WEBVTT NOTE Preface 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.720 Conceived in Liberty, Volume 1, A New Land, A New People, The American Colonies in the 2 00:00:07.720 --> 00:00:12.800 Seventeenth Century, by Murray N. Rothbard. 3 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:18.760 Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people 4 00:00:18.760 --> 00:00:24.720 or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of 5 00:00:24.720 --> 00:00:31.840 War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to 6 00:00:31.840 --> 00:00:38.360 the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence. 7 00:00:38.360 --> 00:00:43.120 John Locke, Preface What? 8 00:00:43.120 --> 00:00:45.920 Another American history book? 9 00:00:45.920 --> 00:00:51.120 The reader may be pardoned for wondering about the point of another addition to the seemingly 10 00:00:51.120 --> 00:00:56.320 and the inexhaustible flow of books and text on American history. 11 00:00:56.320 --> 00:01:02.060 One problem, as pointed out in the bibliographical essay at the end of this volume, is that 12 00:01:02.060 --> 00:01:08.860 the survey studies of American history have squeezed out the actual stuff of history, 13 00:01:08.860 --> 00:01:13.520 the narrative facts of the important events of the past. 14 00:01:13.520 --> 00:01:19.100 With the true data of history squeezed out, what we have left are compressed summaries 15 00:01:19.100 --> 00:01:24.300 and the Historian's Interpretations and Judgments of the Data. 16 00:01:24.300 --> 00:01:27.940 There is nothing wrong with the Historian's having such judgments. 17 00:01:27.940 --> 00:01:34.620 Indeed, without them, history would be a meaningless and giant almanac listing dates and events 18 00:01:34.620 --> 00:01:37.340 with no causal links. 19 00:01:37.340 --> 00:01:42.700 But without the narrative facts, the reader is deprived of the data from which he can 20 00:01:42.700 --> 00:01:50.540 Man himself judged the historian's interpretations and evolved interpretations of his own. 21 00:01:50.540 --> 00:01:57.960 A major point of this and succeeding volumes is to put back the historical narrative into 22 00:01:57.960 --> 00:02:00.660 American history. 23 00:02:00.660 --> 00:02:06.900 Facts of course must be selected and ordered in accordance with judgments of importance, 24 00:02:06.900 --> 00:02:14.220 and such judgments are necessarily tied into the historian's basic world outlook. 25 00:02:14.220 --> 00:02:20.600 My own basic perspective on the history of man and of fortiori, on the history of the 26 00:02:20.600 --> 00:02:27.900 United States, is to place central importance on the great conflict which is eternally waged 27 00:02:27.900 --> 00:02:31.660 between liberty and power. 28 00:02:31.660 --> 00:02:36.740 A conflict, by the way, which was seen with crystal clarity by the American revolutionaries 29 00:02:36.740 --> 00:03:05.740 I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself, or with Lord Acton as the highest political good, but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes, moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. 30 00:03:05.740 --> 00:03:15.740 Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilized life, but liberty has always been threatened by the encroachments of power, 31 00:03:15.740 --> 00:03:24.740 power which seeks to suppress, control, cripple, tax and exploit the fruits of liberty in production. 32 00:03:24.740 --> 00:03:36.740 Power, then, the enemy of liberty, is consequently the enemy of all the other goods and fruits of civilization that mankind holds dear. 33 00:03:36.740 --> 00:03:47.740 And power is almost always centered in and focused on that central repository of power and violence, the state. 34 00:03:47.740 --> 00:04:07.740 With Albert J. Nock, the 20th century American political philosopher, I see history as centrally a race and conflict between social power, the productive consequence of voluntary interactions among men, and state power. 35 00:04:07.740 --> 00:04:20.740 In those eras of history when liberty, social power, has managed to race ahead of state power and control, the country and even mankind have flourished. 36 00:04:20.740 --> 00:04:30.740 In those eras when state power has managed to catch up with or surpass social power, mankind suffers and declines. 37 00:04:30.740 --> 00:04:38.300 For decades, American historians have quarreled about conflict or consensus as the guiding 38 00:04:38.300 --> 00:04:41.020 leitmotif of the American past. 39 00:04:41.020 --> 00:04:47.860 Clearly, I belong in the conflict rather than the consensus camp, with the proviso that 40 00:04:47.860 --> 00:04:58.100 I see the central conflict as not between classes, social or economic, or between ideologies, 41 00:04:58.100 --> 00:05:04.100 What Between Power and Liberty, State and Society? 42 00:05:04.100 --> 00:05:10.620 The social or ideological conflicts have been ancillary to the central one which concerns 43 00:05:10.620 --> 00:05:17.620 who will control the state and what power will the state exercise over the citizenry. 44 00:05:18.660 --> 00:05:25.500 To take a common example from American history, there are, in my view, no inherent conflicts 45 00:05:25.500 --> 00:05:29.500 The Interest of Merchants and Farmers in the Free Market 46 00:05:29.500 --> 00:05:41.500 On the contrary, in the market, the sphere of liberty, the interest of merchants and farmers are harmonious with each buying and selling the products of the other. 47 00:05:41.500 --> 00:05:52.500 Conflicts arise only through the attempts of various groups of merchants or farmers to seize control over the machinery of government 48 00:05:52.500 --> 00:05:57.500 and to use it to privilege themselves at the expense of the others. 