This video discusses the reforms implemented by the Virginia Company of London after the near-collapse of the Jamestown colony. It explains how these reforms, intended to boost the company's profitability, unintentionally led to the establishment of capitalism and representative democracy in America. The video also touches upon the introduction of slavery and the story of Pocahontas.
Because the colony almost collapsed, the Virginia Company of London will institute a series of reforms that will have two major consequences. First, after 1610, the reforms will be successful and that the colony will never come close to collapsing again like it did in the winter of 6009610. Second, effect of these reforms that was unintentional was it will lead to a more inclusive economic and political system. It'll lead to the beginnings of capitalism and representative democracy. But that was not the intent. The Virginia Company of London will send over a new charter and the new charter made all sorts of changes within the company like it said if you wanted to be part of the Virginia Company of London but you didn't have a lot of money you could um pay your own way to America and then you would be a shareholder in the company. So, especially for skilled workers. So, they're trying to encourage skilled workers to come over. Um, they also they hadn't made any money up to this point and they said they were going to continue to invest and reinvest every year. And most importantly though, they decided because they could not use the Native Americans labor, because they couldn't enslave the Native Americans like the Spanish did in Central and South America, they were going to exploit the labor of the colonists. So part of what they did was they sent over a guy to take charge named Sir Da Ward. That is who Delaware will be named after. Uh Da Ward got there, stayed for a little bit, realized it's terrible and left. And he put his second in charge of in command, Sir Thomas Dale. And Dale will run Virginia like Well, let me tell you what he did and then you can say what you think it sounds like. So he enacted very very strict laws in order to exploit the labor of the colonists. He passed the laws divine morale and marshall said you cannot run away or you'll be killed. You cannot rob any garden or vineyard or anything or you'll be killed. And you cannot give or sell any goods to anyone. So if you've grown your own tomatoes, you can't sell those to a ship captain or something. And they took away the people's individual houses and they put everyone in barracks. So everyone had to sleep in barracks. Everyone was gi given company company determined rations twice a day and they were forced to work in work games during the day. What does this sound like? They were trying to enslave the population of Virginia. They were trying to exploit the labor so they could make money. So it wasn't Dale doing well Dale was responsible for doing this but he was doing what the Virginia Company of London told him to do. So uh you wouldn't we like to scapegoat that person but he is just doing what he was ordered to do and he was trying to enslave the population. Now, this obviously does not sound like capitalism or representative democracy. And the reason it's so important to understand how this progressed is because it will fail spectacularly. And its failure is the reason the United States will develop representative democracy and capitalism. It failed for one very, very specific reason. It's not that they disliked being enslaved more than other people. No one likes to be enslaved. It's because North America is land rich, labor poor. It is massive. That is also why two most individualistic places in the world are the United States and Australia because they came from a place that had a history of individualism but also they are geograph geographically massive and it in a place that's that big you cannot easily enslave a population. The population per square mile in North America was about 3/4s of a person. So you have three4s of a person per square mile uh in North America. When it's that open, it is much easier to run away. That is compared to like Mexico and Peru where the Spanish did enslave the population and they had a population density of like four or 500 people per per square mile. That is a lot of people very compact. So given the fact that the America is so big, if you were a colonist and you were put into these slavelike conditions, you could just run away. And that's what they did. Could the Virginia Company of London stop this from happening? Yes. by hiring more soldiers which would have cost them more money. So it was not practical to enslave these British the British population because it would have cost too much money and they're trying not to spend money. They're trying to make money. So the whole thing failed. Now, if you're the Virginia Company of London and you are wanting to make money and you can't exploit the labor, but you want them to work because remember Virginia Company of London has a monopoly on all trade. So, economic activity, trade is going to be good for them. How do you get the population to start working if you can't force them to? incentives. You make them want to work. And how exactly do you make them want to work? Well, you the first thing the Virginia Company of London tried was giving deserving colonists three acres of land. And they found out when the colonists were given their own three acres of land, they worked really, really hard because it's their land and they get to benefit from it. And that is why Virginia Company of London will pass the head system in 1618. The head system said for anyone that came to Virginia on their own expense, they would get 50 acres of land and another 50 acres for anyone they brought with them. Europe. All land had been claimed throughout Europe since like 1200. So there was no chance of getting land in Europe. Now if you came over and you had a wife and two kids, you would just get 200 acres of land. So it encouraged more people to come to America and more the right kind of people to come to America. This was so successful that um it will bring a lot of people and this is a key feature of capital. Now capitalism is insanely complicated and so don't ever let anyone tell you that. But capitalism just means an unregulated market. It's a lot more comp complicated than that. But a key feature of capitalism is private ownership of the means of production and distribution. That means you own it and you get to benefit off of it. So that is the beginning of of an economic system characterized by capitalism where they got to own the land. They didn't have to work someone else's land. And this happened in Virginia, but it will happen in every one of the other colonies. All 13 colonies will experience some period where they try to exploit the labor of the population and it never works because if you are put in a situation or when the British that were brought over were put in a situation where they were going to be enslaved they could just leave and especially when there were other colonies they would just go to a different colony. So the governments would have to figure out ways to entice them and give them incentives to come to want to work. And that is so unusual in human history that you would have