The Truth About Jamestown, Pilgrims, and Puritans

CrashCourse

This fast-paced and engaging history lesson dives into the complex realities of early English colonization in North America, moving beyond the simplified myths often taught in elementary school. Host John Green contrasts the two primary English settlements: the profit-driven, struggling colony of Jamestown in Virginia and the religiously motivated, family-oriented colonies of New England. The video explores how these distinct origins—one based on tobacco and indentured servitude, the other on religious community and subsistence farming—created deep-seated regional differences that would shape American history.