"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest." Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776, volume I

In these few words a Scottish economist lays the foundation of a revolutionary system for organizing societies: capitalism.

Main Points

Businessmen teamed up in companies played the leading role in starting the English colonies
England, along with Holland and a few Italian cities, was one of the few nations where businessmen and merchants were allowed to play a leading--and eventually--primary role in the government
Capitalism as a weapon--the power of systematized gain as the guiding logic of a kingdom that became an empire
Virginia the first colony, 1607
Who went ?
Why did they go ?
The Shadows of History--the invisible 99%
Massachussetts, the second colony, 1620
Culture Clash: Europeans versus Natives
Economic Take Off in the South: Tobacco
Economic Take Off in New England: Fish, Fur, Trees, Ships
Tabula Rasa: Erasing the Indians and a Clean Slate
English Caribbean Colonies: the key role of the slave-driven Sugar and Death Factories
Why the Africans ?
Slavery and Capitalism: a love affair

Businessmen Beat Barons

Unlike Spain and Portugal, England was not centrally in charge of her colonies. The planning, creation and day-to-day management of many English colonies was in the hands of businessmen--not soldiers nor priests, they were supposed to be money-making, capitalist enterprises.

The business-friendly attitude of the English culture had not always been so: in earlier medieval times English kings had borrowed massively from merchant Italians and Jews...and then just refused to pay them, and expelled them
Shakespeare's famous play, the Merchant of Venice, recalls some of these facts
The English colonies were often loosely planned, even chaotic, uncoordinated business enterprises.
the emerging class of businessmen, also known as the bourgeoisie, had a very different outlook from that of then dominant classes of nobles and clergy; the businessmen embraced capitalism: making money by buying and selling--and then re-investing the profits to make even more money--nobles and church traditionally and officially, didn't believe in profit: if you made £50, you spent £50, they despised buying and selling as dirty activities reserved for handfuls of suspect minorities of foreign Jews, Italians, and others
They were not tightly-controlled centrally diryected organizations run by the king or queen, or by parliament
and, because they were not directly run by the English crown, the English colonies had more participative government
but let's be careful: when I write 'participative government', I sure as hell don't mean democratic: the colonies were mostly controlled by limited numbers of very specific people: a wealthy, connected elite.
the origins of what became the USA from English business enterprises may have caused American culture to develop a more business-friendly outlook and 'hands-off' attitude
Another important point: what the English didn't bring to America: they did not bring an established state Church, nor did they bring a feudal aristocratic system, the 13 colonies would be established on a tabula rasa, a 'clean sheet'
A very important point: in the 1600s--during the crucial 'birth' and 'childhood' phases of the American colonies, 'mother England' was convulsed with traumatic rebellions, wars, and other calamities; so 1, 'mother England's' already loose oversight became even looser, and 2, more waves of desperate people came to America; this lack of 'micro-management' of the colonies by England is sometimes referred to as 'salutary neglect'--that the mother country's inattention ended up being salutary or healthful
the richest English colonies were actually in the Caribbean and had an important relationship with the colonies in North America

Let's take a look at why England followed a different path than Spain:

The enormous and sudden success of the Spanish and Portuguese with overseas trade and exploration stunned Europe.

Other Kingdoms were jealous and fearful, as Spain rapidly became a superpower and used its newfound wealth to go on the offensive, sending its armies and fleets across Europe.

Above you see maps indicating how much territory Spain had taken over by the late 1500s

Added to this geopolitical dynamic was a new and highly toxic ingredient: religious hate, born from the split of Christianity into rival Catholic and Protestant factions. This new and venomous element of religious fanaticism, added to existing national and dynastic rivalries, seemed to give divine sanction to war, making competition even more intense and raising the already high levels of cruelty and brutality to a demented point.

But England in the 1400s and 1500s, was a relatively small and impoverished kingdom, lost in the northern mists on the rim of Europe, far from the glory of the wealthy, powerful cities and kingdoms of the south, centered on the Mediterranean: Spain, Genoa, Florence, Venice, the Ottoman Empire.

England could not hope to compete directly against these kingdoms, which were superior in experience, technology, and resources.

So how could England nevertheless take part in this new transatlantic gold rush?

England eventually found its own way: it used not the power of warriors and knights like Spain with Cortes and Pizzaro, it used the new, emerging of capitalism, the power of business, of entrepreneurs (and sometimes pirates!).

a photo showing a little jackal lurking close to a lion which is lying next to a large zebra it's killed; the jackal is labeled 'England', the Zebra is labeled 'New World', and the lion is labeled 'Spain'

Above, a photo from Africa showing a jackal getting ready to steal pieces of dead Zebra from a lion. The jackal is much too small and too slow to catch or kill a big Zebra on its own so, instead, the jackal tries to steal scraps from a bigger predator.

This scene, in my mind, is a metaphor for what England started doing in the 1500s: it was too weak militarily, inexperienced, and too poor financially to directly confront an Empire like Carlos V's Spain.

Instead of directly confronting Spain, the English, like the jackal, attacked indirectly, by piratical raids, by smuggling, and later, by 'nibbling' on the outside perimeter of the Spanish Empire the areas too distant and too marginal to provoke the Spanish 'lion.' So the place of attack was different, and so was the method.

Capitalism as a Weapon

England could not, in the early 1600s, directly compete with the Empire of Spain. So, eventually, the English developed a different approach, rather than the King or Queen personally financing and taking the great risks of investing in an enterprise as dangerous and uncertain (the first English attempt to establish a colony, at Roanoke had ended catastrophically) as taking over new lands on the other side of the planet, the risk--and any future rewards--would be shared among shareholders or investors.

a photograph of the official royal charter, or contract, granted by King James of England to the founding partners of the Virginia company, dated April 1606

The English were comparative amateurs or beginners in the world of international trade--not just the practical shipping side of it, but even more importantly, the financial side of it: funding and insurance.

Business is still very risky today, but can you imagine just how risky business, especially international seaborne trade was 400 years ago?

your ship could sink through bad weather, or by hitting rocks (there were no charts, no GPS)
your ship could sink because of defects in design, construction, or maintenance
your ship could be taken or sunk by pirates or an enemy nation
your ship's own crew could defraud you, or even mutiny ('risicum gentium')

The risks were enormous, but so were the potential profits, this was more like gambling than investing.

The Mediterranean traders had evolved, more than 300 years before the English, practices to minimize risk, including credit, insurance, and risk diversification--such as spreading one merchant's cargo among several ships--rather than putting all the 'eggs in one basket'.

