Surviving in colonial America was not easy, particularly if you were not of the high class, and the continuous class wars ensured that the low class remained suppressed. Click here for a 20-minute video by the History of Western Culture website posted on January 22, 2025.

(Above, left) James the First, King of Great Britain, invested in the Virginia Company in 1604 in order to establish an English colony on the banks of the James River. (Above, center) Tobacco plantations were soon established to create wealth. (Above, right) The practice of indentured servitude brought underclass English laborers to work the fields after attempts to enslave the Indigenous population failed.

(Above, left) A poor indentured female servant, poses for a photo inside a house in the 19th century. (Above, center) In 1639, the punishment for servants who ran away was hanging. (Above, right) At around 1620, the Lord Mayor of London began sending orphans off the streets to Virginia.

(Above, left) Oliver Cromwell sent many Irish to Virginia and the West Indies as indentured servants. (Above, center) After Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, indentured servants began to identify more with the white aristocracy and less with Black Africans. (Bottom, right) When the Natives, wracked by disease, war and enslavement, could not  provide a sufficient quantity of cheap laborers, colonists embraced chattel African slavery.