This video explains the foundational purpose and method behind the British colonization of America, specifically Jamestown. It argues that Virginia was not founded for religious or democratic reasons, but primarily for profit by a joint-stock company, setting a precedent for capitalism and the American zeitgeist. The video also discusses the challenges of colonization and why individual or governmental efforts were not initially successful.
Virginia is the first colony founded by the British and it will be the most important colony and then state in the United States arguably until the 1850s. And it's from Virginia that we get to see the beginnings of representative democracy and capitalism in what will become the United States. And so what it represents is so important in that sense. However, Virginia was not founded for capitalism or for representative democracy. It was founded for one major purpose to make money for shareholders. If you want to understand American zeitgeist or America's personality, Virginia is the best place to look because it wasn't founded for religious reasons. It was founded by what's called a joint stock company for the purposes of making money. And that represents the United States better than anything else, I believe. The second objective uh that was not as important but was just getting a foothold in the new world. Spain had already gotten their foothold in the new world. So Portugal and England wanted to get its own foothold. So the question was how are we going to get our foothold in this new world? And there is a very good contemporary way to think about this. Let's say we are going to colonize I don't know Mars. Who would do it? And that's kind of the same question that they were facing back then. So first option would be what about the government? Well, if you pay attention to politics in any way, shape or form, you know the government is so dysfunctional that that is not going to happen. And the tr same was true back then. It wasn't that it was completely dysfunctional like US politics is, but the government wasn't going to do it because the queen at the time, Elizabeth, she was just worried about staying alive. She wasn't going to spend any of her money or resources on colonizing because she was in survival mode. There were a lot of people that wanted her off the throne and so she couldn't put any resources to to that. So it wasn't going to be the government. Second option. How about some rich dude? Oh, I don't know. Like an Elon Musk say that was tried. His name was Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh will uh try three times to settle in America and he will send three lots of ships and he will have three attempts and his most famous attempt is the Lost Colony of Rowan Oak. It was his third final and to this day most famous one because he sent ships uh sent colonists. They landed at Rowan Oak and he said, "All right, I'm the ships we'll be back in one year with more supplies and more people and food." However, the next year, Spain sent a massive fleet of ships. Spain put almost all of its resources into building this massive fleet to overthrow the queen and for a lot of reasons it went just absolutely sideways and it completely failed which is the beginning of Spain's decline. But what it meant for the people of Ronoke was that the queen said, "No one is leaving England because everyone needs to stay here to protect the mother country." So those ships that were supposed to go back to Ronoke, they never went. When the ships were finally able to go back afterwards, 1590, they found the entire place was gone. It hadn't been attacked. There weren't burn marks. There weren't dead bodies everywhere. There weren't structures that were lying on the ground. It had been very meticulously taken apart. So, there was a slow process. And all they found were the words Croatan carved into the side of the build uh tree. Now, if you watch the History Channel, what it will tell you is so aliens and you will hear people say, "And to this day, we have no idea what it means." Uh, except we do. There was an island not far from there called Croat. They called Crowato an island. Today it's a Hatteris Island off of uh North Carolina I believe. And the Native Americans there, they called the Crowadawan Indians. So do the math. It's we know what happened. The people were starving and they couldn't survive. So they slowly took apart everything and they tried to go live with the Native Americans. Um well that's that is the most we don't know that is the most logical explanation but the bigger point is what this showed is one individual could not colonize themselves. No matter what Elon Musk thinks he would not be able to col colonize Mars by himself. There's too many unknown variables and the cost would just kept going up because you just can't predict everything. There's too much. Uh Sir Walter Raleigh, he will go bankrupt trying to do this. And so it wasn't going to be one person. What he recommended and what will be used is what's called a joint stock company. This happened under Queen Elizabeth's successor, King James I. A group of investors got together and asked for a charter to create a colony in America. joint stock company is so important to understand because this is a business invention is one of the things that made England the world superpower because in the history of business it is an invention of bringing a bunch of investors together to pull their money. So if something doesn't work out then you don't lose everything and everyone that invests gets a share of the profits. This is the precursor to modern day corporations. When you buy a stock in the stock market, you are buying a share of that company. And that is what this is. This is the early version of that. A joint stock company raises money by selling stocks, selling stocks. And it had to get a charter from the king. Just like you, businesses have to get charters or have to get uh contracts from the government. if it fails, they don't lose everything and so the losses are dispersed. But there were a lot of joint stock companies around at the time and some of the most profitable were um pirates. Well, oh, privateeer. Privateeer is government sanctioned pirate. So, it would be a privateeer. Technically, pirates work outside the law. privateeers are when the government says yes, you can go act like a pirate. Uh, and there were some very successful joint stock companies that were privateeers. A bunch of wealthy investors pulled their money and they would get a ship and a captain and sailors and they would go out and attack Spanish or Portuguese ships to get the gold and silver. And there were some joint stock companies that had return on investment of like I think 4,800 was the highest. So you invest a dollar, what would be a dollar back then, you get 4,800 back by plundering Spanish ships. So there were a lot of joint stock companies and that is what will colonize Virginia, a joint stock company. This is a precursor to a modern day corporation. And make sure you understand this point. The purpose is to make money. We have this weird delusional view that businesses are supposed to be moral agents and they're supposed to act morally the way we want them to. And their objective is to make money. And that should never be confused. It's not a good thing or a bad thing. It is just that's the point is to make money. And that was the that is the very first colony founded in America. Called themselves the Virginia Company of London. And it had the rights to all the land. It had uh rights to trade. And the purpose is to make money. They don't they don't even care about the glory of England as much as they care about making money. So, uh, it's good for England, but these are a bunch of investors that they care about making money, and that's it. And that's a very good description of the United States. The Virginia Company of London will originally have 50 investors that agreed that they would invest and keep reinvesting every year until they made a profit. Now, obviously, what they were wanting was gold and silver. That is the hope. But they also thought maybe we'll find a passage to Asia. um or they didn't care how they made the money, they just wanted to make money. And so that is the objective. And these 50 investors would invest and reinvest for several years until they made a profit. And so they're going to disperse the costs.