49 00:05:57.500 --> 00:06:05.500 It is only through and by state action that class conflicts can ever arise. 50 00:06:05.500 --> 00:06:14.500 This volume is the story of the seventeenth century, the first century of the English colonies in North America. 51 00:06:14.500 --> 00:06:44.500 It was the century when all but one, Georgia, of the original thirteen colonies were founded, in all their disparity and diversity. Remarkably enough, this critical period is only brusquely treated in the current history textbooks, while the motives of the early colonists varied greatly and their fortunes changed in a shifting and fluctuating kaleidoscope of liberty and power. 52 00:06:44.500 --> 00:06:52.540 Power. All the colonists soon began to take on an air of freedom unknown in the mother 53 00:06:52.540 --> 00:07:01.060 country. Remote from central control, pioneering in land of relatively few people spread over 54 00:07:01.060 --> 00:07:08.700 a space far vaster than any other they had ever known, the contentious colonists proved 55 00:07:08.700 --> 00:07:22.700 Attempts at imposing feudalism on, or rather transferring it to, the American colonies had all failed. 56 00:07:22.700 --> 00:07:29.700 By the end of the century, the British forging of royal colonies, all with similar political structures, 57 00:07:29.700 --> 00:07:36.620 could occur only with the fearsome knowledge that the colonists could and would rebel against 58 00:07:36.620 --> 00:07:42.260 unwanted power at the drop of a tax or quick rent. 59 00:07:42.260 --> 00:07:49.100 If the late 17th century Virginia rebel Nathaniel Bacon was not exactly the torch bearer of 60 00:07:49.100 --> 00:07:55.620 the revolution, then this term might apply to the other feisty and rambunctious Americans 61 00:07:55.620 --> 00:07:57.940 throughout the colonies. 62 00:07:57.940 --> 00:08:03.380 My intellectual debts for this volume were simply too numerous to mention, especially 63 00:08:03.380 --> 00:08:09.440 since an historian must bring to bear not only his own discipline but also his knowledge 64 00:08:09.440 --> 00:08:16.740 of economics, of political philosophy, and of mankind in general. Here I would just like 65 00:08:16.740 --> 00:08:23.740 to mention, for his methodology of history, Ludwig von Mises, especially his much neglected 66 00:08:23.740 --> 00:08:31.020 Volume, Theory and History, and Lord Acton for his emphasis on the grievously overlooked 67 00:08:31.020 --> 00:08:38.140 moral dimension, for his political philosophy and general outlook on American history, Albert 68 00:08:38.140 --> 00:08:43.380 J. Nock, particularly his Our Enemy the State. 69 00:08:43.380 --> 00:08:47.540 As for my personal debts, I am happy to be more specific. 70 00:08:47.540 --> 00:08:52.380 This volume would never have been attempted, much less seen the light of day, without the 71 00:08:52.380 --> 00:08:59.260 Inspiration, Encouragement and Support provided by Kenneth S. Templeton Jr., now of the Institute 72 00:08:59.260 --> 00:09:04.900 for Humane Studies, Menlo Park, California. I hope that he won't be overly disappointed 73 00:09:04.900 --> 00:09:11.460 with this in later volumes. I am grateful to the Foundation for Foreign Affairs, Chicago, 74 00:09:11.460 --> 00:09:17.700 for enabling me to work full-time on the volumes, and to Dr. David S. Collier, of the Foundation 75 00:09:17.700 --> 00:09:24.260 for His Help and Efficient Administration. Others who have helped with ideas and aid 76 00:09:24.260 --> 00:09:31.520 in various stages of the manuscript are Charles G. Koch and George Pearson of Wichita, Kansas 77 00:09:31.520 --> 00:09:38.680 and Robert D. Kemphart of Human Events, Washington, D.C. Historians Robert E. Brown of Michigan 78 00:09:38.680 --> 00:09:44.580 State University and Forrest MacDonald of Wayne State University were kind enough to 79 00:09:44.580 --> 00:09:50.340 to read the entire manuscript and offer helpful suggestions even though it soon became clear 80 00:09:50.340 --> 00:09:57.640 to them and to myself that our fundamental disagreements tended to outweigh our agreements. 81 00:09:57.640 --> 00:10:03.620 To my first mentor in the field of American history, Joseph Dorfman, now professor emeritus 82 00:10:03.620 --> 00:10:09.540 at Columbia University, I owe in particular the rigorous training that is typical of that 83 00:10:09.540 --> 00:10:20.700 But my greatest debt is to Leonard P. Legio of City College, CUNY, whose truly phenomenal 84 00:10:20.700 --> 00:10:27.500 breadth of knowledge and insight into numerous fields and areas of history are an inspiration 85 00:10:27.500 --> 00:10:29.560 to all who know him. 86 00:10:29.560 --> 00:10:35.640 Legio's help was indispensable in the writing of this volume, in particular his knowledge 87 00:10:35.640 --> 00:10:38.760 of the European background. 88 00:10:38.760 --> 00:10:44.240 Over the years in which this manuscript took shape, I was fortunate in having several congenial 89 00:10:44.240 --> 00:10:51.280 typists, in particular, Willette Murphy-Closner of Los Angeles, and the now distinguished 90 00:10:51.280 --> 00:10:58.960 intellectual historian and social philosopher, Dr. Ronald Hamoway of the University of Alberta. 91 00:10:58.960 --> 00:11:04.420 I would particularly like to thank Mrs. Phyllis Wampler of Wichita, Kansas, for her heroic 92 00:11:04.420 --> 00:11:09.820 Book Service of Typing the Entire Manuscript in its Final Form. 93 00:11:09.820 --> 00:11:14.780 The Responsibility for the Final Product is, of course, wholly my own. 94 00:11:14.780 --> 00:11:19.060 Murray N. Rothbard, December 1973.