Other ways of managing high risk were partnerships, but also joint-stock companies and shares. The English borrowed these ideas--and even their flag--from the Italians, and Genoa, in particular.

Sins of the Father

The English certainly were not the inventors of capitalism, nor, arguably, even its perfectors; the history of capitalism is long and complex, and numerous groups, especially Middle East and Italian cities had been developing it centuries before the first English corporations started.

But when England and Holland started implementing capitalist methods, a new stage in history began.

This was the implementation of capitalism:

on a national scale--not a city scale
by nations strategically positioned on the Atlantic, not the landlocked slowly dying Mediterranean
by nations which were majority protestant religion which were less hostile to business and profit
by nations that had relatively weak monarchies
and, importantly--this was a colonial, and fundamentally predatory capitalism: a 'business model'--or to speak plainly, a crime model--based on theft, the stealing of land and the stealing and killing of people

By the 1600s, there had been, of course, many, many great empires.

But the Empire created by England would be different: its fundamental, primary organizing principle and logic

wasn't religion--because England was religiously fragmented
wasn't nationality or ethnicity--because besides the English, there were Scots, Irish, and Welsh
wasn't dynastic--because England had a revolving door of different families on its throne

No, the common 'glue' that kept the ruling elite more or less focused was a simple one: gain, or to put it more plainly, greed, this was the more universal motivating and unifying factor.

My view--which I hasten to warn you, is surely controversial--is that a combination of conditions unique to England, allowed the emergence of a mostly dominant capitalist class, which harnessed and systematized greed--and enabled England to achieve unparalled success and eventually attain and maintain the status of the first superpower.

Question: Has modern American culture inherited the 'business-centered' approach of the British?*

Virginia, the First Colony, 1607

In the time of Queen Elizabeth the First, the 'Virgin Queen', the English had tried to start a colony on a small island in Virginia, at a place called Roanoke, but its people vanished, and the enterprise failed.

About twenty years later, King James granted permission to the English investors to cross the Atlantic and start a colony, in exchange he received one-fifth or twenty percent of any gold and silver they might find. The king made no investment in the enterprise, either of money or resources.

one share in the Virginia Company cost 12 and a half pounds (12 pounds 10 shillings); to put this sum in context, a servant made about 5 pounds a year in the early 1600s
only six shareholders invested more than 200 pounds

But what right did the King of England have to assign Virginia to some London capitalists? The reasons given in the Charters of 1606 and 1606 (more fully discussed if you follow this link) are:

the Natives occupying this land aren't Christians, nor even subjects of a Christian monarch
the Natives occupying this land are 'savage' and 'brutish'
a terrible God-sent plague has decimated the Natives*
consequently, the area is now 'deserted'

(King James and the Virginia Co either did not know, or conveniently forgot the fact that the terrible plague had been brought in by Europeans)

Who went and Why did they go ?

Some middle-class ('gentlemen'), the younger sons of families--who would not inherit the family farm or business (usually left to the eldest son), came to America in hopes of a better life
desperately poor people who faced the choice between starvation or taking a leap into the unknown world of the Americas
young people sold into servitude by family, or themselves, through desperation
prisoners--whether convicted of crime, or captured in war
all the above were mostly misled by exaggerated or outright false information about the enterprise
the 1600s were a terrible time for many people in all of Britain, with international wars, civil wars, religious wars, bad weather, starvation, epidemics, and catastrophic fires
slaves, beginning in 1619, usually Africans, but also Native Americans

photograph of an overloaded boat filled with refugees

Question: Are there any significant similarities between the immigrants of 1620 to the immigrants of 2020 ?

The Shadows of History

There's a bias in historical evidence from hundreds of years ago--the vast majority of things from the past, whether it's the writings, art, buildings, and objects are those belonging to, and made for, a tiny minority of the wealthy and powerful.

99% of historical material revolves around the lives and doings of 1% of the people. The 99% are largely invisible and silent.

Most of them couldn't write. And maybe if they could, they had no money to buy ink or paper (which were very expensive in those days). And they had no time anyway.

This invisibility of the 99% doesn't mean they didn't exist and it definitely shouldn't lead us to the illusion that they're not important. They were and they are.

A specific development happening in England at this time which probably caused waves of poor desperate people was the enclosure movement: society changed, the use of cash increased, the economy became increasingly monetized, traditions and rules weakened.

Land could now be rented, bought, or sold for cash--rather than being held semi-permanently in exchange for barter or payments in kind--like X amount of work and/or X amount of wool or grain, etc.

Guess who did have the cash? Not the average small farmer or peasant, that's for sure.

Thus, many British small farmers were evicted and had their land and houses seized, and small family farms that grew food to feed local people were transformed into large commercial farms which frequently produced commodities like wool for more profitable cash-based international trade

Now these dispossessed farmers had:

no place to live
no food to eat
no education to start a career
no tools or money to start a business or craft
no, or weak support networks
no government assistance--are you kidding??--the government is basically run by the wealthy people seizing the land
the choice of an uncertain--and probably miserably--life in a city OR going to America...

Question: Do the English Enclosures of the 1600s remind you of things happening today, not just in India, China, Mexico, but even in the USA?

Crappy contemporary drawing of English peasants being driven off their farms during the Enclosure Movement. I searched for a pretty long time to get a visual of this process, but I was hardly able to find any art of these events.

Can you guess why I couldn't find many pictures of the poor majority of people in Britain being screwed?

Perhaps because the vast majority of writers and artists aren't poor peasants, and either they or their wealthy patrons didn't find the plight of the multitudes of people they robbed--and from whom they derived so much of their wealth--interesting.

a primitive drawing from England in the late 1500s and early-mid 1600s, small cottages are pictured being attacked and set on fire by armed men on horseback, families with women and children are shown fleeing on foot

↓ Primary Source

“NOTE FOR MEN THAT HAVE GREAT SPIRITS, AND SMALL MEANES.

(I wish) ’to finde imployment for those that are idle, because they know not’ (where to find work)...’Who can desire more content, that hath small meanes; or but only his merit to advance his fortune, then to tread, and plant that ground hee hath purchased by the hazard of his life? What to such a minde can bee more pleasant than planting and building a foundation for his Posteritie, gotte from the rude earth, by Gods blessing and his owne industrie...every man may be master and owner of his owne labour and land; or the greatest part in a small time.” (Captain John Smith, On the Advantages of New England with Historical Reflections)

For an insight into the experience of an indentured servant:link to letter of Richard Frethorne to his parents

↓ Secondary Source

"The rich outpouring of scholarship on late Elizabethan and early Stuart England has left little doubt that the period from 1590 to 1650 witnessed a succession of some of the worst employment crises ever experienced by the British Isles. "

'Earlier improvements in diet had spurred a dramatic growth in the laboring-age population, which by the 1590s had begun to outstrip the supply of both food and work. A series of bad harvests, together with textile depressions, enclosures, estate consolidations, rising prices, and falling wages, brought hardships to laborers and small producers alike...Laborers, cottagers and craftsmen whose wages had earlier allowed them to keep their families above the subsistence level could no longer do so.

