WEBVTT NOTE 2. New World, New Land 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.680 Volume 1, Chapter 2, New World, New Land 2 00:00:05.680 --> 00:00:11.880 The Englishmen and other Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries faced westward 3 00:00:11.880 --> 00:00:21.200 to the New World in awe and in hope, for here was a vast virgin continent and its most striking 4 00:00:21.200 --> 00:00:28.860 feature was the millions of square miles of new and potentially highly productive land. 5 00:00:28.860 --> 00:00:36.620 To a Europe beset by the incubus of feudalism and statism, of absolute monarchy, of state-controlled 6 00:00:36.620 --> 00:00:43.140 churches, of state restrictions on human labor and human enterprise, to a Europe with scarce 7 00:00:43.140 --> 00:00:50.700 land which was engrossed by feudal and quasi-feudal landlords whose vast government granted estates 8 00:00:50.700 --> 00:00:58.660 drained in rents the surplus over subsistence earned by the peasantry, to this Europe the 9 00:00:58.660 --> 00:01:04.620 The new and vast land area appeared as potential manna from heaven. 10 00:01:04.620 --> 00:01:10.380 At home the mass of Europeans, middle class and peasants alike, faced centuries of weary 11 00:01:10.380 --> 00:01:17.180 struggle against the frozen cake of status restrictions, a network of taxes, feudal dues 12 00:01:17.180 --> 00:01:23.260 and rents, and controls and shackles by states and state fostered guilds. 13 00:01:23.260 --> 00:01:28.900 This was a relatively stagnant old world whose population pressed heavily upon the means 14 00:01:28.900 --> 00:01:35.340 of subsistence. This was a Europe that recently emerged from the secular depression into which 15 00:01:35.340 --> 00:01:42.380 the growth of statism had plunged it at the beginning of the fourteenth century. But abroad 16 00:01:42.380 --> 00:01:49.740 they saw a quite different vision, new, productive and virtually unoccupied land with the important 17 00:01:49.740 --> 00:02:06.140 In short, here at last was the opportunity for the individual to leave his unsatisfactory 18 00:02:06.140 --> 00:02:12.300 conditions at home to try to carve out of the wilderness a better life for himself and 19 00:02:12.300 --> 00:02:18.940 his family, a life offering him the freedom and opportunity to make his own way, stand 20 00:02:18.940 --> 00:02:39.940 It is not the privilege of many generations of men to experience a revolution, a breeze of fresh air upon the stagnant social structure and an opportunity to break loose from the old mold and strike out afresh on one's own. 21 00:02:39.940 --> 00:02:55.940 Through the discovery of the New World, the men of the 17th century experienced at least the potential of such a revolution, for the escape hatch to the untapped storehouse of the New World lay always at hand. 22 00:02:55.940 --> 00:03:06.940 New land then confronted the Old World, and this vast stretch of land furnished the most striking fact about the Virgin American continent. 23 00:03:06.940 --> 00:03:12.940 But how was the ownership of this great new land mass to be allocated? 24 00:03:12.940 --> 00:03:20.940 Basically, new and previously unowned land can come into ownership in two different ways. 25 00:03:20.940 --> 00:03:28.940 Either the settler, the pioneer who in the later phrase of John Locke mixes his labor with the soil 26 00:03:28.940 --> 00:03:34.940 and brings the previously unused and fallow natural resources into productive use, 27 00:03:34.940 --> 00:03:45.500 of Use is conceded ownership of the land he has in this way created or he is not. 28 00:03:45.500 --> 00:03:51.920 If it be objected that the pioneer has not really created the land, it is also true that 29 00:03:51.920 --> 00:03:55.380 no producer creates matter. 30 00:03:55.380 --> 00:04:01.500 The builder of a factory has not in the ultimate sense created the matter in the factory. 31 00:04:01.500 --> 00:04:07.740 He has rather transformed by the use of his labor the previously nature-given matter. 32 00:04:07.740 --> 00:04:14.220 He has shifted this original matter into other forms more useful to himself and to his fellow 33 00:04:14.220 --> 00:04:15.220 men. 34 00:04:15.220 --> 00:04:21.500 This shifting is the meaning of production, and this is precisely what the pioneer has 35 00:04:21.500 --> 00:04:25.220 done in transforming the land. 36 00:04:25.220 --> 00:04:30.960 If he is not challenged, the pioneer settler of new land will naturally and automatically 37 00:04:30.960 --> 00:04:38.960 There are two types of threats to this basic principle of first ownership to first user. 38 00:04:38.960 --> 00:04:47.960 Either existing settler owners can be subjected to the arbitrarily imposed ownership of some overlord, 39 00:04:47.960 --> 00:04:55.960 or else new land can be parceled out to some person or persons before any settlement has taken place. 