I know at times my rambling are professorial and I get into more detail than maybe is necessary. With that said, I feel that one needs clear understanding of the foundation of our current cultures and mindsets that are affecting our daily lives. I reflect back on my public school education and recognize how American history taught in my classes was grossly lacking in truth and glossed our history as benevolent and almost righteous. The dark side is skipped over or minimized. Most countries do this, but it does not help in preserving the democracy that was carefully instituted in this new land.
We must look at the very beginning when Europeans started the long risky journey to the new world. As I was mainly taught, they made such dangerous travels for Noble causes such as religious liberty that being the Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth Rock and others for political freedom from tyrants and yet others for adventure into this new world. All of these were part of the reasoning, but the primary reason so many risked everything to settle in actual wilderness with hostile aboriginal natives attacking them frequently was for money, not for themselves, but more importantly the profit that these settlers would bring to their employer back in the old world. In the beginning the settlers voyage were paid for my capitalist companies in the Old World and in return the settlers would find and export back to the old world commodities that made a profit for the companies; furs, tobacco, cotton, potatoes, corn, spice, sugarcane, gold, silver and copper.
We currently celebrate Christopher Columbus as the one who discovered America. I’ll state that he was the first European to establish contact with the Americas for the purpose of profit. After all, his voyage was to find a faster route to the spice industry of India and surrounding island. Of course the monarchy of Spain paid for the voyage and any profits would be theirs, thus the motive was money.
After he returned with gold and slaves, the rush was on for claims to the new land. All the major powers of coastal Europe sent explorers and settlers to establish ownership and exploit what they can find to make money for the companies and monarchies that sent them on such a risky voyage.
Britain was not going to be left out of the potential of profit gains from this new world, so in 1497 they sent John Cabot to the far north of what became Newfoundland of Canada and down to around what is Main today. His voyage was to lay claim to the land and resources they could extract for profit.
These discoveries of the new world created an economic race of whom was going to control and own this new world for the profit that it can yield. The various monarchies could not afford to finance all the voyages and settlements. Collectively pooling wealth was the way to finance such an expense and risky venture. The monarchy would grant a charter to the wealthy merchants and aristocrats under their control to form companies that issued stock certificates that stated how much money they had put at risk in the company and then would receive that amount back plus extra when the company made a profit. Most of these charters required the company to share the profits with the monarchy as a patent grant fee called a "royalty," thus how we got the word royalty when you use the property of others for profit, i.e. copyrighted material and patented ideas and products.
In 1587 - Sir Walter Raleigh founds Roanoke Colony, the first English settlement in the New World, in what becomes the Virginia Colony, but was abandoned in 1590. His business was to export the plant tobacco to England.
On December 1606.The Virginia Company of London sent an expedition to establish a settlement in the New World. In 1607 John Smith working for the Virginia Company of London establishes Jamestown, named after King James 1 of England. As the VCL shipped more settlers to exploit the tobacco they discovered they moved more and more inland and founded the Virginia Colony for the company.
In 1609 Henry Hudson was hired by the operators of the Dutch West Indies Company to find a northern route to China.
Held back by the Arctic ice, Hudson sailed south, into what is now known as Hudson Bay. When that failed to be a passage to the Pacific, he sailed further south and up a river also thinking it was a passage to the Pacific Ocean. It is now named the Hudson River. When again it didn't happen, he declares this area as “New Netherland.”
As settlements were established it was charted as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod while the settled areas are now part of the Mid-Atlantic States of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The provincial capital of New Amsterdam was located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan on upper New York Bay. The colony was conceived as a private business venture to exploit the North American fur trade as the Hudson Bay Company.
On Aug. 5, 1620, the pilgrims sailed for America on the ship the Mayflower. Only 44 of these passengers were Pilgrims, or "Saints," as they called themselves. The rest were "The Strangers," whose primary aim was not to seek religious freedom but to make a profit. The voyage was financed by the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London. A group of English investors, the Merchants Association, sponsored the trip and paid for the supplies; in return, the Pilgrims pledged to work for the association for a period of seven years. Originally they were bound for the Virginia Company Colony, but storms forced them north to what is now Cape Cod. They also wanted to avoid the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (New York City now).
The Massachusetts colony was founded by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which included investors in the failed Dorchester Company, which had in 1624 established a short-lived settlement on Cape Ann. The second attempt, the Massachusetts Bay Colony begun in 1628, was successful, with about 20,000 people migrating to New England in the 1630s. The population was strongly Puritan, and its governance was dominated by a small group of leaders who were strongly influenced by Puritan religious leaders. Although its governors were elected, the electorate was limited to freemen, who had been examined for their religious views and formally admitted to their church. As a consequence, the colonial leadership exhibited intolerance to other religious views, including Anglican, Quaker, and Baptist theologies.
As one can clearly see, money was the driving force of the establishments of the 13 colonies that then rebelled against the British for economic reasons that translated into what our founders considered Freemen. The founders also were rebelling against the power of not only the crown, but the companies that ran the colonies for their own profit and not for the benefit of the colonists. They were generally treated as slave labor of sorts. Many were in fact economically in servitude to the companies they worked for and treated much the same as the black slaves, except after the white enslaved worker would become a freeman when his debt was repaid to his employer. To some extent at first, this was the rule for many black workers before Virginia established a law that established that black slaves were not equal to white slaves and thus property of the employer to do as they wish with them regardless of any debt or not. That created the rush to import slaves to improve the profitability of the huge cotton and tobacco plantations in America and the islands of the West Indies (Caribbean) that produced Spice and Sugarcane.
Today we fight the very same battle for the control of our country against the Companies that have exploited the natural and human resources of America. They use an organization called the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC] that was formed and sponsored by companies and the wealthy to continue this pursuit to control by creating legislation that like-minded state legislators would pass in their respective states. Since these individuals need the Religious discipline and adherence, much the same as the early religious pilgrims of the Mayflower for the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London in 1620; A battle that has gone on for 393 years.
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