Virginia was a royal colony, meaning that it was controlled directly by the authority of King James I. Many of the first settlers were hopeful to find gold and gain fortune. But they soon realized that there was no gold. By this time, nearly 2/3 of the original colonists had died due to starvation and disease. Many of the ill-prepared colonists didn’t know how to farm or hunt because they were townsmen or gentlemen.
They depended on slave labor for economic stability. Without the slaves many whites believed they were not able or should be doing the backbreaking labor. The plantation owners also needed the support of the slaves in all areas of their lives such as: cooks, housecleaners, nannies and chauffeurs. The possibility of life without the slaves was devastating. Slaves were the support system of their owners.
High birth rates and heavy immigration bespoke easily available land, widely distributed among the farming population. The colonists' dispersion and ethnic diversity helped produce the fragmentation and political instability that became pronounced as populations spread westward after the French and Indian War (known in Britain as the Seven Years' War). The easy availability of land weakened American elites; lacking the ability to live off rents, gentlemen also lacked a secure economic and political base. The southern colonies had stable aristocracies, based on slave ownership; but even the greatest planters lived in fear of slave rebellions. Nor did colonial institutions create stability: governments were small, poor, unbureaucratized, and lacked permanent constabularies; neither a unified market economy nor a
Landlords often borrowed large sums of money and, when serfs died or demanded higher wages, landlords could not raise money to repay creditors. If the landlord succumbed to the plague, there was no way for creditors to recover lost money. Widespread labor shortages led to a rise in labor prices. This occurred in all aspects of the economy but was especially evident in the agricultural sector. Serfs who for centuries had worked the land for little or not pay, suddenly began to demand higher wages and, increasingly, revolted against a nobility that sought to work them for lower wages of the past.
Clearing the land, pushing back the Indians and earning a living from the rocky, sandy soil had been a difficult task. Nevertheless, a number of families had become wealthy, either from farming or trading or both. As the time of the Revolution approached, men such as Colonel John Cuming, a country squire whose bequest later started Harvard Medical School, and Ephraim Wood, 1. http://philobiblos.blogspot.com shoemaker-farmer and a selectman and
There was little communication between the handlers and the cargo. Sign language was used and sometimes the slaves guessed as to what they were supposed to do. The slaves were treated like cattle and the slave traders cared only about profit. As Harms states, the slave traders were taking a bigger risk than one may think. This took place during the age of the Enlightenment and people began to think more scientifically.
The Virginian colonists’ adaption to the new world of America was no easy feat and was certainly full of obstacles. The colonists’ initial goals of gold and glory were tossed away and replace by a single goal, to survive. However with inspirational leadership and large amounts of luck the colonists survived and thrived. During the 16th and 17th centuries England had gone through some great economic changes. Some of which included a high demand of wool which put many people, mostly farmers out of a job.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby works his entire life to be rich just so he can get Daisy back, however it turns into an obstacle in getting her. Since Gatsby was originally from a poor family, when he achieved wealth in his later years, he was considered “new money.” This “new money,” was the main problem in getting Daisy. She was considered from “old money,” which is when you come from a family who had money. Gatsby did many things to try to get back with Daisy, he even tried to hide his money so that Daisy did not know where it came from, which he hoped would allow her to come and be with him. When Gatsby and Daisy first met, Gatsby was in the war, and very poor.
Perhaps one of the biggest flaws in the U.S. immigration policies over the past two centuries has been the fact that it is expensive to enforce immigration laws. Those coming to America have become aware of this issue and used it to their advantage. After all, cheap labor was initially popular with the slave trade when America was first being colonized. As a new nation, the lack of white indentured servants willing to work on plantations caused an array of problems in regards to building up the promising new territory. Thus, forced labor
Edwar Pino HIST-2112 10/11/2011 Assignment #1 A Biography of America #16 “The West” This video starts out by telling us that America was an expanding empire in which government did not spend money, but it spend what it had the most of, land. Therefore, between 1860 and 1900 the government transformed land much more quickly than ever before, but most of the land that the government gave away ended up in the hands of a wealthy few. Thousands of Americans and immigrants shared Henry David Thoreau’s dream of finding freedom by heading west. In 1849, thinking of joining the East and West, a politician named William Gilpin told a mass meeting in Independence, Missouri, that the East should no longer hold the West in bondage. He stated,