WEBVTT NOTE 6. The Social Structure of Virginia: Bondservants and Slaves 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 Volume 1, Chapter 6, The Social Structure of Virginia, Bond Servants and Slaves 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:17.000 Until the 1670s, the bulk of forced labor in Virginia was indentured service, largely white but some negro. 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:25.000 Negro slavery was negligible. In 1683 there were 12,000 indentured servants in Virginia 4 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:33.280 and only 3,000 slaves of a total population of 44,000. Masters generally preferred bond 5 00:00:33.280 --> 00:00:38.720 servants for two reasons. First, they could exploit the bond servants more ruthlessly because 6 00:00:38.720 --> 00:00:45.120 they did not own them permanently as they did their slaves. On the other hand, the slaves were 7 00:00:45.120 --> 00:00:50.400 completely their owners' capital and hence the masters were economically compelled to try to 8 00:00:50.400 --> 00:00:55.400 to Preserve the Capital Value of Their Human Tools of Production. 9 00:00:55.400 --> 00:01:00.640 Second, the bond servants, looking forward to their freedom, could be more productive 10 00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:06.320 laborers than the slaves, who were deprived of all hope for the future. 11 00:01:06.320 --> 00:01:12.280 As the colony grew, the number of bond servants grew also, although as servants were repeatedly 12 00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:17.840 set free, their proportion to the population of Virginia declined. 13 00:01:17.840 --> 00:01:23.800 Since the service was temporary, a large new supply had to be continually furnished. 14 00:01:23.800 --> 00:01:31.880 There were seven sources of bond service, two voluntary, initially, and five compulsory. 15 00:01:31.880 --> 00:01:38.560 The former consisted partly of redemptioners who bound themselves for four to seven years 16 00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:42.060 in return for their passage money to America. 17 00:01:42.060 --> 00:01:47.760 It is estimated that 70 percent of all immigration in the colonies throughout the colonial era 18 00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:55.060 consisted of redemptioners. The other voluntary category consisted of apprentices, children 19 00:01:55.060 --> 00:02:01.720 of the English poor who were bound out until the age of 21. In the compulsory category 20 00:02:01.720 --> 00:02:08.260 were a. impoverished and orphaned English children shipped to the colonies by the English 21 00:02:08.260 --> 00:02:14.840 government, b. colonists found to service in lieu of imprisonment for debt, the universal 22 00:02:14.840 --> 00:02:37.840 C. Colonial criminals, who were simply farmed out by the authorities to the mastership of private employers D. Poor English children or adults kidnapped by professional crimps, one of whom boasted of seizing 500 children annually for a dozen years 23 00:02:37.840 --> 00:02:47.840 and E. British convicts choosing servitude in America for 7 to 14 years in lieu of all prison terms in England. 24 00:02:47.840 --> 00:02:56.840 The last were usually petty thieves or political prisoners, and Virginia absorbed a large portion of the transported criminals. 25 00:02:56.840 --> 00:03:04.840 As an example of the grounds for deporting political prisoners into bondage, an English law in force in the mid-1660s 26 00:03:04.840 --> 00:03:11.800 In the 1960s, banished to the colonies anyone convicted three times of attempting an unlawful 27 00:03:11.800 --> 00:03:18.800 meeting, a law aimed mostly at the Quakers. Hundreds of Scottish nationalist rebels, particularly 28 00:03:19.960 --> 00:03:26.960 after the Scottish uprising of 1679, were shipped to the colonies as political criminals. 29 00:03:26.960 --> 00:03:39.960 An Act of 1670 banished to the colonies anyone with knowledge of illegal religious or political activity who refused to turn informer for the government. 30 00:03:39.960 --> 00:03:54.960 During his term of bondage, the indentured servant received no monetary payment. His hours and conditions of work were set absolutely by the will of his master, who punished the servant at his own discretion. 