Bacon's siege and capture of Jamestown was the climax of the rebellion. Berkeley fled by water across the Chesapeake. Bacon burned the colonial capital — including the church and statehouse — to prevent Berkeley from reoccupying it. Bacon died of dysentery within weeks, collapsing the rebellion. Berkeley returned and executed 23 rebel leaders, prompting King Charles II to recall Berkeley and famously remark that he had "hanged more men in that naked country than I have done for the murder of my father."
European colonization of North America accelerated after 1600, with England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands establishing competing settlements along the Atlantic coast, the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi Valley. The first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (1607) struggled with starvation and conflict; the Plymouth colony (1620) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) followed. By the mid-1700s, thirteen English colonies stretched along the Atlantic seaboard, governed through a mix of royal charters, proprietary grants, and elected assemblies. The colonial economy depended on tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, rice and indigo in the Carolinas, and maritime trade in New England — all increasingly reliant on enslaved African labor after 1619. Conflict with Indigenous peoples over land was continuous, punctuated by major wars including King Philip's War (1675–1676) in New England and the Yamasee War (1715–1717) in the South. The French and Indian War (1754–1763), part of the global Seven Years' War, ended French power in North America and left Britain deeply in debt — triggering the taxation disputes that would lead to revolution.
Light; city burned to ground
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