WI: Jamestown had been a failure?

What if Jamestown had been a complete failure with all of the colonists dying, how would that have affected the colonization of the New World?
 
The English would try again, just somewhere else somewhere in the modern Mid-Atlantic states. After all, Jamestown was the third or fourth recorded attempt to settle in America by the English. But it certainly wouldn't be the Virginia Company of London, I'll tell you that much.
 
What if Jamestown had been a complete failure with all of the colonists dying, how would that have affected the colonization of the New World?

It depends. When does this happen? It might make no difference, or it might make all the difference? Would this happen after John Smith's departure from the Virginia Colony? Is he among the dead?

It won't stop the English from colonization but the Chesapeake area would likely be ignored as a possible place to establish a colony for maybe five-ten years, maybe more.
 
It depends. When does this happen? It might make no difference, or it might make all the difference? Would this happen after John Smith's departure from the Virginia Colony? Is he among the dead?

It won't stop the English from colonization but the Chesapeake area would likely be ignored as a possible place to establish a colony for maybe five-ten years, maybe more.

How about the Malaria Outbreak of 1607 manages to kill a majority of the settlers, causing the abandonment of the settlement.
 
The English would try again, just somewhere else somewhere in the modern Mid-Atlantic states. After all, Jamestown was the third or fourth recorded attempt to settle in America by the English. But it certainly wouldn't be the Virginia Company of London, I'll tell you that much.

I agree, by Jamestown there had been several attempts and IIRC there were plans for more while Jamestown was starving.

My favourite WI of early American colonisation is where Francis Drake took off a bunch of settlers because their supply boat hand`t arrived, and the boat arrived a couple of days later.
 
How about the Malaria Outbreak of 1607 manages to kill a majority of the settlers, causing the abandonment of the settlement.

I suppose if the settlement is abandoned, the remaining survivors are probably taken as prisoners of war by the Powhatan. The area is likely to not going to be colonized again by the English. The area is pretty worthless and this is before the discovery of growing tobacco.

They may well try again in New England or in the OTL New York area. :D
 
The colonies weren't being founded directly by the government, but rather by a private company operating under royal charter, which changes up the incentive structure quite a bit. The Virginia Company "owned" the North American coast from what's now North Carolina through southern New Jersey, and that land grant is the Company's main asset. If Jamestown fails, either they'll keep trying (probably not directly in the Jamestown/Roanoke area, but perhaps in OTL Maryland or North Carolina), or they'll sell their land grant in order to cover their losses.

In the latter case, I suspect the most likely buyer would be roughly the people who OTL formed the Plymouth Company, leading to the Pilgrims settling further south than OTL. OTL New England would either go uncolonized by the English (likely eventually taken over by the spread of New Amsterdam and New France), or would be colonized later by the demographics who OTL settled the Southern colonies.

Could be very interesting, swapping the original cultures of the South and New England. Culturally and religiously, I'd expect the New England Puritans (particularly the radically (by the standards of the day) egalitarian Congregationalists and Quakers who dominated early settlement in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania) to be much slower and more reluctant to adopt chattel slavery and an aristocratic plantation culture.
 
I suppose if the settlement is abandoned, the remaining survivors are probably taken as prisoners of war by the Powhatan. The area is likely to not going to be colonized again by the English. The area is pretty worthless and this is before the discovery of growing tobacco.

They may well try again in New England or in the OTL New York area. :D

New York at the time is Dutch though isn't it.
 
Didn't England revoke the company charter after the Virginia Company proved incompetent and the colonists were dying en masse, and nationalize the whole thing, after which point it really took off?
 
Didn't England revoke the company charter after the Virginia Company proved incompetent and the colonists were dying en masse, and nationalize the whole thing, after which point it really took off?

Even so, a lot of the colonists who went to the Chesapeake area died in droves after the Virgina Company became nationalized. It just was not a good place to start a settler colony.
 
Well MY mistake. :p

A Puritan New York would be awesome. Especially if it was called Avalon.

It is. In the last thread about this, I suggested Puritan Bermuda as a funny alternative location. Avalon's a good name for Manhattan or Staten Island or Long Island. ;)
 
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