31 00:03:54.960 --> 00:04:02.960 Flight from the master's service was punishable by beating or by doubling or tripling the term of indenture. 32 00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:09.960 The bond servants were frequently beaten, branded, chained to their work and tortured. 33 00:04:09.960 --> 00:04:17.960 The frequent maltreatment of bond servants is so indicated in a corrective Virginia Act of 1662. 34 00:04:17.960 --> 00:04:36.960 The barbarous usage of some servants by cruel masters being so much scandal and infamy to the country that people who would willingly adventure themselves hither are through fears thereof diverted, thus diminishing the needed supply of indentured servants. 35 00:04:36.960 --> 00:04:42.960 Many of the oppressed servants were moved to the length of open resistance. 36 00:04:42.960 --> 00:04:48.960 The major form of resistance was flight, either individually or in groups. 37 00:04:48.960 --> 00:04:55.960 This spurred their employers to search for them by various means, including newspaper advertisements. 38 00:04:55.960 --> 00:04:59.960 Work stoppages were also employed as a method of struggle, 39 00:04:59.960 --> 00:05:10.960 But more vigorous rebellions also occurred, especially in Virginia in 1659, 1661, 1663, and 1681. 40 00:05:10.960 --> 00:05:22.960 Rebellions of servants were particularly pressing in the 1660s because of the particularly large number of political prisoners taken in England during that decade. 41 00:05:22.960 --> 00:05:29.960 Independent and rebellious by nature, these men had been shipped to the colonies as bond servants. 42 00:05:30.960 --> 00:05:36.960 Stringent laws were passed in the 1660s against runaway servants striving to gain their freedom. 43 00:05:37.960 --> 00:05:45.960 In all cases, the servant revolts for freedom were totally crushed and the leaders executed. 44 00:05:45.960 --> 00:05:53.960 Demands of the rebelling servants ranged from improved conditions and better food to outright freedom. 45 00:05:53.960 --> 00:06:03.960 The leading example was the servant uprising of 1661 in York County, Virginia, led by Isaac Friend and William Pluton. 46 00:06:03.960 --> 00:06:10.960 Friend had exhorted the other servants that he would be the first and lead them and cry as they went along, 47 00:06:10.960 --> 00:06:37.960 The Rebels retreated with surprising leniency by the county court, but this unwanted spirit quickly evaporated with another servant uprising in 1663. 48 00:06:37.960 --> 00:06:53.960 This servant rebellion in York, Middlesex and Gloucester counties was betrayed by a servant named Birkenhead, who was rewarded for his renegade by the House of Burgesses with his freedom and 5,000 pounds of tobacco. 49 00:06:53.960 --> 00:07:04.960 The rebel leaders, however, former soldiers under Cromwell, were ruthlessly treated. Nine were indicted for high treason and four actually executed. 50 00:07:04.960 --> 00:07:12.640 In 1672, a servant plot to gain freedom was uncovered and a Catherine Nugent suffered 51 00:07:12.640 --> 00:07:19.120 thirty lashes for complicity. A law was passed forbidding servants from leaving home without 52 00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:25.280 special permits and meetings of servants were further repressed. One of the first servant 53 00:07:25.280 --> 00:07:32.320 rebellions occurred in the neighboring Chesapeake tobacco colony of Maryland. In 1644, Edward 54 00:07:32.320 --> 00:07:37.920 Robert Robinson and two brothers were convicted for armed rebellion for the purpose of liberating 55 00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:45.480 bond servants. Thirteen years later, Robert Chesick, a recaptured runaway servant in Maryland, 56 00:07:45.480 --> 00:07:50.640 persuaded several servants of various masters to run away to the Swedish settlements on 57 00:07:50.640 --> 00:07:56.540 the Delaware River. Chesick and a dozen other servants seized a master's boat, as well 58 00:07:56.540 --> 00:08:02.460 as well as arms for self-defense in case of attempted capture, but the men weren't captured 59 00:08:02.460 --> 