'The result was the infamous era of Hugh Make-Shift, with its proliferation of masterless men, vagrants, beggars, drunkenness, and criminality. By some estimates, unemployment and underemployment had brought nearly one-quarter of England’s laboring population to the edge of starvation. Peter Bowden believes that the decades of extreme hardship from 1620 to 1650 “were probably among the most terrible through which the country has ever passed.”...D. C. Coleman estimates that “in Stuart England between a quarter and a half of the entire population were chronically below what contemporaries regarded as the official poverty line.”

(Quotation from pages 3 & 4, Work and Labor in Early America, Stephen Innes, Ed., Chapel Hill, 1988)

Arrival--Survival

A one way trip: destination death (probably)

a bird's eye view drawing by an artist, imagining what the settlement at Jamestown might have looked like in the early 1600s. The drawing shows a small, roughly rectangular piece of land, surrounded with water on three sides and one side closed off by a wooden palisade. Inside the settlement are a few dozen buildings, and a ship is anchored next to the village.

Jamestown, 1608, imagined by an artist.

It’s very difficult, and perhaps impossible, to really understand what it was like to live four hundred years ago and cross the Atlantic or the Pacific.

People today cross the oceans routinely--it’s a twelve hour trip, yes, mostly narrow seats and shitty microwaved food, but in less than 1 day we travel safely to another continent.

But until 1900 or so, travel was very different:

it was very expensive: a trip (Mayflower 1620= £5) cost more than a year’s wages, in many cases people’s life savings

and, because it was so expensive many people had to borrow money

but...who would lend money to poor people--especially if they’re going on a trip where they might die and therefore not be able to pay back their debt ?

what if they borrow money from relatives or friends? Probably all their relatives and friends are also poor
consequently the most likely lender would be a moneyed person, and the guarantee or collateral would be...the life of the person making the voyage: in other words, you would sell yourself (because that’s all you have)

the trip was extremely unpleasant: the ships were overcrowded (the ship Mayflower, for example, had over 100 people living in a space of about 1,600 square feet--while the average US home has over 2,000 square feet), leaky, rat and cockroach infested shit-holes. There was no air conditioning, there were no refrigerators, canned food was still hundreds of years in the future, so food was terrible, lacking in vitamins and often spoiled, causing malnutrition and disease. One either had to be desperate, insane, or an ignorant fool to go on a trip like this;

indeed, blatantly lying to people about the real dangers of the trip and of the immense challenge

British social upheaval created pressures leading to the colonization of North America, these pressures contributed to people leaving Britain for the colonies. If the situation in Britain hadn’t been so bad, perhaps they wouldn’t have left in such numbers, and then the British colonies in North America would have failed…and the path of history would have been changed, and the USA would not have evolved; maybe Spanish, or French culture would dominate North America.

↓ Primary Source

"During the winter a certain malady attacked many of our people. It is called a land-sickness, otherwise scurvy. There was engendered in the mouths of those who had it large pieces of superfluous fungus flesh which caused a great putrefaction. And this increased to such and extent they could scarcely take anything except in very liquid form. Their teeth barely held in place and could be withdrawn with the fingers without causing pain. This superfluous flesh was cut away which caused them to lose much blood from the mouth. Afterwards they had great pains in the arms and legs which became swollen and very hard with spots like flea bites." Samuel Champlain (d. 1635)

↓ Primary Source

"As at this time were most of our chiefest men either sicke or discontented, the rest being in such dispaire, as they would rather starve and rot with idleness, then be persuaded to do any thing for their owne reliefe without constraint..." John Smith

Of the 105 men and boys who started Jamestown, by the end of winter, 38 had survived. George Percy, governor of Jamestown, wrote about his experiences in the August and September of 1607:

"The fourth day of September died Thomas Jacob Sergeant. The fifth day, there died Benjamin Beast. Our men were destroyed with cruel diseases, as Swellings, Fluxes, Burning Fevers, and by wars, and some departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of mere famine. There were never Englishmen left in a foreign Country in such misery as we were in this new discovered Virginia. . . . Our food was but a small Can of Barley sod* in water, to five men a day, our drink cold water taken out of the River, which was at a flood very salty, at a low tide full of slime and filth, which was the destruction of many of our men. Thus we lived for the space of five months in this miserable distress, not having five able men to man our Bulwarks upon any occasion. If it had not pleased God to have put a terror in the Savages’ hearts, we had all perished by those wild and cruel Pagans, being in that weak estate as we were; our men night and day groaning in every corner of the Fort most pitiful to hear. If there were any conscience in men, it would make their hearts to bleed to hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries of our sick men without relief, every night and day, for the space of six weeks, some departing out of the World, many times three or four in a night; in the morning, their bodies trailed out of their Cabins like Dogs to be buried. In this sort did I see the mortality of diverse of our people."

'Captain' John Smith on the 'gentlemen' from England, who apparently thought that conquering a New World was a 'pic-nic':

"For some small number of adventrous Gentlemen...nothing were more requisite; but to have more to wait and play than worke, or more commanders and officers than industrious labourers was not so necessarie. For in Virginia, a plaine Souldier that can use a Pockaxe and spade, is better than five knights."

quoted in The Forming of a Nation: Random House Readings in American History, V.1, p. 11. New York, 1970.

THE VIRGINIA COMPANY: an early example of corporate 'bait and switch'--Virginia a paradise on Earth?

↓ Primary Source

Letter of Henry Brigg, to his brother, Thomas:

" My Master Atkins hath tould me, If you remember he tould me that for my Diett, the worst day in the weeke should be better than the Sonday, & also he swore unto you that I should never serve any man but himselfe: And also he tould us that there they paled out their groundes from Deare and Hoggs. But in stead of them we pale out or enemies."

Letter to Sir John Worsenholme:

"If the Company would allow to each man a pound of butter and a pounde of Chese weekely, they would find more comfort therin then by all the Deere, Fish & Fowle is so talked about in England of which I can assure you your poore servants have nott had since their cominge into the Contrey..."