40 00:04:55.960 --> 00:05:10.960 In both cases, the arbitrary parceling is performed by the State, that institution that asserts its claim to a monopoly of legalized coercion in a given territorial area. 41 00:05:10.960 --> 00:05:20.960 The former is one of the chief methods of feudalism, the parceling out of peasant-owned land to the ownership of overlords favored by the State. 42 00:05:20.960 --> 00:05:28.900 But this method requires previously existing settlers. Clearly, in the case of a new and 43 00:05:28.900 --> 00:05:35.800 untapped continent, the second method would be the major threat to settler ownership of 44 00:05:35.800 --> 00:05:41.600 what the settlers would create. And this is precisely what happened in the case of North 45 00:05:41.600 --> 00:05:49.240 America. It is the propensity of the state to parcel out arbitrary subsidies in disregard 46 00:05:49.240 --> 00:05:54.640 Part of the individual's natural right to own what he has produced. This propensity 47 00:05:54.640 --> 00:06:00.800 is here aggravated by the fact that the State always assumes sovereign ownership over new 48 00:06:00.800 --> 00:06:07.800 and unused land, its self-proclaimed public domain. It hereby assumes the right to dispose 49 00:06:09.120 --> 00:06:15.960 of this domain in any way it sees fit. Unless forced by the pressure of public opinion to 50 00:06:15.960 --> 00:06:22.400 To do otherwise, the State will naturally tend to dispose of such land in a way best 51 00:06:22.400 --> 00:06:29.820 calculated to maximize either its own revenue or the revenue of its privileged favorites. 52 00:06:29.820 --> 00:06:36.320 The crucial question then becomes, will the land pass after time into the hands of the 53 00:06:36.320 --> 00:06:42.680 settlers, or will it remain permanently in the hands of privileged overlords dominating 54 00:06:42.680 --> 00:06:44.360 the settlers? 55 00:06:44.360 --> 00:06:55.360 England, the major sovereign over the lands of North America, had been subjected to feudalism since at least the Norman conquest of the 11th century. 56 00:06:55.360 --> 00:07:05.360 After the conquest of England in 1066, the conquerors parceled out large tracts of land to the ownership of their leading warlords, 57 00:07:05.360 --> 00:07:12.360 and this newly created nobility became the liege lords of the subdued peasantry. 58 00:07:12.360 --> 00:07:19.120 Since the overwhelming mass of Englishmen were still engaged in agriculture, feudalism became 59 00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:25.760 the crucial fact about English, as well as other European, society. 60 00:07:25.760 --> 00:07:31.280 The major attributes of the feudal system were the granting of huge estates to land-owning 61 00:07:31.280 --> 00:07:38.880 warlords, the coerced binding of the peasants' serfs to their land plots and hence to the 62 00:07:38.880 --> 00:08:00.880 and the further bolstering by the state a feudal status through compulsory, promogenitor, the passing on of the estate to the oldest son only, and entail, prohibiting the landowner from alienating, selling, breaking up, and so on, his land. 63 00:08:00.880 --> 00:08:13.880 This process froze landlordship in the existing noble families and prevented any natural market or genealogical forces from breaking up the vast estates. 64 00:08:13.880 --> 00:08:21.880 But after the late 14th century, the serfdom aspect of feudalism began a steady decline in England, 65 00:08:21.880 --> 00:08:38.880 As compulsory labor service imposed on the peasants began to be commuted permanently into money rents, quit rents, which quit or freed one of the onerous obligations of feudal, including military, service. 66 00:08:38.880 --> 00:08:46.600 By the early 17th century, however, feudal military service had not been abolished, and 67 00:08:46.600 --> 00:08:54.160 the two other aspects of feudalism, promogeniture and entail, remained intact. 68 00:08:54.160 --> 00:09:00.840 An important specific spur to imposing feudalism on the colonies of the New World was England's 69 00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:04.800 experience in subjugating Ireland. 