00:08:08.300 and Chesick was given 30 lashes. As a special refinement, one of Chesick's friends and abettors 60 00:08:08.300 --> 00:08:15.780 in the escape, John Beale, was forced to perform the whipping. In 1663, the bond servants of 61 00:08:15.780 --> 00:08:21.240 Richard Preston of Maryland went on strike and refused to work in protest against the 62 00:08:21.240 --> 00:08:29.240 The Maryland Court sentenced the six disobedient servants to thirty lashes each with two of 63 00:08:29.240 --> 00:08:35.240 the most moderate rebels compelled to perform the whipping. Facing force majeure, all the 64 00:08:35.240 --> 00:08:40.760 servants abased themselves and begged forgiveness from their master and from the court, which 65 00:08:40.760 --> 00:08:44.760 suspended the sentence on good behavior. 66 00:08:44.760 --> 00:08:50.400 In Virginia, a servant rebellion against a master, Captain Sisby, occurred as early 67 00:08:50.400 --> 00:08:58.880 as 1638. The lower Norfolk Court ordered the enormous total of 100 lashes on each rebel. 68 00:08:58.880 --> 00:09:06.120 In 1640, six servants of Captain William Pierce tried to escape to the Dutch settlements. 69 00:09:06.120 --> 00:09:11.460 The runaways were apprehended and brutally punished, lest this set a dangerous precedent 70 00:09:11.460 --> 00:09:18.300 for the Future Time. The prisoners were sentenced to be whipped and branded, to work in shackles, 71 00:09:18.300 --> 00:09:24.360 and to have their terms of bondage extended. By the late seventeenth century, the supply 72 00:09:24.360 --> 00:09:30.660 of bond servants began to dry up. While the opening of new colonies and wider settlements 73 00:09:30.660 --> 00:09:37.500 increased the demand for bond servants, the supply dwindled greatly as the English government 74 00:09:37.500 --> 00:09:44.500 In Virginia, there had been 50 Negroes, the bulk of them slaves, out of a total population of 2,500 in 1630, 950 Negroes out of 27,000 in 1660, and 3,000 Negroes out of 15,000 in 1660. 75 00:10:07.500 --> 00:10:14.500 Negroes out of 44,000 in 1680, a steadily rising proportion but still limited to less 76 00:10:15.140 --> 00:10:22.140 than 7% of the population. But in 10 years, by 1690, the proportion of Negroes had jumped 77 00:10:24.740 --> 00:10:31.740 to over 9,000 out of 53,000, approximately 17%, and by 1700 the number was 16,000 out 78 00:10:31.740 --> 00:10:51.740 In 1700, the number was 16,000 out of a population of 58,000, approximately 28 percent. And of the total labor force, the working population, this undoubtedly reflected a considerably higher proportion of Negroes. 79 00:10:51.740 --> 00:11:06.740 How the Negro slaves were treated may be gauged by the diary of the aforementioned William Byrd II, who felt himself to be a kindly master and often invade against brutes who mistreat their slaves. 80 00:11:06.740 --> 00:11:12.740 Typical examples of this kindly treatment were entered in his diary. 81 00:11:12.740 --> 00:11:22.940 2-8-09 Jenny and Eugene were whipped 5-13-09 Mrs. Byrd whips the nurse 82 00:11:22.940 --> 00:11:31.620 6-10-09 Eugene, a child, was whipped for running away and had the bit put on him 83 00:11:31.620 --> 00:11:44.300 11.30.09. Jenny and Eugene were whipped 12.16.09. Eugene was whipped for doing nothing yesterday 84 00:11:44.300 --> 00:11:53.060 4.17.10. Bird helped to investigate. Slaves tried for high treason. Two were hanged 85 00:11:53.060 --> 00:12:01.060 7.1.10. The Negro woman ran away again with the bit in her mouth. 86 00:12:01.060 --> 00:12:08.060 7.15.10. My wife, against my will, caused little Jenny to be burned with a hot iron. 87 00:12:08.060 --> 00:12:14.900 8.22.10. I had a severe quarrel with little Jenny and beat her too much, for which I was 88 00:12:14.900 --> 00:12:15.900 sorry. 89 00:12:15.900 --> 00:12:22.980 1.22.11. A slave pretends to be sick. I put a branding iron on the place he claimed 90 00:12:22.980 --> 00:12:26.260 of and put the bit on him. 91 00:12:26.260 --> 00:12:32.340 It is pointless to criticize such passages as only selected instances of cruel treatment 92 00:12:32.340 --> 00:12:38.900 counterbalanced by acts of kindness by bird and other planters toward their slaves. 