Southern Colonies

The Southern Colonies of British North America were Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, and Virginia, where the first permanent settlement among them was at Jamestown.

The hope of gold, resources, and virgin lands drew English colonists to the Southern Colonies. Their economy was driven by plantations, initially worked by indentured servants, a labor force which was largely replaced in the early 18th century by slaves imported from Africa, except for Georgia, where most plantations were worked by debtors. Colonial South Carolina relied mainly on the Indian slave trade and deerskin trade until the Yamasee War of 1715. Thereafter the colony economy diversified. Rice plantations, and later other cash crops like cotton, worked by African slaves overtook the Indian trade as the colony's economic foundation.

The ports of Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia traded with Great Britain, slave ships from Africa, and the Caribbean. Their cash crops were tobacco, cotton, indigo, rice, and sugar cane. Colony and Dominion of Virginia and Province of Maryland are sometimes considered part of the Southern Colonies.

The first representative legislative body met at Jamestown in 1619, and became known as the House of Burgesses, a precursor to the Virginia General Assembly. Throughout the colonies, the government, subject to the Crown and Royal Governors, was dominated mainly by planters and farmers, and consisted only of men and landowners.