Letter of John Thorp to John Smyth:

"I am pswaded that more doe die of the disease of their minde then of theire body by having this country victualls overpraised unto them in England & by not knowing , they shall drinke water here

(quoted in The Forming of a Nation: Random House Readings in American History, V.1, p. 31. New York, 1970.)

Jamestown "Scoreboard"

Composition of Original Expedition (1607) 105 people--all men, of whom 67 are known by name; of these 35 gentlemen, 1 preacher, 4 carpenters, 12 laborers, 1 surgeon, 1 blacksmith, 1 sailor, 1 barber, 2 bricklayers, 1 mason, 1 tailor, 1 drummer, 4 boys, 2 unidentified non-gentlemen

Composition of the 1608 Expedition

120 people, 73 known, 28 gentlemen, 21 laborers, remainder are craftsmen: jewelers, refiners, goldsmiths, apothecaries, tailors, blacksmiths, and even a perfumer.

Within a few months, 50 of the 105 were dead, by 1610, 88% of the settlers had died (440 out of 500)

It's almost miraculous that the Jamestown colony survived, because a lot of factors were negative:

the colonists should have arrived earlier to get a quick start on planting food
the site they chose was swampy--which why the Natives had avoided it--the water quality was bad, and there were a lot of mosquitoes
recent tree analysis suggests that the Jamestown area was in the middle of the worst drought in 700 years, so there was a water and food shortage

12 Years Later English Land in Massachusetts

Twelve years after the start of Jamestown, another group of English, on a ship called the Mayflower, crossed the Atlantic. Most of the passengers were Puritans, strict Protestants who were coming to America with their families and servants to start their own religious utopia--not get rich quick like Cortes or the founders of the Virginia Company.

They were also going to Virginia, but after a tough trip finally landed in November, 500 miles farther north at Plymouth, in the area today known as New England. Nobody knew it at the time, but this was the start of the USA's second region, the North.

The 102 people on the Mayflower's bad luck turned out to be good luck. The Natives who had lived in the area where they landed had been decimated by disease: in other words, a pre-emptive biological bombardment had devastated the tribes, opening the path for the newcomers.

THANKSGIVING or...THANKSTAKING ?

↓ Secondary Source

After more than two months at sea and arriving practically at the beginning of winter, how did the English survive?

'...by robbing Indian houses and graves. The Mayflower first hove to at Cape Cod. An armed company staggered out. Eventually it found a recently deserted Indian settlement. The newcomers—hungry, cold, sick—dug up graves and ransacked houses, looking for underground stashes of corn. "And sure it was God's good providence that we found this corn," Bradford wrote, "for else we know not how we should have done." (He felt uneasy about the thievery, though.) When the colonists came to Plymouth, a month later, they set up shop in another deserted Indian village. All through the coastal forest the Indians had "died on heapes, as they lay in their houses," the English trader Thomas Morton noted. "And the bones and skulls upon the severall places of their habitations made such a spectacle"'

(From Charles C. Mann, 1491, 'The Atlantic Magazine', March 2002)

The starving English (almost half of them would die that first winter) dug everywhere in their desperate search for caches of Native corn. To their astonishment they dug up one grave to find a corpse with blonde hair.

It turns out a French ship had visited the area a couple of years earlier (as had other European fishing ships), perhaps it was then that disease, perhaps viral hepatitis was transmitted, killing 75 to 90% of the Natives; and, in the words of William Bradford: "The good hand of God favored our beginnings," by "sweeping away great multitudes of the natives ... that he might make room for us."

It was disease again--or the hand of God, if you believe Bradford--that sent Tisquantum a Patuxet Indian kidnapped by the English and then released by the Spanish, whose tribe during his absence, had been apparently entirely destroyed and acted as an invaluable guide, teacher, and translator to the Puritans as they adapted to life in their new home. It was partly due to Tisquantum that the Puritans went from starving to plenty, and this is part of how the American tradition of Thanksgiving originated.

Culture Clash

Cortes and Pizarro came to the New World as armed and experienced adventurers, looking for, and prepared for trouble--which is why they were called 'Conquistadores'; but the English experience in the New World was crucially different in several respects, Where, Why, and Who:

Where the English landed in Virginia, Massachusetts, and the Caribbean, where there were no large agriculture-based Native civilizations, just relatively small tribes of Natives with a mixed economy based on farming as well as hunting and gathering
Why the English arrived with the goal of settling, as individuals and families, unlike the Conquistadores, whose initial goal seems to have been short-term plunder
Who the English were not, mostly, people with military experience

↓ Secondary Source

John Alexander Williams describes this in his book, West Virginia: A History for Beginners:

"The Indians had no concept of "private property," as applied to the land. Only among the Delawares was it customary for families, during certain times of the year, to be assigned specific hunting territories. Apparently this was an unusual practice, not found among other Indians. Certainly, the idea of an individual having exclusive use of a particular piece of land was completely strange to Native Americans."

The Indians practiced communal land ownership. That is, the entire community owned the land upon which it lived.

Why didn't the Natives kill the English while they had the chance?

The short answer is we don't know, because most of them died of disease, or were killed, or left no record. From the Native perspective, since their people were mostly anihilated and their lands taken, their culture destroyed, the outcome of an earlier effort to throw the English back into the sea could hardly have been worse.

Consider these points:

In 1622, finally, Opechancanough carried out a planned assault on the Virginia Colony it caused very heavy losses, killing 347 settlers, a quarter of its population
If the Natives could cause such damage in 1622, it seems plausible that had they attacked before, in the period 1607-1611 when the settlers were starving, ill, and far fewer, they would have been capable of either exterminating Jamestown entirely or causing such heavy losses that the English would have evacuated
Native counterattacks had succeeded in the past in forcing the withdrawal of European settlements before and would again, in Florida, and in New Mexico

Long-standing military doctrine holds that the crucial time to defeat an assault across water is when the invader is crossing, or has just crossed over--but the Natives allowed the English vital time to gain a foothold, build a bridgehead, and reinforce their numbers. Why?

Here are some ideas--again, we have almost no direct testimony from the Natives, so, apart from archeological findings, much of these are suppositions or 'educated guesses':

Jamestown was a crappy wasteland site; perhaps the Natives didn't really care about surrendering such a small, unattractive area
the Jamestown site might have been in a neutral zone that didn't belong to any tribe
the first batch of dying, starving Englishmen may not have seemed threatening
the Englishmen were a source of desirable items that the Natives could neither make themselves, nor buy from anybody else: blankets, iron tools, guns
the Natives committed one of the cardinal (and most common) of military sins, they underestimated their adversaries: they simply didn't know that this handful of bumbling Englishmen begging and stealing food were, in fact, the spearhead of an entire continent
the Natives were divided and initially more concerned with enemy tribes than with a handful of puny, pathetic foreigners, and their pre-existing rivalries and linguistic problems made it difficult for them to create alliances and carry out a concerted military strategy against the Europeans

Compare and Contrast Native Resistance

In Africa and Asia, some Native cultures were able to successfully resist European penetration and colonization.

