Communism. Good or bad. What do you really know about Communism?

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Enrico32

Virginia Company was a group of rich Britons who pooled capital to establish business in America. They owned everything and did not even set foot on American soil. Ordinary migrants worked for salary.

the Virginia company, like a lot of these ventures, operated for a few years and then disappeared in 1624; the English population of Virginia at the time was a few hundred people, perhaps a thousand. The population had been as low as 50 in 1610.

There were endless such ventures, nearly all of them including the Virginia Company failed without a trace, they have very little importance for the structure of land title in the American colonies.

Basically, the land was pretty worthless. There was a lot of it, and it wasn't particularly productive-- note the letters back to England begging for food. Moreover, the ability to do anything with the land was contested by native Americans, and in some case French-- you you basically have a lot of failed investments.

The ventures which made money in British North America were trading companies-- principally the Hudson's Bay Company. They weren't land speculators-- they bought furs from the Indians, and sold them in Europe, very profitably.

There's a huge number of land speculation companies: the Ohio Company, the Walpole Company, the Indiana Company . . . they all ended up with essentially nothing.

[Enrico32]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

the Virginia company, like a lot of these ventures, operated for a few years and then disappeared in 1624; the English population of Virginia at the time was a few hundred people, perhaps a thousand. The population had been as low as 50 in 1610.

There were endless such ventures,

But am I correct that the original settlers, including the famous John Smith and Rolfe, were paid salaries (provisions) from England (as English soldiers?)?

Then, again, how did they end up with the division between planters and proletarians?

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Enrico32

But am I correct that the original settlers, including the famous John Smith and Rolfe, were paid salaries (provisions) from England (as English soldiers?)?

Then, again, how did they end up with the division between planters and proletarians?

They didn't. The colony collapsed. They were starving, there was no money, no food.

The question of "dividing" profits never came up.

John Smith left Virginia in 1609, and never returned. He died in London

John Rolfe gained some land by a gift from Chief Powhatan, father of Pocahontas-- had not connection to the Virginia Company at that point. Rolfe made the most important discovery, a strain of tobacco that could readily be grown in Virginia, years later this makes Virginia and Maryland profitable exporters. The Virginia Company gets none of this-- Rolfe dies in 1622, and the Virginia Company is defunct in 1624.

There are lots of such busted ventures in the Americas-- I don't know of one which actually ever amounted to anything. The only profitable companies for European investors were trading companies like the Hudson's Bay Company or the Dutch East India Company.

[bowlinggreen]

Originally Posted by judy84

I know what you mean


https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/820540...nd-oven-broke/

Jesus Christ.

That would pay for a whole bunch of cans of soup and stew and a few loaves of bread, with money left over for cookies. You could eat for days on that.

If you have kids, you ought to have all that in your pantry anyhow.

But... stupid.

I guess this is why xyz would ban capitalist pizza companies.

[Enrico32]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

The only profitable companies for European investors were trading companies like the Hudson's Bay Company or the Dutch East India Company.

Yes but what about the settlers? They were workers for the said companies - hunters, traders, farmers, fishers - all proletarians as the owners sat in London. Were they paid in food or British Pounds? Could they save money (I doubt)?

I understand that the huts they built themselves were eventually ascribed to them as property.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Enrico32

Yes but what about the settlers? They were workers for the said companies - hunters, traders, farmers, fishers - all proletarians as the owners sat in London. Were they paid in food or British Pounds? Could they save money (I doubt)?

I understand that the huts they built themselves were eventually ascribed to them as property. But what about land (including, importantly, urban area)? I assume the original land ownership stood thus -- King>Company>salaried administrators and workers.

They starved. The colony was down to 50 people. Ownership was irrelevant. They begged the company for food, and got none.

Then the Company disolved and its interest lapsed.

The labor was initially indentured-- that is, the theory was, you work for 7 years for no pay, then you get land of your own.

As it happened, none if it worked out that way. The company went broke, the Colony became a Royal Colony, the land owned substantially to whoever was there and had survived-- there was far more land than there were people, so it wasn't remotely a scarce commodity.

Its hard to imagine a world with so much land that it didn't matter-- but that's what the New World was. Endless forests, so far as anyone was concerned. When there are fewer than a thousand settlers in 50,000 square miles or so of territory, you could own whatever you wanted to improve, so long as you could defend it from native Americans.

The "urban area" was nothing. The Roanoake colony perished. Jamestown was burned, then abandoned later in the 17th century, ownership didn't matter, no one wanted it.

[Enrico32]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

The company went broke, the Colony became a Royal Colony, the land owned substantially to whoever was there and had survived-- there was far more land than there were people, so it wasn't remotely a scarce commodity.

I would still insist that theoretically it all belonged to King.

But still, let's roll forward in time. We still need to understand when and how the elites (especially planters) sprung.

So, the originally built huts were held as property. Perhaps sea trading was in hands of King directly (people hunted beaver and sold to royal marines in exchange for European goods). Then royal governors could set prices for people's huts in case someone wanted to sell.