an advanced for the time economy that was just giving away land. That is Americans individualism. Like you think of how important you would consider yourself compared to most people in the world. Like oh they want me so much. I'm going to they're just giving me land. So that is the beginning of capitalism. And it is not a coincidence that the very next year after the head system, we get and this is super important to know the oldest institution of representative self-government in America. The general assembly. It is the oldest institution of representative self-government in US history. General Assembly was a governing body that had two houses. So two chambers. There was uh well there was a governor that was appointed by the Virginia Company and then there was a council which was the upper house. It had six very the wealthiest and most elite members of society. The lower house, the Burgesses, was composed of representatives from the town. Virginia had started growing and so there were like different towns and the Burgesses had 22 people at first, one from every one of the towns that would represent those little towns. Uh you have to be 21, you have to be male, you have to be a land owner. And if this sounds familiar, it is a biccameal legislature like the US House and US Senate. Senate is upper house. It's supposed to be more elite lower house. Supposed to represent the population, but because of gerrymandering, it absolutely doesn't. However, this is the oldest institution of representative self-government. And it's so important to understand that these things go together. This is what you call the virtuous circle. You have the beginning of capitalism. When individuals start getting more wealthy economically, they want more rights. They think they're important and so they want to save the government. Same thing happened in England with which is why they England was a monarchy, but king didn't have total power because he had there were businessmen and companies that started challenging that. And so in Virginia, they g got freedom of a say in government, local government. The Virginia Company partly did this because they wanted to attract as many people as possible. And being being told, hey, you can have land and self-government. That is incredible for colonists, for any colonist. So it was to entice the people to come but also logistically it was just an easier way to govern the area. So you have beginning of capitalism not the beginning of capitalism but a capitalist system established and also a representative government and again those things went hand in hand. Also in 1619, the Virginia Company of London, they were still trying to make money and they tried to diversify the economy in all sorts of ways. They uh tried a making glass steel. They uh tried making silk didn't didn't catch on. They uh tried to sell wives u brought over wives and the past is a terrible place for everyone. uh they tried all sorts of things. What also happened in 1619 was the very first African slave was brought to America, North America. Slavery in the United States will end in 1865. The United States was a slave nation for 250 years. Uh today we've been a nation without slavery for 150 years is why this was just the first and over the course of the transatlantic slave trade there will be more than 1.2 million Africans brought from Africa to the Americas and into what will become the United States. There's about 400,000 Africans brought here. Now, this is the most controversial part of American history because while all societies in the world, most societies had some version of slavery, in the United States, it was specifically African slavery. And we will talk about this more specifically in a future lecture. But that was the beginning of slavery. And what the slaves were brought to America for was because again the United States land rich for tons of land but didn't have enough labor or people to work it. And so they will be brought and they were brought to the southern United States because that's the only part of the United States that was had the right type of soil that they could grow the most important crop in the world at the time. Tobacco. Tobacco for a while was the most important natural resource in the world and it will be replaced by cotton. Cotton will be the most important natural resource in the entire world from with cotton from the southern United States um for a 1800s up until the civil war and it could only be grown in the southern United States at the time and it had to be handpicked. Now tobacco it was actually only in um it was incredibly popular but the Spanish had a monopoly on it. and they would not let anyone else have their tobacco. Well, luckily for the British, there was a guy named John Rolf who managed to steal some tobacco plants and tobacco seeds and brought it to Virginia in 1612. And by 1616, it was the most popular thing being grown and it will be continue to be grown in southern United States for centuries. This is also where you get the story of Pocahontas who John Ralph will marry in 1614. And this is where the whole story comes from. The British or the English colonists in Virginia, they were at war with Powton's Confederacy. 1613. They captured Pocahontas and she got what is called um Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is where you were captured and you start associating with your captors and that's what she got. She gave up her Native American past, changed her name to Rebecca and she became British. She married John Rolf and she was so popular. She was like the Kim Kardashian of her time. Everyone wanted to know about her. Everyone was so curious about her and they uh everyone was talking about her in England because she was going to come back to England. And that is when John Smith remembered he had totally forgotten about this and he remembered, "Oh yeah, I know that chick. Yeah, she saved my life. Now what we do know is that John Smith was actually captured by uh the Native Americans in 1608. He had never once mentioned Pocahontas until she was famous. And then he remembered, oh yeah, yeah, the sto Yeah, she saved my life. And that's when he came up with his story about him being saved by Pocahontas by throwing her body on top of him. Uh, so they couldn't smash his brains out with two great stones. Fun fact for you. So much of history is just people making stuff up. And you get to see see this when you do a lot of oral history, but people do this all the time. They just make up stories because there's no way to fact check them throughout most of human history. Until you get the internet, it's you couldn't fact check people. And so people could just say whatever they wanted to say and they do all the time. It's amazing how much of history is just people lying to make themselves sound better. And it worked too. John Smith when he came out with this story, it was so he became even more popular. The queen of England asked to meet him because he knew Pocahontas. Uh luckily for him, well, when this happened also, she would have only been like 10 or 11 years old in 1608 when he was captured. So, uh, if there was anything romantic, really gross. But when she came to England, she didn't live long enough to completely squash the story. So, that is how you get the Pocahontas story.