Why did Peru and Mexico rapidly fall into the hands of the Europeans while Congo and China resisted for centuries and Japan entirely escaped colonization ?

As I said before, we should be very cautious in making historical comparisons, because there are so many different factors which make it difficult to reach a conclusion.

Nevertheless, the biggest factor saving many African and Asian cultures from European conquest was disease.

Unintentional biological warfare devastated and demoralized American cultures who had no immunity to diseases, allowing handfuls of Europeans to get footholds and establish bases to gradually conquer and dominate the decimated and disorganized natives.

But the Africans and Asians had immunity to diseases carried by Europeans. Not only this, the more challenging microbiological environment of tropical and subtropical areas in Africa and Asia meant that while Europeans arriving in the Americas appeared to be supermen, these same 'supermen' disembarking in African and Asian jungles died like flies, so that many inland areas of Africa and Asia became virtual forbidden zones which white people entered at the jeopardy of their lives.

Because they escaped deadly, debilitating pandemics, the cultures of Africa and Asia gained time to organize resistance and survive.

In Africa, the Kingdom of Kongo adopted European technology and tactics to strengthen their army and also cleverly exploited the antagonisms among the European powers Portugal, Spain, and Holland.

In Japan, although the Portuguese initially penetrated some areas, the Shogun eventually organized a concerted, decisive and ruthless response: the Europeans and numerous Japanese sympathetic to them, or culturally 'infected' by them were pitilessly slaughtered and a coordinated policy of socio-economic quarantine or isolation called Sakoku was begun and maintained.

Economic Take Off in Virginia

TOBACCO for the South, FISH for the North

The English had hoped to strike it rich like the Spanish with Cortes in Mexico and Pizzaro in Peru, looting huge civilizations of all their gold and silver. But it turned out there were no huge civilizations in North America, so a 'plan B' had to be developed.

For Virginia, plan B became tobacco

For New England, plan B became fishing and its associated activities, shipbuilding and trading

With aircraft there is a critical moment where the plane on the runway gathers enough speed until its wings create sufficient lift...so it can leave the ground and beginning flying: and the same term is applied by economists for businesses or nations to describe a time when the enterprise actually begins to make money, and becomes viable, self-sustaining.

VIRGINIA and the SOUTH

The investors of the Virginia Company were businessmen, they started a corporation to make money and had been anxiously awaiting for years their ROI (Return On Investment): they had spent thousands of pounds into ships, stores, personnel, bribes--and so far, they had gotten nothing, only death--and fool’s gold.

Walter Raleigh was an Englishman who endeared himself to Queen Elizabeth by slaughtering a lot of Catholic Irish, Spanish, and Italians and by his nice clothes and fancy dancing.

He caught the attention of the Queen, was made a Knight and tried to start a colony in America, which in a typical act of brown-nosing he named after Elizabeth, the unmarried--and therefore officially Virgin Queen--Virginia.

He picked up the habit of smoking tobacco and with his high status, helped popularize its use, which is why brands of cigarettes and tobacco were named after him.

commercial tobacco plantation became such a staple of the southern colonies, especially North Carolina, that even its capital, Raleigh, is named after the famous admiral/pirate/smoker

Until...pirate/hero/explorer Sir Walter Raleigh and John Rolfe...respectively, popularized tobacco, and then discovered it could be successfully grown in Virginia, previously tobacco, a plant domesticated by Native Americans, had been a virtual monopoly of the Spanish, who, like all monopolists, endeavored to keep prices high, and were rivals of the English, who were naturally loath to enrich Madrid with gold, and have their money come back to them in the form of bullets and cannonballs.

The Spanish had tried to lock down production of tobacco, or sugar, or cocoa, or cotton--just like in times past, the Chinese had done the same with silk, so they would have no competition and be guaranteed good, steady prices.

But when Rolfe stole or smuggled some tobacco seeds from the Spanish, and successfully grew tobacco in Virginia, then, accidentally, Virginia colony became a sudden commercial success because tobacco became a craze and then a habit.

But there were consequences:

tobacco is a plant that demands a lot of nutrients from the soil and consequently 'burns out' the land, especially with intensive, large-scale, careless commercial cultivation
as virgin lands taken from Natives were 'burned out' by tobacco planting, new lands were stolen from the Natives, with the plantations pushing further inland into Virginia, and later Kentucky and Tennessee

Commercial agriculture like the tobacco planting in Virginia was very different from either Native American or traditional European village subsistence farming.

Commercial farming was on a large scale, often with indentured servant and slave labor, with an emphasis on maximum profit in the shortest time. Sometimes the owners didn't even live on the property (or even in America) and, since, they frequently hadn't paid anything from land simply stolen or defrauded from Natives, they lacked either the incentive or the knowledge to take care of the land.

Family farms on the other hand, were on a smaller scale and diversified (because you can't eat tobacco) with labor inputs from the family or neighbors--who together reaped the benefits of their work--unlike indentured servants and slaves who worked under compulsion. Since the land belonged to the community (or perhaps better said, the community belonged to the land) and would be passed on to the next generation, care was taken of it, so the emphasis was efficiency and long term sustainability.

tobacco also requires considerable labor input--which means a lot of low-pay or even slave labor is needed, especially as volume comes up and prices go down
tobacco smoking is an addiction that hurts the health and the finances of people
but people back then thought that tobacco and nicotine were actually good for you--medicinal
governments were quick to begin taxing tobacco

It might surprise you, there already was an anti-smoking movement in the 1600s, including King James of England :

↓ Primary Source

“Have you not reason then to bee ashamed, and to forbeare this filthie noveltie, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossely mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming your selves both in persons and goods, and raking also thereby the markes and notes of vanitie upon you: by the custome thereof making your selves to be wondered at by all forraine civil Nations, and by all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and contemned. A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible stigian moke of the pit that is bottomelesse.”

King James I, 'A Counterblaste to Tobacco', 1604

a photograph of the Massachusetts State House with a large carved wooden codfish hanging over the chamber

New England Economic Take Off: Fish, Fur, Trees, Ships, and Rum

500 miles north of Virginia, the situation was different--the weather was colder, with frosts that were bad for tobacco, or cotton, or rice. And the soils tended to be rockier, with heavy forest cover. So commercial farming was unlikely to be very successful, so farmers mainly grew grain for their own use.