93 00:12:38.900 --> 00:12:45.460 For the point is not only that the slave system was one where such acts could take place. 94 00:12:45.460 --> 00:12:51.020 The point is that threats of brutality underlay the whole relationship. 95 00:12:51.020 --> 00:12:57.140 For the essence of slavery is that human beings, with their inherent freedom of will, with 96 00:12:57.140 --> 00:13:05.100 individual desires and convictions and purposes, are used as capital, as tools for the benefit 97 00:13:05.100 --> 00:13:11.420 of their master. The slave is therefore habitually forced into types and degrees of work that 98 00:13:11.420 --> 00:13:17.740 he would not have freely undertaken. By necessity, therefore, the bit and the lash become the 99 00:13:17.740 --> 00:13:21.740 The Myth of the Kindly Master 100 00:13:21.740 --> 00:13:27.740 camouflages the inherent brutality and savagery of the slave system. 101 00:13:27.740 --> 00:13:33.740 One historical myth holds that since the slaves were their masters' capital, 102 00:13:33.740 --> 00:13:38.740 the masters' economic self-interest dictated kindly treatment of their property. 103 00:13:38.740 --> 00:13:44.740 But again, the masters always had to make sure that the property was really theirs, 104 00:13:44.740 --> 00:13:54.740 and for this systematic brutality was needed to turn labor from natural into coerced channels for the benefit of the master. 105 00:13:54.740 --> 00:13:58.740 And second, what of property that had outlived its usefulness? 106 00:13:58.740 --> 00:14:02.740 Of capital that no longer promised a return to the master? 107 00:14:02.740 --> 00:14:08.740 Of slaves too old or too ill to continue earning their masters a return? 108 00:14:08.740 --> 00:14:18.740 What sort of treatment did the economic self-interest of the master dictate for slaves who could no longer repay the cost of their subsistence? 109 00:14:18.740 --> 00:14:33.740 Slaves resisted their plight in many ways, ranging from such non-violent methods as work slowdowns, feigning illness and flight, to sabotage, arson and outright insurrection. 110 00:14:33.740 --> 00:14:40.540 Insurrection. Insurrections were always doomed to failure, outnumbered as the slaves were 111 00:14:40.540 --> 00:14:47.540 in the population, and yet the slave revolts appeared and reappeared. There were considerable 112 00:14:47.540 --> 00:14:59.020 slave plots in Virginia in 1687, 1709 and 10, 1722 and 23, and 1730. A joint conspiracy 113 00:14:59.020 --> 00:15:15.020 The conspiracy of great numbers of Negro and Indian slaves in Surrey and Isle of Wight counties was suppressed in 1709 and another Negro slave conspiracy crushed in Surrey County the following year. 114 00:15:15.020 --> 00:15:21.020 The slave who betrayed his fellows was granted his freedom by the Grateful Master. 115 00:15:21.020 --> 00:15:28.020 The 1730 uprising occurred in five counties of Virginia and centered on the town of Williamsburg. 116 00:15:28.020 --> 00:15:34.020 A few weeks before the insurrection, several suspected slaves were arrested and whipped. 117 00:15:34.020 --> 00:15:41.020 An insurrection was then planned for the future, but was betrayed and the leaders executed. 118 00:15:41.020 --> 00:15:46.620 Joint flight by slaves and servants was also common during the 17th century, as well as 119 00:15:46.620 --> 00:15:50.420 joint participation in plots and uprisings. 120 00:15:50.420 --> 00:15:56.740 In 1663, Negro slaves and white indentured servants in Virginia plotted an extensive 121 00:15:56.740 --> 00:16:01.880 slave revolt and a number of the rebels were executed. 122 00:16:01.880 --> 00:16:07.860 The colonist appointed the day as one of prayer and thanksgiving for being spared the revolt. 123 00:16:07.860 --> 00:16:14.620 Neither slave nor indentured servant was permitted to marry without the master's consent, yet 124 00:16:14.620 --> 00:16:20.100 there is record of frequent cohabitation despite prohibitory laws. 125 00:16:20.100 --> 00:16:25.100 It has been maintained in mitigation of the brutality of the American slave system that 126 00:16:25.100 --> 00:16:32.860 The Negroes were purchased from African chieftains who had enslaved them there. 