You're listening to an AirWave Media Podcast.

Ben Franklin's World is a production of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios.

Hello and welcome to episode 355 of Ben Franklin's World.

The podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our early American past

have shaped the present day world we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Covart.

On April 10, 1606, King James I of England granted the Virginia Company,

which was a commercial trading company, a charter so that it could undertake the work

of establishing an English colony on the eastern coast of North America.

Today we know that the Virginia Company successfully established the first permanent

English colony in North America at Jamestown, Virginia.

But what worked did the Virginia Company have to do to establish this colony?

And how much money did the company have to raise and from whom did it raise this money

to support its colonial venture?

Misha UN, a lecture at the University of Bristol and a historian of early modern England

and its Atlantic world empire, joins us to discuss the creation and operation

of the Virginia Company with details from her book, The Virginia Venture.

Working colonization and English society, 1580 to 1660.

Now as we investigate the Virginia Company, Misha reveals details about the Virginia Company

and why England had to depend on trading companies like it to launch its programs of colonization.

The plans and work the Virginia Company had to undertake to ensure it could establish a viable colony.

And information about the Virginia Company's investors and why they may have chosen to support the company

...