But while the rough terrain and cold weather of New England weren't ideal for cash-crops, they were good for Fish, Fur and Trees--along with their by products: as the saying goes: 'if life gives you lemons, make lemonade.'

Fish

Not far from New England, to the north east, were the 'Grand Banks' of Newfoundland, a shallow corner of the Atlantic with some of the richest fishing areas in the world, that had been attracting fishermen from as far away as France and Spain for centuries--and Massachusetts was practically right next door to it.

In 1585, the English pirates/navy had virtually destroyed the Spanish and Portuguese fishing fleets on the Grand Banks, and this opened the door for what became the New England fishing economy.

Although one has to be careful with fishermen's tall tales, the Grand Banks were a tremendously rich fishing area--the codfish were so big, and swarmed so densely that it was said that one could jump off a boat and walk across the water on the backs of the packed fish.

Fish, and cod in particular, were even more important then than now for several reasons. Back then, there were no refrigerators and freezers--but codfish can be dried, salted and then stored almost indefinitely--and then, when you want to eat it, you just put it in a tub of water and overnight it almost magically becomes a delicious, nutritious (80% protein) fish again.

Dried cod, often known as Baccala, became a staple food in many countries, especially Italy, Spain, Portugal, because meat was often expensive, and in Catholic cultures, the eating of meat was discouraged on Fridays and other holidays.

Although fish, due to its scarcity nowadays due to industrial overfishing, is now considered a luxury food for the rich or middle-class, in those days it was the food of the average people and the poor, and the slaves--so there was an enormous market for it.

the old seal of New Hampshire, displaying a codfish

Fur

It's probably difficult for many people today to understand why the Fur Trade was so important. Who wears fur now, especially in California? It seems not just cruel, but absurd.

So why was fur so important, so valuable?

But, let's remember that the 1600s was during the Little Ice Age, a time when temperatures were significantly lower than today's.
Also home heating was primitive in most of Europe--worse than the Roman's central air heating systems more than a thousand years earlier. Europeans used fireplaces and chimneys where 90% the heat produced went straight out of the house. Iron or ceramic stoves were still very rare.
And perhaps some of you have not experienced very cold weather, but the fact is that 'out of the box', humans are mostly hairless warm-weather creatures (hey, we originated in Africa).
Many of Europe's furry creatures (except those in Russia) had been hunted to near-extinction and their habitats destroyed by deforestation

Thus, in a time of unusually cold weather and bad heating systems, warm clothing, especially coats and hats (we lose a lot of heat via the head) was a necessity and a luxury.

Even today, fur clothes can bring prices of tens of thousands of dollars fur coat on sale for forty thousand dollars

But while Europe's forests were being devoured by large, industrializing urban civilizations, across the Atlantic, in North America, a huge 'ocean' of trees stretched thousands of miles, from Newfoundland all the way to Alaska--and it was teeming with beavers, bears, minks.

The Natives didn't hunt or trap these smaller creatures that much--after all, how much meat is there on a mink or a beaver? Plus, they're small and agile and not the easiest to catch--so time was better spent hunting bigger deer.

In the early 1600s, the Natives realized they could trade furs for Europeans goods. Amazingly useful things the Natives could not make, guns, gunpowder, blankets, axes, knives, pots, pans, or rhum were exchanged for precious furs that Europe's expanding middle class desired. This was the beginning of the fur trade, an international business that would change the world.

A few people got very rich. More got very dead. Probably the biggest casualty of all though, was the native way of life.

Guns made hunting easier, and now there was a great incentive for Natives to kill increasingly large numbers of animals, damaging the ecological balance--because beavers and deer play an important role in the health of forests.

Springfield, in western Massachusetts, gives us a telling example of the havoc caused by suddenly plugging the Natives into commercial trade: in 1654, 3723 beaver furs were traded--ten years later, the number had dropped to 191.

Illiterate, innumerate Natives with no experience of business were actively defrauded with mounting debt and tricked, forced to 'sell' lands to the Europeans. To sell land, that no individual Native owned--and therefore had no right to sell, but which were owned by the tribe collectively (in a manner similar to how common lands used to be used collectively by English peasants before the Enclosures).

A traditional Native American gift, wampum, beautiful little beads made out of seashells, became a medium exchange for furs. But when Europeans, especially the Dutch and English, realized their value to the Natives, production of wampum was massively expanded, leading to the depreciation of wampum, and leading to economic distortions.

Wool blankets, metal tools, alcohol, and guns, things the Natives could not make, profoundly changed how they lived and, in many ways, made their lives better and easier.

But now--similar to tribal peoples in West Africa--they were caught in the economic web of the Europeans, they were no longer autonomous and were now somewhat dependent on a fundamentally hostile culture.

English Hudson't Bay blanket with bars indicating how many beaver furs it must be exchanged for

scene from a movie with actors portraying Eastern Woodland Indians heavily armed with European muskets

Warm, comfy wool blankets from England (of sheep raised on the farms from poor britons evicted during the Enclosures we mentioned earlier) were specially made for the fur trade, and had marks sewn into them, indicating how many beaver furs they were worth.

With European guns and a much stronger incentive to hunt, beaver, mink, and deer were hunted and trapped more intensively than ever. Fur and deerskin became a kind of money on the frontier--this is probably why Americans still use the word 'Buck' as slang for money.

Before long, Native tribes were ferociously competing for dwindling numbers of animals, in conflicts that have been called the Beaver Wars. Already decimated by disease, the Natives were now killing each other--while every year new shiploads of Europeans arrived, shifting the balance of power ever more to the side of the English.

Native Culture Profoundly Changed, Undermined by Contact

The Horse, metal tools, guns, blankets, among many other items they obtained from Europeans rapidly revolutionized the cultures of many Native American tribes. But the very real benefits of these things frequently also brought a profound danger: permanently changing their cultures, and involvement with, and dependence on, the Europeans.

Ultimately, I believe it was impossible for the Natives to remain closely in contact with the Europeans: the two cultures were antithetical, too different and could not co-exist

Even the design of some Native American war clubs began to mimic the shape of European guns:

photo of a Native American wooden fighting club that is shaped and decorated to resemble a European firearm from the 1700s

Trees

The same cold weather that was terrible for profitable tropical crops like tobacco, cotton, sugarcane was great for trees, especially one tree in particular, the Eastern White Pine, which is the tallest, and straightest tree in the eastern USA, growing to over 200 feet.