127 00:16:32.860 --> 00:16:39.500 It is true that the slaves were also slaves in Africa, but it is also true that African 128 00:16:39.500 --> 00:16:45.900 slavery never envisioned the vast scope, the massive dragooning of forced labor that marked 129 00:16:45.900 --> 00:16:48.460 American plantation slavery. 130 00:16:48.460 --> 00:16:53.820 Furthermore, the existence of a ready white market for slaves greatly expanded the extent 131 00:16:53.820 --> 00:16:59.860 of Slavery in Africa, as well as the intensity of the inter-tribal wars through which slavery 132 00:16:59.860 --> 00:17:07.180 came about. As is usually the case on the market, demand stimulated supply. Moreover, 133 00:17:07.180 --> 00:17:13.080 African slavery did not include transportation under such monstrous conditions that a large 134 00:17:13.080 --> 00:17:19.820 percentage could not survive, or the brutal seasoning process in a West Indies way station 135 00:17:19.820 --> 00:17:26.540 to make sure that only those fit for slave conditions survived, or the continual, deliberate 136 00:17:26.540 --> 00:17:31.100 breaking up of slave families that prevailed in the colonies. 137 00:17:31.100 --> 00:17:37.340 From the earliest opening of the New World, African slaves were imported as forced labor 138 00:17:37.340 --> 00:17:45.800 to make possible the working of large plantations, which, as we have seen, would have been uneconomic 139 00:17:45.800 --> 00:17:52.060 If they had had to rely, as did other producers, on free and voluntary labor. 140 00:17:52.060 --> 00:17:58.820 In Latin America, from the 16th century on, Negro slavery was used for large sugar plantations 141 00:17:58.820 --> 00:18:04.260 concentrated in the West Indies and on the North Coast of South America. 142 00:18:04.260 --> 00:18:11.620 It has been estimated that a total of 900,000 Negro slaves were imported into the New World 143 00:18:11.620 --> 00:18:20.500 in the 16th century and two and three quarter million in the 17th century. Over the 17th 144 00:18:20.500 --> 00:18:28.100 and 18th centuries, only about one-fifteenth of the total Negro imports into the New World 145 00:18:28.100 --> 00:18:34.260 arrived in the territory of what is now the United States. That the slaves fared even 146 00:18:34.260 --> 00:18:40.400 worse in the Latin American colonies is seen by the far higher death rate there than in 147 00:18:40.400 --> 00:18:47.160 in North America. Negros came into use as slaves instead of the indigenous American 148 00:18:47.160 --> 00:18:54.040 Indians because a. the Negros proved more adaptable to the onerous working conditions 149 00:18:54.040 --> 00:19:03.120 of slavery. Enslaved Indians tended, as in the Caribbean, to die out. b. it was easier 150 00:19:03.120 --> 00:19:11.320 to buy existing slaves from African chieftains than to enslave a race anew and see of the 151 00:19:11.320 --> 00:19:18.160 great moral and spiritual influence of Father Bartolomé de Las Casas in Spanish America, 152 00:19:18.160 --> 00:19:25.120 who in the mid-16th century invade against the enslavement of the American Indians. Spanish 153 00:19:25.120 --> 00:19:32.160 consciences were never agitated over Negro slavery as they were over Indian. Even Las 154 00:19:32.160 --> 00:19:38.400 Las Casas himself owned several negro-slaves for many years. Indeed, early in his career, 155 00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:45.680 Las Casas advocated the introduction of negro-slaves to relieve the pressure on the Indians, but 156 00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:52.160 he eventually came to repudiate the slavery of both races. In the seventeenth century, 157 00:19:52.160 --> 00:19:59.240 two Spanish Jesuits, Alonso de Sandoval and Pedro Claver, were conspicuous in trying to 158 00:19:59.240 --> 00:20:07.960 to help the Negro slaves, but neither attacked the institution of Negro slavery as un-Christian. 159 00:20:07.960 --> 00:20:13.040 Undoubtedly one reason for the different treatment of the two races was the general conviction 160 00:20:13.040 --> 00:20:18.360 among Europeans of the inherent inferiority of the Negro race. 161 00:20:18.360 --> 00:20:24.240 Thus, the same Montesquieu who had scoffed at those Spaniards who called the American 162 00:20:24.240 --> 00:20:32.240 Indians Barbarians suggested that the African Negro was the embodiment of Aristotle's natural 163 00:20:32.240 --> 00:20:39.240 slave, and even the environmental determinist David Hume suspected the Negroes to be naturally 164 00:20:39.240 --> 00:20:41.200 inferior to the whites. 