ABSTRACT
Edmund Morgan’s classic article, “The Labor Problem at Jamestown” (1971) addresses how European colonists-in this case, the Englishintended to survive in their new circumstances. Morgan transports us to early modern England and Virginia, in order to demonstrate that English settlers behaved very much as they would have at home. The example of the earlier Spanish conquest of the Americas led the English to expect the Indians to labor for them. When that proved hard to arrange, the English colonists nearly starved. It was only after tobacco took off in 1618 that the colonists had sufficient incentive-the promise of profit-to work. Even then, they constantly sought others to perform their labor for them.
