The True Story About How America Was First Settled By Profit-Seeking Speculators{large image}

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/corporate-history-of-the-pilgrims-2013-11


Virginea Pars map, including Roanoke Island, drawn by John White during his initial visit in 1585.


England’s first colonies in the New World were profit-seeking corporations, and like any wave of firms entering a radically new sector, it took some flameouts and consolidation for what might be called England's America industry to really get off the ground.

Born at the same moment, the Virginia Companies of London and Plymouth would come to know radically different fates. The former struggled mightily for nearly a decade before flaming out. The Plymouth company would help make the Pilgrims' story possible. It would take a third company backed by investors with entirely different motives than the first two to make America work.

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You’ll recall from our profile of the British East India Company last year that many colonies were founded not by governments themselves but rather by private individuals who raised funds to finance expeditions. This concept lies at the root of the word adventure. Sometimes they would form joint stock companies, which would finance expeditions to prospective lands with the hope of splitting up whatever commerce they were able to drum up on the other side of the sea.

The first two English adventurers to attempt to make it in America were Sir Walter Raleigh and his half brother Humphrey Gilbert. We can get a sense of their motivations from the following account, dated 1583 — 37 years before the pilgrims — from Captain Edward Hayes, who commanded one of Gilbert’s ships back from Newfoundland, site of the first-ever English colony in America:

…although we cannot precisely judge (which only belongeth to God) what have been the humours of men stirred up to great attempts of discovering and planting in those remote countries, yet the events do shew that either God's cause hath not been chiefly preferred by them, or else God hath not permitted so abundant grace as the light of His word and knowledge of Him to be yet revealed unto those infidels before the appointed time.

[bemildred]

1. No, the country was settled by slaves, indentured servants, and religious/political refugees.

We have always been saddled with the "owners" mentioned in the OP too, but there were and are far too few of then to settle the place.

[JackintheGreen]

2. Only if you selectively delete "first"

and purposefully misread the way the word "settle/settler/settled" have been connotatively used in historiography for decades.

Though, I suppose it could be argued that North America was "first settled" by people crossing the land bridge from Asia just a few years before that.

[bemildred]

6. Yeah. But I'm pretty sure those siberians crossing the land bridge didn't plan to get rich.

They weren't looking for gold, though they were not above having some servants by any means. So anyway, settlers is not the word I would use for then, migrants or refugees is more like it, or perhaps explorers and adventurers and heroes, like we use for ourselves.

[JackintheGreen]

11. Which goes back to

what we mean by "settlers" within the context of historiography. So, I think, we all of us are splitting semantic hairs here. I regret having started it. Cheers!

[bemildred]

12. What do you mean? I started it. Now you've done it. nt

[kydo]

3. Well not really "no" - settled yes built by no

This country was built by slaves, indentured servants, and religious/political refugees. However all of this was funded by companies. Without these companies funding bringing slaves, indentured servants, and religious/political refugees here they never would have made it here by themselves. It was greed that funded the exploration and exploitation of the so called "New World."

[bemildred]

4. And those companies got their money by theft and exploitation

of "slaves, indentured servants, and religious/political refugees", since time immemorial. Indentured servitude is the ideal capitalist/imperialist economic model, and they always gravitate to it.

[bemildred]

8. And a lot of the money used to settle the new world was stolen from the new world.

And then there were the drugs: sugar, rum, tobacco, and the slaves to grow them.

And then as now, the lives of the poor were forfeit to forward the project:

[1StrongBlackMan]

7. Well ...

since everyone wants to get all semantical and all ... to say the country was "settled by" suggests that it was "unsettled" before the Europeans arrived.

[bemildred]

9. A sound point, please see post #6. nt

[marmar]

5. k/r

[hfojvt]

10. speculators who died in the attempt

"Howbeit, peaceful coexistence was the general rule during the ghastly years of the Virginia colony, when the settlers died in batches in the miasmic Jamestown swamps (of the first 900 colonists landed during the first three years 1607 to 1610, only 150 were still alive in 1610) and old Powhatan could have stamped it out or left it to starve with the greatest of ease." "Indians" by William Brandon 1961 p 157-59

and then there's Plymouth "There were two deaths, but this was just a precursor of what happened after their Cape Cod arrival, when almost half the company would die in the first winter."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony

Which is funny because just now is the first time I can remember hearing about "The Speedwell"

53 remained out of 102 original passengers by October 1621.