165 00:20:41.200 --> 00:20:47.560 There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even an individual 166 00:20:47.560 --> 00:20:55.400 eminent either in action or speculation, no ingenious manufacturers amongst them, no arts, 167 00:20:55.400 --> 00:21:02.480 no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarian of the whites have still something 168 00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:09.320 eminent about them. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries 169 00:21:09.320 --> 00:21:15.600 in the Middle Ages if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds 170 00:21:15.600 --> 00:21:17.800 of men. 171 00:21:17.800 --> 00:21:22.360 Contrary to the views of those writers who maintained that Negroes and whites enjoyed 172 00:21:22.360 --> 00:21:29.040 equal rights as indentured servants in Virginia until the 1660s, after which the Negroes were 173 00:21:29.040 --> 00:21:35.680 gradually enslaved, evidence seems clear that from the beginning many Negroes were slaves 174 00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:40.960 and were treated far more harshly than were white indentured servants. 175 00:21:40.960 --> 00:21:47.320 No white man, for example, was ever enslaved into perpetuity, lifetime service for the 176 00:21:47.320 --> 00:21:52.640 slave and for his descendants in any English colony. 177 00:21:52.640 --> 00:21:59.720 The fact there were no slave statutes in Virginia until 1660 simply reflected the small number 178 00:21:59.720 --> 00:22:03.840 of Negroes in the colony before that date. 179 00:22:03.840 --> 00:22:10.960 Jordan cites many evidences of Negro slavery, including court sentences, records of Negroes, 180 00:22:10.960 --> 00:22:19.480 executions of wills, comparative sale prices of Negro and white servants, dating from 1640, 181 00:22:19.480 --> 00:22:25.400 before which time the number of Negroes in Virginia was negligible. 182 00:22:25.400 --> 00:22:31.160 From a very early date, owned Negroes were worked as field hands, whereas white bond 183 00:22:31.160 --> 00:22:37.160 and also from an early date, Negroes in particular were denied any right to bear arms. 184 00:22:37.160 --> 00:22:44.160 An especially striking illustration of this racism pervading Virginia from the earliest days 185 00:22:44.160 --> 00:22:49.160 was the harsh prohibition against any sexual union of the races. 186 00:22:49.160 --> 00:22:57.160 As early as 1630, a Virginia court ordered Hugh Davis to be soundly whipped before an assembly of Negroes 187 00:22:57.160 --> 00:23:02.980 to be soundly whipped before an assembly of Negroes and others for abusing himself to 188 00:23:02.980 --> 00:23:11.980 the dishonor of God and shame of Christians by defiling his body in line with a Negro. 189 00:23:11.980 --> 00:23:21.340 By the early 1660s, the colonial government outlawed miscegenation and interracial fornication. 190 00:23:21.340 --> 00:23:30.340 When Virginia prohibited all interracial unions in 1691, the assembly bitterly denounced miscegenation 191 00:23:30.340 --> 00:23:38.000 as that abominable mixture and spurious issue. Spurious in colonial legislation meant not 192 00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:46.280 simply illegitimate, but specifically the children of interracial unions. Other regulations 193 00:23:46.280 --> 00:23:55.280 and a little later included one that forbade any slave from leaving a plantation without a pass from his master. 194 00:23:55.280 --> 00:24:01.280 Another decreed that conversion to Christianity would not set a slave free, 195 00:24:01.280 --> 00:24:09.280 a fact which violated a European tradition that only heathens, not Christians, might be reduced to slavery. 196 00:24:09.280 --> 00:24:20.280 By the end of the seventeenth century, the growing Virginia colony had emerged from its tiny and precarious beginnings with a definite social structure. 