Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Estates and gentry income/Growth of the Colonial Plantation
The investors in the plantations and trade of North America were market oriented from the beginning due to their social backgrounds in England, these were younger sons from gentry families or those of the merchant class. [1] They were men who were eager to make their fortune and prove themselves and were willing to do whatever it took. They were not always the established bankers of London, but rather men of often middle class, shopkeepers and younger sons from outside of London who were looking to break into the English Commercial world.[2] The resulting land race in the colonies was driven mainly by speculation with these investors buying up huge tracts of land in order to sell it, lease it or just hold it.[3] For these colonialists, land was the key to status and wealth; but as always the access to and accumulation of land was always unequal and led to stratified colonial societies.[4] This stratification of society placed even more importance on the drive for land, the search for a suitable labour supply, and individual desire for upward social mobility.[5]
As more of these highly driven younger-sons moved into the colony they were often absorbed into the local elite or gentry; they subsequently became known as the “great-planter class” and on average had accumulated 2000 acres. [6] These were men who were very highly driven to gain material success in order to prove themselves as they never could in the English system of primogeniture.[7] This drive to prove their worth by amassing a grand fortune made them more willing to invest in slave labour. The turn to slave labour was an almost inevitable one given the huge amount of cheap land and the highly marketable commodities, such as tobacco, they had; all they needed to make their fortunes was a hard working labour force, willing or not. Because of the large Profit to be made from Plantation agriculture, there was an evolution of the English-American society which led to the slave holding societies.[8] There was such a huge profit to be made because tobacco is a high yield crop, and the soils of the Colony were particularly suited to tobacco; the Planters also required relatively little capital to start up due to the cheapness of land and the initial investment. [9] The profit grew further as the tobacco market expanded at a rapid rate, exports rose from approximately 60,000 pounds in 1620 to about 28 million pounds in the 1680’s. [10] The same transformation was occurring in other colonial industries as well. These planters just needed a supply of labour to work their enormous plats of land in order to export their valuable crop; in their quest for quick fortunes they wanted cheap labour, which was satisfied by the influx of slaves from Africa by way of the Caribbean.[11]
References:
- ↑ Robert D. Mitchell, “American Origins and Regional Institutions: The Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 73(1983): 417.
- ↑ Anthony S. Parent Jr., Foul Means: The Formation of Slave Society in Virginia 1660-1740, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2003): 25.
- ↑ Parent, Foul Means, 26.
- ↑ Mitchell, “American Origins and Regional Institutions: The Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake,” , 417.
- ↑ Mitchell, “American Origins and Regional Institutions: The Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake,” , 417.
- ↑ Parent, Foul Means, 30.
- ↑ Parent, Foul Means, 30.
- ↑ James Horn, “Tobacco Colonies: the Shaping of English Society in Seventeenth Century Chesapeake.” In Oxford History of the British Empire: Origins of Empire, ed. Nicholas Canny. (New York: Oxford University Press), 183.
- ↑ Horn, “Tobacco Colonies”, 183.
- ↑ Horn, “Tobacco Colonies”, 183.
- ↑ Hillary McD. Beckles, “The Caribbean and Britain,” In Oxford History of the British Empire, the Origin of Empire, ed. Nicholas Canny (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 223