Jamestown Failure?

hey, all. a new idea has been bouncing around in my head recently, concerning European colonization: Jamestown struggled historically, so what if the settlement ultimately failed? would there eventually be more successful colonies on the Eastern Seaboard, or would the Europeans more or less give up trying to properly colonize North America and instead just try setting up trading outposts, playing the natives off each other for their own profit and eventually leading to the formation of some native states that are strong enough to largely resist assimilation by the Europeans, at least for a while? keep in mind that, with the earliest-possible POD, New Spain would still exist and the Spanish would have alot of territory in Central and South America as well
 
This might only delay colonization, and would have to occur before new settlements begin to occur (e.g. Plymouth). It will definitely be a stronger deterrent for the English, but might allow the French, Dutch, Swedish and whoever else to colonize.
Of course these people had different treatment of the natives than the British did, and if there are far more colonizers, the natives can play off each of them and it allows them more independence to adapt even with the diseases.
Failure at Jamestown will mean a very different North America
 
I don't think a failure at Jamestown would stop the British from trying further. They were in stiff competition with the French for the New World. I dunno about the Swedish. I don't think their empire would be powerful enough to compete with the British and French.
 
Funny, I was thinking a similar thought.

Say John Rolfe dies when the ship he's on heading to Virginia manages to actually sink, in this case. In real life it almost did, but they saved themselves by shipwrecking on Bermuda. With him out of the picture, he never manages to get tobacco plantations off the ground in Virginia. When the Virginia Company loses its charter, Jamestown doesn't amount to much. Without the growth that the introduction of commercially useful tobacco, it doesn't grow as it had in OTL. The last colonists either die, out of starvation or in a bout with the natives, or they escape to live with them.

Granted, this will definitely not stop people from trying to colonize North America. I mean, Jamestown already went through what probably felt like hell. But perhaps Virginia won't be as much of a magnet for people as it had been, without the cash crop.

One question is how the Tsenacommacah would fair after this. Unfortunately, by this time malaria would most likely already be introduced in the area. Most likely the population of the people in the area already would decline because of it. But with their biggest threat gone, maybe they would have fared better. No English there growing tobacco in a way that exhausted the land, pushing them further in, no introduced animals (the few of them there at this point probably eaten by the last colonists) and maybe not honeybees or earthworms in the land to change it so much.

Thoughts?
 
English colonization then is concentrated more in New England and further attempts at settlement in the South is delayed for a while, maybe another ten to twenty years.
 
Funny, I was thinking a similar thought.

Say John Rolfe dies when the ship he's on heading to Virginia manages to actually sink, in this case. In real life it almost did, but they saved themselves by shipwrecking on Bermuda. With him out of the picture, he never manages to get tobacco plantations off the ground in Virginia. When the Virginia Company loses its charter, Jamestown doesn't amount to much. Without the growth that the introduction of commercially useful tobacco, it doesn't grow as it had in OTL. The last colonists either die, out of starvation or in a bout with the natives, or they escape to live with them.

Granted, this will definitely not stop people from trying to colonize North America. I mean, Jamestown already went through what probably felt like hell. But perhaps Virginia won't be as much of a magnet for people as it had been, without the cash crop.

One question is how the Tsenacommacah would fair after this. Unfortunately, by this time malaria would most likely already be introduced in the area. Most likely the population of the people in the area already would decline because of it. But with their biggest threat gone, maybe they would have fared better. No English there growing tobacco in a way that exhausted the land, pushing them further in, no introduced animals (the few of them there at this point probably eaten by the last colonists) and maybe not honeybees or earthworms in the land to change it so much.

Thoughts?

this reminds me, one of the actual PODs that i really had in mind was that tobacco is never discovered (or at least not when it is IOTL)
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
If you want English colonization of the new world to fail, focus on Barbados. That's where the english got their taste for colonizations, and slavery, and cash crops in the new world. Indeed, changing the history of barbados is changing the history of the English in the new world.
 
^^^ Yeah, true. How much could change though in those few decades?

^^ Circa ten thousand BC? Or do you mean by Europe? :p
 
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