70 00:09:04.800 --> 00:09:11.120 In the process of conquering Ireland during the 16th century, the English concluded that 71 00:09:11.120 --> 00:09:18.000 the wild Irish were no better than savages and unreasonable beasts, and hence could be 72 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:24.960 treated as such, a significant preview of English treatment of the American Indian. 73 00:09:24.960 --> 00:09:32.280 As a result, the English decided that, as in Ireland, a colony had to be planted under 74 00:09:32.280 --> 00:09:38.680 Under direction of a central monopoly organization run along military lines, they also decided 75 00:09:38.680 --> 00:09:43.880 to favor imposing on a colony a system of feudal land tenure. 76 00:09:43.880 --> 00:09:50.000 It was no coincidence that the leaders in the early English colonizing projects in America 77 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:57.080 had almost all been deeply connected with the planting of Englishmen, largely a supposed 78 00:09:57.080 --> 00:10:04.640 Surplus of Poor and Feudal Land Ownership in Ireland. Indeed, many of the active 79 00:10:04.640 --> 00:10:09.360 incorporators of the Virginia Company had substantial interest in Irish 80 00:10:09.360 --> 00:10:16.240 plantations. As recently as 1603, in fact, a crushing defeat of the Irish had 81 00:10:16.240 --> 00:10:22.600 spurred renewed colonization in Ulster by the English government. The hapless 82 00:10:22.600 --> 00:10:28.760 Most Irish peasants were declared to have no rights in owning land. Instead, their lands 83 00:10:28.760 --> 00:10:36.240 were handed over by the Crown in large grants to privileged courtiers and monopoly companies, 84 00:10:36.240 --> 00:10:43.440 all enjoying feudal powers over the new domain. The Irish were deliberately exterminated or 85 00:10:43.440 --> 00:10:50.280 driven off their land, and the vacant lands compulsorily planted with an alleged surplus 86 00:10:50.280 --> 00:10:55.440 of English Poor, who were now little better than serfs. 87 00:10:55.440 --> 00:11:01.760 The treatment of the Irish and Ireland proved a directly illuminating model for the gentlemen 88 00:11:01.760 --> 00:11:05.360 colonizing in Virginia. 89 00:11:05.360 --> 00:11:09.640 That the first English settlements in the New World were organized not directly by the 90 00:11:09.640 --> 00:11:16.920 Crown but by private monopoly companies meant that the proprietary company would be interested 91 00:11:16.920 --> 00:11:22.880 in subdividing its granted land as quickly as possible to the individual settlers in 92 00:11:22.880 --> 00:11:27.000 order to reap a rapid gain for its shareholders. 93 00:11:27.000 --> 00:11:32.280 The situation was, of course, not that of the free market. 94 00:11:32.280 --> 00:11:38.520 If it were, the British government would a. have refrained from claiming sovereignty over 95 00:11:38.520 --> 00:11:46.000 the unused American domain, or especially b. have granted ownership of the land titles 96 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:50.160 to the actual settlers rather than to the company. 97 00:11:50.160 --> 00:11:55.240 The privileges to the chartered companies, however, did not prove disastrous in the long 98 00:11:55.240 --> 00:11:56.440 run. 99 00:11:56.440 --> 00:12:01.440 The companies were eager to induce settlers to come to their granted land and then dispose 100 00:12:01.440 --> 00:12:04.360 of the land to them at a profit. 101 00:12:04.360 --> 00:12:11.080 The cleansing acid of profit was to dissolve incipient feudalism and land monopoly. 102 00:12:11.080 --> 00:12:17.160 It is true that the fact of the land grant to the company engrossed the land for a time 103 00:12:17.160 --> 00:12:22.040 and raised its price to the settlers, thus restricting settlement from what it would 104 00:12:22.040 --> 00:12:27.600 have been under freedom, but the quantitative effects were not very grave. 105 00:12:27.600 --> 00:12:33.080 Defenders of pre-settler land speculation have claimed that speculators, such as the 106 00:12:33.080 --> 00:12:37.920 first charter companies, spurred settlement in the hope of profit. 107 00:12:37.920 --> 00:12:43.680 This is true, but it does not offset the net restriction on settlement by virtue of the 108 00:12:43.680 --> 00:12:50.320 land grants and the consequent raising of the price of otherwise free land to the settlers. 109 00:12:50.320 --> 00:12:55.080 In a free market, the same companies could simply have loaned settlement money to the 110 00:12:55.080 --> 00:13:00.560 colonists, and this productive credit could then have spurred settlement and earned them 111 00:13:00.560 --> 00:13:05.280 a profit without the arbitrary restrictions imposed by the land grants.