Georgia

=__**Terms**__= **__James Oglethorpe: __**  Oglethorpe was the founder of the final colony to be chartered, Georgia. Oglethorpe was a member of parliament and was a military hero as well. One of his motives to establish Georgia was to create a military buffer bet ween the Spanish Florida and South Carolina. Also, since Oglethorpe was a philanthropist, he desired to have a colony that would provide a refuge for the impoverished of England (especially innocent debtors in English prisons). Oglethorpe, along with some fellow trustees, was given ownership of the land between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers by King George II in 1732. Oglethorpe himself led the first expedition to settle on the Savannah river and founded a small fortified town at the mouth of the river. As it turned out very few debtors were released from prison to be sent to Georgia and more impoverished artisans and tradesmen from England settled there. (Tommy Bakken)

__Plantations__: Artificially established field or estate made for the purpose of growing various crops. Immigrants came to America with the hopes of owning their own land, a luxury that was not available to them in the small, crowded cities of Europe. Some major crops typically grown in newly colonized America were corn, sugar, and tobacco.

Pictured above is a plantation with neat, orderly rows of plentiful crops.

Georgia Category: There were typically more plantations in the south compared to the north. This was more common due to the fact that the warmer weather allowed for crops to grow more efficiently. Open spaces also contributed to the prevalence in the south than that of the north. The north was more urbanized with a bigger population while the south was more rural with a lesser population and more open land.

Merchant Capitalist: A type of economic and social system that is not a fully capitalistic system. This system was seen in early Europe, but it was also common in the Southern United States where it was used to keep legislators from carrying out economic packages. The Merchant Capitalist system also asserted the creation of capitalist societies as a way to create wealth. We chose to put this in Georgia because Merchant Capitalists were most present in the southern colonies. This is a picture of a bag of gold to simbolize a way to create wealth. (Takizawa, Adamczyk)

__Sugar Cultivation__: Sugar, a newly introduced crop to the Americas, was widely popular and quickly turned into a major cash crop. This new harvest had many effects including: increasing trade with Great Britain, growth of demand for labor (leading to the enslavement of Native Americans as well as Africans), and added much wealth to developing America.



Above: Raw sugar cane stalk, before harvest and processing.

Category rationale: Georgia seemed to be fitting because sugar cultivation typically occurred more towards the south, where land as well as labor were abundant. The Caribbean actually had the most plantations producing sugar cane.

(Rinya Kamber and Sharon Shim)