The Eastern White Pine was straight, strong, light, and had few knots. In Europe, apart from Scandinavia and Russia, large, high quality lumber had already been running out in the Middle Ages--trees grow much more slowly than they can be cut down. England, France, Spain were running out of wood, so much so, that the best trees were being inventoried and guarded. Even in the time of Ancient Greeks, wars had been fought over access to strategic supplies of wood for ship construction.

In the 1600s and 1700s, wood was like oil or metal or plastic today: it was not only the primary fuel for heating and cooking, it was also the primary construction material.

And ships large and strong enough to viably cross the Atlantic to fight or carry heavy cargo needed large beams of solid wood--piecing a ship together from little pieces, the way the Inca or Egyptians had done it, may have been workable on Lake Titicaca or the Nile, but wouldn't be survivable against oceanic storms with waves 11 to 17 feet in height.

Thus, New England, with enormous old-growth forests of towering pines which the Natives with their stone tools had left untouched, became a shipbuilding center for the English, and by the eve of the War of Independence, was making a third to half of the ships in the British Empire, and also supplying the crucial masts on which the sailships depended.

The elite trees big and straight enough to make masts for the Navy were marked with a special symbol, the King's Arrow cut into their trunks, designating and reserving them for the exclusive use of the Royal Navy.

photograph of a large tree trunk with an arrow symbol cut into it

Cutting down these King's trees for any other use was a serious crime, punishable by crushing fines, as noted, for example in the Massachussetts Charter of 1691:

"We doe restrains fordbid all persons whatsoever from felling, cutting, or destroying any such trees...upon penalty of Forfeiting One Hundred Pounds Sterling"

With plentiful--and therefore cheap--wood and many rivers for transport and for the hydro power that operated sawmills, New England, and the Boston area in particular, built ships for fishing and for commerce.

Trade

With ships and with fish the New Englanders could set sail and sell or trade the things they had a lot of, fish and lumber, to people who didn't have these things--like England, or the Caribbean; this pattern of exchange developed into what's been called Triangular Trade.

It was called Triangular Trade, because like a triangle, the commercial exchanges involved three points: New England, the Caribbean, and England. Often, the triangle trade pattern became a rectangle, with West Africa becoming one destination.

The Caribbean sugar and death factories had money, sugar, or molasses to trade--but they needed lumber and cheap food for all their slaves. Yankee ships from New England could sail to Jamaica filled with wood or codfish and come back to Boston loaded with sugar or molasses.

That sugar or molasses could be boiled in distilleries (fueled by New England's plentiful firewood) and turned into Rum--strong alcohol that was compact, wouldn't spoil, and would find buyers anywhere in the world. In fact, alcohol in those days was an international currency like gold or weapons, there was always a ready market. So this is how distilleries became a strongpoint of the New England economy.

Rum was sold or traded to Native Americans, West Africans, and poor Whites, and its health and social effects were often devastating. While wine and beer had been available for millenia, and the Aztecs drank pulque made from fermented agave and my Salvadoran friends drink a fermented corn drink called chicha, the alcohol content in rum or gin was ten times higher, making it an entirely different class of drug.

This is just one of many instances demonstrating how capitalism can feed on itself (a process I call social cannibalism): Phase 1 capitalists enrich themselves--taking over village lands in Europe, or Native lands in the Americas; Phase 2, capitalists make even more money, by profiting from the social dislocation of the first phase--in this case, massively selling addictive alcohol to the thousands of people who's communities have been shattered by their communities disintegrating. Misery is a very lucrative business: the profit is private--the costs are public.

To summarize the economy of New England in the 1600s and 1700s:

logging, shipbuilding
fishing
maritime trade
distilling (alcohol)

Tabula Rasa

The English Colonies were primarily established by businessmen from a country that itself was fractured in many respects: in religion, just to name a few, there were the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church, the Puritans, the Scottish Presbyterians, The Society of Friends (commonly called Quakers).

Politically, there were divisions between the various aristocratic 'Houses' or lineages, and the Royalists and emerging bourgeoisie in General. And then there were also strong ethnic divisions among the English, the Welsh, the Scots, and the Irish.

Which meant that when the English crossed the Atlantic to come to America, they did not come as a single homogeneous group in a coordinated, centrally planned or directed movement.

The English high aristocracy, mainly, did not come to America and begin to establish fiefs and build castles, nor did the Church of England build Cathedrals and enthrone Archbishops in the New World.

There was good and bad in this fact; the positive was, and is, that the lack, or underdevelopment of such established structures may have allowed America a freedom that allowed it to grow so quickly and so dynamically. But the negative side of this same lack of established structures and groups may have meant that there was also less restraint on curbing some excesses and abuses of the new, uninhibited ruling elite that emerged in America.

America would have no King to tell railroad tycoons not to destroy old forests, or monks to admonish slaveholders no to separate slave families, or entreat the cavalry to spare Indian villages.

English Caribbean Colonies: origins of the slave economy

Though tiny in comparison to the massive land area of the English colonies in North America, the English colonies in the Caribbean are nearly as old as the settlements in Virginia, beginning with Bermuda in 1612, and Barbados in 1625, and adding Jamaica in 1655.

a map of the Caribbean showing in red the English island colonies of Jamaica, Bahamas, Bermuda, Barbados, and Trinidad

With the best weather on earth (judging by the number of super-wealthy people who could afford to live anywhere but choose to live in the Caribbean) steady 80° temperatures, plentiful rain and fertile soil, and strategically poised for lucrative trade/piracy, these settlements grew quickly and by 1650, there were more British living on the Caribbean islands than in Virginia and New England combined.

The islands had lots of sunlight, frequent rain, fertile soil, and were conveniently located. But with almost 100% of their Native inhabitants dead from imported European diseases, the problem was labor. With the Indians dead who was going to do the work?

These small islands were deeply linked to England and to the 13 colonies–not just through trade connections, but by family ties as well, and it seems that much of the American deep South plantation slave economy was derived, even directly imported, by English emigrants from the Caribbean.

With enormous wealth flowing into and out of these Caribbean islands from tobacco, cotton, but especially sugarcane and its derivatives molasses and rhum, these settlements were in some ways the 'tail that wags the dog.'

The 13 English in America acted as the Caribbean's supermarket and 'home depot': while the tiny islands concentrated on their lucrative cash crops of sugar, tobacco, and cotton, they outsourced their food production and construction material production to the north.

New England cod cheaply fed the slaves of Jamaica, and Carolina beef and pork fed the gentlemen in the mansions, while North American lumber built the freighters that carried them, and Carolina ('Tar Heel') pitch waterproofed their hulls.

