“Dispossessing
the Poor, Part 3- Into the New World”
“Here every man may be master and owner of his owne labour
and land. If he have nothing but his hands, he may by industries grow quickly
rich.”
Imagine how such words would affect poor people in London in
the early 1600s, many unemployed and landless since the enclosure system had
forced them off farms. The words were written by Captain John Smith. Ads were
posted throughout the city, promising wealth and freedom to anyone willing to
go to the English colonies in North America, where free land awaited. The goal
of the Virginia Company was to get the one thing their new colony needed most:
workers.
The Virginia Company and the Plymouth Company were both
trading companies chartered by King James I in 1606 to settle the Atlantic
Coast of North America. Stories about Pocahontas or the Pilgrims do not mention
corporations, but they were the primary movers of the colonies. The King
granted them authority to use “his” land, much as kings had previously done
with feudal lords. The Plymouth company’s shareholders were gentlemen in
Plymouth, while those of the Virginia Company were mostly gentlemen from
London.
There were several reasons the British government would want
to cooperate with private companies to create colonies in North America. They
hoped to find gold and silver, like the Spanish had (they did not). They wanted
to grow tobacco, introduced to Europeans several decades earlier (turns out,
the more people smoked the more they wanted). They hoped to establish bases
from which to fight the Spanish in the Caribbean. But there was another, very
important reason, one that set them apart from France and Spain.
England, especially in the cities, had too many people. And
a great many of them were poor, whether unemployed in the cities or farming in
the country. It was a great enticement, indeed, to tell them that in the
colonies they could get rich -or, at the very least, be free, have land, and be
their own boss. It sounded like a great deal, but the shareholders of the
Company and their agents were not quite as magnanimous as they seemed. Some of
them spoke of the laborers they attracted -many of whom they expected to die in
the process -as “manure” from which they would grow their empire. One of them
described the colonies as a sinkhole into which they could sweep all the filth
of England.
The catch was, you had to get across the ocean. It was
expensive. Some of the new colonists had no problem paying their own way- these
were the “gentlemen of means,” many of them second or third sons who would have
only a small inheritance but could still afford to travel. These were the
people who expected to own and control most of the land they encountered. For
the poor people, imported as labor, they had to pay their way by signing a
contract indenturing themselves, usually for a seven-year period. In other
words, their masters who paid their way by buying their contracts OWNED their
labor for seven years. Many drove their servants on with whips, or literally
worked them to death. That, plus disease, starvation, and wars with local
Native Americans meant that, for the first fifty years, most indentured
servants did not survive their first seven years. And, if they did, they were told
the available land had all been taken (which brings us, once again, to Bacon’s
Rebellion in 1676).
Many of the poor found themselves in the same position they
had been in back in England: existing only to serve as labor, with no end in
sight. Some, though, were daring. They left the tobacco plantations behind and
pressed into the western part of the colonies, up into the mountains. The
Appalachian Mountains. There, many of these “back woods” people adapted and
became self-sufficient.
But that would change.
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