Then we somehow get a bunch of lords like William Penn assigned "property" over vast swaths of land to make plantations. All transactions about this were done in England. At this point land quickly becomes rare - even though there were few people, plantation owners were even fewer.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Enrico32

I would still insist that theoretically it all belonged to King.

"Belonged to the Crown" -- rather than the King. "Belong" really didn't mean anything much; if no one was there to improve the land or defend it, there was nothing that could be done with it. It hadn't been surveyed, so no one really knew what "it" was. Moreover, native Americans inhabited most of it, and before smallpox decimated them were a substantial threat.

Originally Posted by Enrico32

So, the originally built huts were held as property. Perhaps sea trading was in hands of King directly (people hunted beaver and sold to royal marines in exchange for European goods). Then royal governors could set prices for people's huts in case someone wanted to sell.

You're confusing very different activities by different people. Almost all fur trading was done by the Hudson's Bay Company, who had a monopoly, and generally didn't want colonists pushing into Indian lands, because they were buying furs from the Indians.

I'm not sure why you're hung up on huts. These were very rudimentary shacks, built out of abundant timber. There was more housing than there were people in the period of the Virginia Company.

Originally Posted by Enrico32

Then we somehow get a bunch of lords like William Penn assigned "property" over vast swaths of land to make plantations. All transactions about this were done in England.

No, Penn is in Pennsylvania, with his fellow Quakers. He does return to England, where after a period of time in debtor's prison, he dies penniless, while the Quaker community of Pennsylvania prospers. There were no "vast plantations" in Pennsylvania, essentially everyone lived in a few small towns. He's "Sir William Penn", but has no title, he's not "Lord" of anything. Moreover, although he had a Royal Charter, he still had to buy the land from the Indians-- the Lenni Lenape tribe. He essentially bought a small slice of land that is today Philadelphia up through Bucks County. At the time of his death, most of Pennsylvania was still owned by the native Americans.



Essentially he was a trust fund kid who funded a religious community. The community worked, but he went broke.

The American colonies were never moneymakers for the Crown. That's part of why the American Revolution occurs; Britain tried to impose taxes to pay for the substantial costs of defending the colonies, which pisses off the colonists, hence the Revolution.

[Enrico32]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

"Belong" really didn't mean anything much; if no one was there to improve the land or defend it, there was nothing that could be done with it.

I want to understand how did the rich arise.

Sometimes I assume they simply transplanted the English society with the existing caste inequality - but that would need enacting the same prices as in England, and this point looks weak. An acre of wild American forest could not worth an acre of downtown London (but it looks very very much that it could).

Then how do we get some Americans starting to work for the profit of other Americans? We get some people going to Harvard (founded, oh, in 1636!) and boasting about "their" acres of forest. And we get their compatriots actually falling timber for meagre pay.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Enrico32

I want to understand how did the rich arise.

Sometimes I assume they simply transplanted the English society with the existing caste inequality - but that would need enacting the same prices as in England, and this point looks weak. An acre of wild American forest could not worth an acre of downtown London (but it looks very very much that it could).

Then how do we get some Americans starting to work for the profit of other Americans? We get some people going to Harvard (founded, oh, in 1636!) and boasting about "their" acres of forest. And we get their compatriots actually falling timber for meagre pay.

For the most part, the US gets neither the very poor nor the very wealthy from Britain. That's substantially true of Canada and New Zealand as well. The nobles don't come, nor do the impoverished. Australia's a bit different because of the convicts, but in general the English speaking colonies were _not_ "simply transplanted the English society with the existing caste inequality"

The US is distinct from Canada, NZ and Oz because of the preponderance of religious colonists; much less important a motivation in the other countries.

But in general all of them drew much more from the middle classes, and power in the society rested with a "middle".

George Washington wasn't from any kind of nobility. He was a surveyor by profession, and a soldier. Benjamin Franklin was a printer. John Adams was a lawyer. Thomas Jefferson's father was a surveyor and a cartographer (note the importance of surveying in history-- when you're going to improve land, you have to be able to identify who owns what). John Hancock was the richest of the Founders, a merchant's son; the Hancock business was importing manufactured goods from Britain and exporting rum, whale oil, and fish.

Life in the colonies wasn't posh enough for an Englishman with money. If you already were rich and powerful, why would you leave London, where all the power and money was? You wouldn't.

Where does the labor come from?

Slavery, natural increase-- early America had extraordinarily high birth rates-- and immigration. The US population grows from 3.9 million in 1790 to 23 million in 1850 to 76 million in 1900. That is, in a little over 100 years, the US population increased 20 fold.

As an example of just how big families were, my great great grandmother was one of 11 children (who survived), her son, my great grandfather, was one of 7, and his daughter, my grandmother, was one of six.

They were popping out babies like Mormons. The could do that because they had a lot of food-- its the agricultural productivity of the US that makes all this possible. Europe's soils were worn out; newly cleared American soils produced much better yields, feeding more people easily.