Slaves initially came from England's wars in Ireland, but eventually, the Caribbean colonies of England, France, and Holland, along with Portugal's Brazil, became huge consumers of African slaves:

world map with colored arrows of different widths indicating the direction of volume of slaves captured and sold, with the largest flows going to the Caribbean, Brazil, and the Middle East

The business of sugar planting and production eventually grew into one of the most profitable--and destructive industries of the world--manufacturing sweets and death on a colossal scale.

In a time before electricity and even the steam engine still decades away, the engine driving industry was mainly still human muscle.

And farming sugarcane is one of the most back-breaking types of agriculture there is--my friend's dad is from El Salvador and he told me how hard it was working with caña.

Imagine this back-breaking labor--now imagine it in 90 degree heat with 90% humidity, with clouds of mosquitoes carrying malaria and yellow fever hovering around--without mosquito nets, without medication, mosquito repellent, or insecticides.

Since the Europeans had cut down so many forests, now there were even more mosquitoes--because the habitat of so many insect-eating birds had been destroyed.

Can you imagine the result? Death. The African slaves died by the thousands, but to the 'gentlemen' entrepreneurs, this was just the cost of business--boatloads of new slaves were simply purchased, much as a 7-11 buys more cups for the Slurpees they sell. And so it went on, the appetite for sugar was--and is--insatiable.

Think of it: coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar, alcohol, and cotton. At first they were expensive rarities that had to be brought all the way from India and the Middle East--they say Queen Isabella of Spain had given her daughter a small jeweled box full of sugar as a present.

But now these tropical luxuries were being grown in the New World, and could become habits, even addictions, for millions of people.

Why pick on the Africans

Why did the Europeans mainly take their slaves from Africa? Was racism driving the slave trade?

Here are some possible factors to consider:

the English did enslave Native Americans, but there were relatively few of them, and they frequently died when exposed to Old World diseases
the English also enslave or quasi-enslave their own poor people, convicted criminals, as well as prisoners of war (especially from wars in Ireland and Scotland), but there was a limited supply of these people, many of them weren't physically strong enough, and, they did have some rights under the law and/or a limited term of servitude
the African areas where slaves were taken were right across the Atlantic from the primary markets for slaves, Brazil and the Caribbean, and it was fairly convenient to sail back and forth with the prevailing trade winds
the African slaves did have immunity to many communicable diseases deadly to the Native Americans
Some Africans come from hunter-gatherer cultures and were taller, stronger, and healthier than malnourished Europeans
some African slaves also had a degree of immunity to malaria because of the 'sickle cell' mutation
because of skin color, the Africans were more identifiable if they escaped than white slaves, who could attempt to blend in with the general population

↓ Primary Source

A 1645 letter from Emmanuel Downing to Massachusetts governor John Winthrop explains some of these reasons, namely that African slave labor was considered cheaper than temporarily enslaving poor European immigrants:

“Sir, I heartily thank you for your kind letter and the news therein. A war with the Narrangaset is very considerable to this plantation. For I doubt whether it be a sin is us having power in our hands to allow them to maintain the worship of the devil, which their powwows often do. If in a just war the lord should deliver them in our hands, we might easily have men and women and children enough to exchange for Moores, which will be more gainful pillage for us than we conceive, for I do not see how we can thrive until we get a stock of slaves sufficient to do all our business, for our childrens children will hardly see this great continent filled with people, so that our servants will still desire freedom to plant for themselves, and not stay but for very great wages. And I suppose you know very well how we shall maintain 20 moors cheaper than one English servant. The ships that shall bring Moors may come home laden with salt which may bear most of the charge if not all of it.”

two color-coded maps showing a coincidence of areas with high levels of malaria corresponding to areas with a high prevalence of sickle cell mutations

These maps indicate a degree of correspondence between areas in Africa with lots of malaria and areas where some people have the sickle cell mutation

a map of Africa indicating with color the areas where people were enslaved between 1500 and 1900

A map displaying the areas and estimated numbers involved in the slave trade

African slaves frequently came from hunter-gatherer groups whose lifestyle and nutrition made people bigger and stronger than people living in sedentary cultures eating a mostly grain diet

Conclusion: while racism and simple bigotry undoubtedly were factors in slavery, economics or 'cost-effectiveness' was perhaps the decisive factor. The abysmal mistreatment, abuse and even killing by the English of other whites like the Irish and the Scots, even of fellow Englishmen who happened to be of the 'wrong' religion or political affiliation, suggests that ethnic prejudice was not the primary consideration.

Slavery and Capitalism: A Love Affair

The great French writer Balzac said (more or less), 'behind every great fortune lies a forgotten crime', and this quote, I believe, can well be applied to the growth of capitalism: behind the brilliance and majestic growth is a hidden and heinous, massive crime--slavery.

As I wrote at the beginning of this section, from the beginning of the 13 colonies, business and money or, more crudely put, greed, were fundamental to the foundation of America--and continue to be part of the values, the ethos of this country. Capitalism, in the USA, occupies the same semi-sacred status of Marxism in communist nations, or of the Bible in a theocracy.

So it's dangerous for me to call into question 'holy' capitalism and its unsavory ramifications. But I do.

Slavery isn't just a 'footnote' of history, or a little chapter tacked onto a textbook for purposes of 'politcal correctness', no, slavery is integral, fundamental to the growth of capitalism and to the history of America and the USA.

Slavery made possible a much higher rate of capital accumulation which, in turn, was re-invested, to yield even further profits.

Land stolen, in other words, zero cost, from the Natives, was worked by slaves who were paid nothing, to make sugar, molasses, and rum, which could then be exchanged for...more slaves. Stolen land stolen labor = high profits.

two photos, one of the cover of a book, Capitalism and Slavery, the other, of its author, Eric Williams

Capitalism and Slavery is a ground-breaking history book written by the Trinidad scholar and statesman Eric Williams in 1944, when he was at Oxford.

While it focuses on the Caribbean and the sugar trade, it has wider implications which are applicable to slavery in North America.

Williams was skeptical of the humanitarian interpretation of abolition and had a more economics-driven interpretation. While some scholars claim his views have been disproven, I personally put much credence in them: the ‘official’ or ‘nominal’ end of slavery in the 1840s (for the Caribbean) and the 1860s in the USA did not signal an end to exploitation--perhaps just a ‘re-branding’ of it.

Scrutinize many contemporary mega-fortunes and, as Balzac wrote, one is quickly confronted with more ill-hidden mass crimes: behind Bezo's Amazon, behind Apple, behind Walmart--the less workers are paid, the more profit.

We will return to examine the theme of slavery and its central role in American history in later sections.