197 00:24:20.280 --> 00:24:31.280 This society may be termed partly feudal. On the one hand, Virginia, with its abundance of new land, was spared the complete feudal mold of the English homeland. 198 00:24:31.280 --> 00:24:45.280 The Virginia Company was interested in promoting settlement, and most grantees, such as individual settlers and former indentured servants, were interested in settling the land for themselves. 199 00:24:45.280 --> 00:24:54.280 As a result, there developed a multitude of independent yeoman settlers, particularly in the less choice upcountry lands. 200 00:24:54.280 --> 00:25:01.080 Also, the feudal quit-rent system never took hold in Virginia. The settlers were charged 201 00:25:01.080 --> 00:25:07.560 quit-rents by the colony or by the large grantees who, instead of allowing settlers to own the 202 00:25:07.560 --> 00:25:14.000 land or selling the land to them, insisted on charging and trying to collect annual quit-rents 203 00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:20.640 as overlords of the land area. But while Virginia was able to avoid many crucial features of 204 00:25:20.640 --> 00:25:27.600 and Feudalism, it introduced an important feudal feature into its method of distributing land, 205 00:25:27.600 --> 00:25:35.600 especially the granting of large tracts of choice tied water river land to favorite and wealthy planters. 206 00:25:35.600 --> 00:25:42.600 These large land grants would have early dissolved into ownership by the individual settlers, 207 00:25:42.600 --> 00:25:50.600 were it not for the regime of forced labor, which made the large tobacco plantations profitable. 208 00:25:50.600 --> 00:25:56.040 Furthermore, the original settlers, those who brought the new land into use, were in 209 00:25:56.040 --> 00:26:03.040 this case the slaves and bond servants themselves. So it might well be said that the planters 210 00:26:03.040 --> 00:26:12.040 were in an arbitrary quasi-feudal relation to their land, even apart from the large grants. 211 00:26:12.040 --> 00:26:17.720 Temporary indentured service, both voluntary and compulsory, and the more permanent Negro 212 00:26:17.720 --> 00:26:24.260 Primal slavery formed the base of exploited labor upon which was erected a structure of 213 00:26:24.260 --> 00:26:32.060 oligarchic rule by the large tobacco planters. The continuance of the large land tracts was 214 00:26:32.060 --> 00:26:39.140 also buttressed by the totally feudal laws of entail and primogenitor, which obtained 215 00:26:39.140 --> 00:26:44.920 at least formally in Virginia and most of the other colonies. Primogenitor compelled 216 00:26:44.920 --> 00:26:51.400 of the undivided passing on of land to the eldest son and entail prevented the land from 217 00:26:51.400 --> 00:26:59.160 being alienated even voluntarily from the family domain. However, Primogenitor did not 218 00:26:59.160 --> 00:27:05.760 exert its fully restrictive effect, for the planters generally managed to elude it and 219 00:27:05.760 --> 00:27:12.200 to divide their estate among their younger children as well. Hence, Virginia land partly 220 00:27:12.200 --> 00:27:23.760 Promojenitor and entail never really took hold in Virginia, because the abundance of 221 00:27:23.760 --> 00:27:32.040 cheap land made labor, and hence the coerced supply of slaves, the key factor in production. 222 00:27:32.040 --> 00:27:37.480 More land could always be acquired, hence there was no need to restrict inheritance 223 00:27:37.480 --> 00:27:43.000 to the Eldest Son. Furthermore, the rapid exhaustion of tobacco land by the current 224 00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:49.420 methods of cultivation required the planters to be mobile and to be ready to strike out 225 00:27:49.420 --> 00:27:58.420 after new plantations. The need for such mobility militated against the fixity of landed estates 226 00:27:58.420 --> 00:28:05.160 that marked the rigid feudal system of land inheritance prevailing in England. Overall, 227 00:28:05.160 --> 00:28:13.000 The wealth and status of Virginia's large planters was far more precarious and less entrenched 228 00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:17.600 than were those of their land-owning counterparts in England.