Joint Stock Companies/Indentured

Service
Since the traveling to the New World from Europe was extremely expensive, many companies
in Britain pooled their resources to create joint stock companies. A joint stock company is a
financial organization devised by English merchants around 1550 that facilitated the colonization
of North America. In these companies, a number of investors pooled their capital and received
shares of stock in the enterprise in proportion to their share of the total investment. In other
words, wealthy merchants in England invested their money with other wealthy business owners
and whatever money was made on the investment was divided up with the people who invested
more getting more of the profits.

The most famous example of a British Joint Stock Company was the Virginia Company of 1606,
named after Elizabeth I, the never-married “Virgin Queen.” In 1607, the Virginia Company made
its first attempt to colonize the New World with the creation of Jamestown in the Chesapeake
Bay. At first Jamestown was not successful. With the majority of the colonists being gentlemen
hoping to build their fortune (many of them had strong ties with the heads of the company), the
original Jamestown settlers found themselves ill equipped for the climate of the New World. As
starvation grew rampant, some settlers turned to cannibalism. Through the work of
adventurer John Smith and the help of the native Powhatan tribes, Jamestown slowly
survived. When tobacco was discovered as a cash crop, the Powhatan were displaced and a
new system of colonization was built upon it.

As the economy boomed in the Chesapeake Bay, joint stock companies offered incentives for
would-be colonizers. The headright system guaranteed 50 acres of land to anyone who paid
the passage of a new immigrant to the colony. For colonists living in the New World, if they
could pay for another person from England to come to the New World, they would be
guaranteed 50 extra acres of land per person.

Another system of colonization was that of indentured servitude. With this system, men and
women signed contracts by which they made the expensive journey to the New World for free in
exchange for four or five years of labor to the company or “master” who paid their way. These
servants would not be paid for their efforts, nor could they marry or own property. After the
terms of their contracts were fulfilled, indentured servants could work for themselves, marry,
and, if they were fortunate, own land.
Slavery
The rigors of indentured servitude paled before the brutality that accompanied the large scale
shift to African slave labor. In Barbados and the other English islands, sugar production
devoured laborers and the supply of indentured servants quickly became inadequate to the
planters’ needs. By 1690, blacks outnumbered whites on Barbados nearly three to one and
white slave owners were developing a code of force and terror to keep sugar flowing and
maintain control of the black majority that surrounded them. The first comprehensive slave
legislation for the island, adopted in 1661, was called an “Act for the better ordering and
governing of Negroes.”

About 400 Africans lived in the Chesapeake colonies (near Jamestown) in 1649, just 2 percent
of the population. By 1670, that figure reached 5 percent. Most Africans served their English
masters for life. However, since English common law did not acknowledge chattel slavery
(which defines slaves as property to be traded and used as any other object), it was possible
to escape bondage. Some were freed as the result of Christian baptism; some purchased their
freedom from their owners; some ---like Elizabeth Key--- won their freedom in courts. Once
free, some ambitious Africans became landowners and purchased slaves or the labor
contracts of English servants for themselves.

Social mobility for Africans ended in the 1660s with the collapse of the tobacco boom
and the increasing political power of the gentry (white gentlemen of high social
status).Tobacco had once sold for 30 pence a pound; now it fetched less than one tenth of that.
As they imported more African workers, the English born political elite grew more race
conscious. Increasingly English legislators created laws distinguishing themselves from
African residents by color (white-black) than by religion (Christian-pagan.) By 1671, the
Virginia House of Burgesses had forbidden Africans to own guns or join the militia (a
volunteer army designed to defend the colony).It also barred them--- “the baptized and enjoying
their freedom” from owning English servants. Being black was increasingly a mark of inferior
legal status, and slavery was fast becoming a permanent and hereditary condition. Whereas in
the past only slaves who were brought over were slaves (allowing their children to be free), now
laws were in place to make children of imported African labor also slaves.
Proprietary Colony
A proprietary colony is a colony that is based off of the concept of proprietorship. Under this
system, a colony is created through a grant of land from the English monarch (King or Queen)
to an individual or group, who then set up a form of government largely independent from royal
control.

There are several famous examples of proprietary colonies in the New World. From 1663-1664,
the Church of England was given proprietor grants for the territories of North/South Carolina,
New Jersey and New York. The most famous of these cases could be found with William Penn
and Pennsylvania. As William Penn’s father was an Admiral in the Royal Navy and served
King Charles II very well, Charles II gave William Penn a grant of land which became
Pennsylvania (and originally, Delaware, too). As William Penn was a Quaker he established a
colony based off of the notions of harmony, rejection of extravagant wealth and gender equality.
As the Quakers were persecuted in England for their refusal for military service and paying
taxes, many Quakers journeyed to Pennsylvania. The resources that Penn had as a gentleman
payed the way for the journeying Quakers.

Another example of a proprietary colony is the case of Lord Baltimore and Maryland. In 1632,
King Charles I granted Lord Baltimore a grant of land next to the Chesapeake Bay. As King
Charles I had sympathies with the Catholics, he gave a land grant to Lord Baltimore, who was
also a Catholic. With this new grant of land, Lord Baltimore created “Mary-land” which served as
a great haven for Catholics who, like the Quakers, were persecuted by the Church of England to
live in peace.

Essentially with Proprietary colonies, lands are given from the government to people or
organizations who did them service. As a result, the people receiving the grant had the ability to
settle on their own terms. Since the people/organizations receiving the grant had
significant wealth, the settlers under these grants were less likely to travel via indentured
servitude.
Migration
In 1620, 102 English Protestants anded at a place they called Plymouth, near Cape Cod. A
decade later, a much larger group began to arrive just north of Plymouth, in the newly chartered
Massachusetts Bay Colony. The original 102 English Protestants were known as Pilgrims.
Pilgrims were religious separatists--- Puritans who had left the Church of England. When King
James I threatened to drive Puritans “out of the land, or else do worse,” some Puritans chose to
live among Dutch Calvinists in Holland. Subsequently, 35 of these exiles resolved to maintain
their British identity by moving to America. Led by 67 migrants from England, the Pilgrims sailed
to America aboard the Mayflower. Because they lacked a royal charter, these would be
colonists combined themselves “together into a civill body politick,” as their leader
explained.

The Mayflower Compact used the Puritans’ self governing religious congregation as the model
for their political structure. Only half of the first migrant group survived until spring. With
the cold weather and inability to properly grow crops in the New World, the citizens of Plymouth
were starving. Only through the assistance of local tribes such as the Wampanoag
Confederacy (led by Squanto) did the inhabitants of Plymouth survive. This encounter was
later commemorated in the annual Thanksgiving celebration. After that winter, the Plymouth
colony thrived as the colonists adapted to the new climate; the cold climate inhibited the spread
of mosquito borne disease and the Pilgrims’ religious discipline encouraged a strong work ethic.

As the Plymouth colony grew stronger, the Wampanoag society dwindled. A smallpox epidemic
in 1618 devastated the population. By 1640, there were 3,000 settlers in Plymouth.

The Plymouth colony, which was founded without an official royal charter and
functioned on the combined resources of the settlers, was eventually overshadowed by
officially sanctioned colonies such as the Massachusetts Bay Colony led by John
Winthrop.