THE PARTITION OF THE NEW WORLD
_The time approacheth and now is, that we of England may share and
part stakes, both with the Spaniard and the Portingale, in part of
America, and other regions yet undiscovered._ RICHARD HAKLUYT.
I
No feeling of exultation accompanied the discovery of America. The
Portuguese alone were well content to see rising on the western horizon
a new continent blocking the way to India. It was more than thirty years
before the Spanish explorers found the rich cities which Columbus
sought; and a century after the voyage of Magellan the vain hope of
reaching the South Sea by some middle or northwest passage still
inspired the activities of French and English adventurers. In 1534
Verrazano, in the service of Francis I, skirted the coast from Cape Fear
to Sandy Hook seeking the way to China. Fifty years later Sir Humphrey
Gilbert's _Discourse of a North West Passage_ led to the voyages of
Frobisher and Davis. Undismayed by their failures, the excellent Hakluyt
assured the queen in 1584 that the passage to "Cathaio may easily,
quickly, and perfectly be searched oute as well by river and overlande
as by sea." And as late as 1669, when Virginia had been settled for half
a century, Sir William Berkeley still had faith "to make an essay to doe
his Majestie a memorable service, which was to goe to find out the East
India Sea."
Yet before the middle of the sixteenth century America took on a value
of its own, and ceased to be regarded as a mere obstacle, in the path of
trade. After the conquest of Mexico and Peru, the New World, found to be
rich in silver and gold, was thought to be a new Indies indeed. To the
idealizing mind of the age America already spelled opportunity; and in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the maritime states of Europe
established their spheres of influence there--still seeking, through its
trackless forests, a waterway to the South Sea, still seeking gold,
falling back at last upon the prosaic business of colonization and the
exploitation of its less attractive resources. The Spaniards found no
lack of treasure, but in North America gold ever turned to ashes, and
the great South Sea receded like a mirage before every advance. Yet the
failure of many voyages to the frozen North, and of many inland
expeditions ending in disaster and death, could not quench the optimism
which the gentlemen adventurers caught from the men of the Renaissance
and bequeathed to the colonist, and which for two hundred years the
frontiersman has preserved as a priceless heritage of the New World.
When Columbus returned from his first voyage of discovery in 1493, he
brought home some gold trinkets which the Indians had readily exchanged
for glass beads. The transaction is symbolical of two centuries of South
American history. The achievements of the Conquistadores have scarcely a
parallel in the annals of conquest; but it was the desire for treasure
that led them on; and the treasure they discovered became the foundation
of the Spanish Empire. In exchange for their gold and silver, Spain
imposed upon the native races of America an enlightened despotism and
the benefits of Christian civilization.
From Hispaniola as the first center, the Spaniards soon extended their
dominion over the islands of Cuba, Porto Rico, and San Domingo, and to
the mainland of North America. Seeking gold and the fountain of
perpetual youth, Ponce de Leon explored Florida in 1513, and in 1521 and
1525 Allyon and Gomez skirted the eastern coast as far north as
Labrador. They found no fountain of youth, nor any passage to the South
Sea, nor treasure. It was twenty-five years after Columbus's first
voyage, when Velasquez reached Cozumel off the coast of Yucatan, that
the Spanish explorers first encountered a people advanced beyond
savagery, and came upon evidences of that wealth which determined the
future of their empire. Two years later Hernando Cortez, the greatest of
the Conquistadores, was given command of the expedition which ended in
the capture of Mexico and the overthrow of the Aztec power. The simple
Mexicans, who had never seen a white man, first welcomed Cortez as the
long expected Culture God, and the hapless Montezuma gathered as a
present for the invader treasure equal in present value to the sum of
six and a half million dollars. Most of this was lost in the lake during
the fatal retreat from the city; but when the conqueror returned to
Spain in 1528, he brought with him, to that very port of Palos where
Columbus had landed in 1493, three hundred thousand _pesos_[1] of gold
and fifteen hundred marks of silver.
The silver mines of Mexico were not exploited until many years later,
but the conquest gave an immense impetus to further exploration. It was
the hope of rivaling the brilliant success of Cortez that inspired those
fruitless expeditions through what is now the southern part of the
United States. Cabeza de Vaca and three companions, sole survivors of
Narvaez's ill-fated expedition to conquer an empire in Florida, wandered
for many years over the country between the Mississippi and the Gulf of
California. Picked up in 1536 by Spanish slavers, De Vaca's report of
the vast country to the north induced Mendoza, the Governor of New
Spain, to send out Friar Marcos from Mexico in 1539 to find the famous
Seven Cities. The friar found no cities, but during the next three years
the search was continued by Coronado, who penetrated as far north as the
present State of Kansas. It was also in 1539 that De Soto, who had
accompanied Pizarro in the conquest of the Incas cities, set out from
Florida in search of another Peru. After three years of untold hardship
he died of swamp fever in the region of the great river which he
discovered and in which he lies buried. The only result of all these
expeditions was to establish the claims of Spain to an immense
territory; and it was not until 1565 that the Spaniards founded, at St.
Augustine in Florida, the first permanent European settlement north of
the Gulf of Mexico.
"To the south, to the South," cried Peter Martyr, "for the riches of
the Aequinoctiall they that seek riches must go, not into the cold and
frozen north." It was a judgment justified in the event. Francisco
Pizarro, having verified the report of rich kingdoms to the south,
received in 1528 from the Emperor Charles V a commission to conquer the
country of the Incas in Peru. With reckless daring equaled only by
cunning treachery and unspeakable cruelty, the little band of
adventurers that followed Pizarro made its way to the city of Cuzaco.
The Incas were more civilized than the Aztecs, their defense less
resolute, their wealth more abounding. The ransom of Atahucellpa and the
plunder of the capital, when melted down into ingots, measured nearly
two million _pesos_ of gold. And to the south of the capital city were
the inexhaustible silver deposits of the Andes. In 1545 the Government
registered the mines of Potosi, the main source of the treasure which,
flowing in ever-increasing volume into Spain, so profoundly influenced
the history of Europe and America.
It is said of the Emperor Charles V that his eyes "sparkled with
delight" when he gazed upon the vases and ornaments wrought in solid
gold which Hernando Pizarro, returning from Peru in 1534 with the royal
fifth of the first fruits of plunder, displayed before him. Yet the
profit and the burden of the empire which Charles established in America
fell mainly to his son, Philip II. And a great revenue was as essential
to Philip as to Charles; for, although he did not succeed to the
imperial title, he aspired no less than his father to the mastery of
Europe. Circumstances seemed not unfavorable. With the close of the
Council of Trent in 1563, the policy of conciliation was at an end, the
Jesuits were in the ascendant, and the forces of the Counter-Reformation
were prepared to do battle with the heresies that disrupted Christendom.
In this death struggle the King of Spain was well suited to be the
leader of Catholicism. Crafty in method and persistent in purpose,
sincerely devout, unwavering in his loyalty to the true faith, never
doubting that God in his wisdom had singled him out as the champion of
the Church, Philip identified his will with truth and saw in the
extension of Spanish power the only hope for a restoration of European
unity and the preservation of Christian civilization. To set his house
in order by extirpating heresy and crushing political opposition was but
the prelude to the triumph of Church and State in Europe. Germany and
France were rent by dissension and civil war. England was scarcely to be
feared; without an effective army or navy, half Catholic still, governed
by a frivolous and bastard queen whose title to the throne was denied by
half her subjects, the little island kingdom could by skillful diplomacy
be restored to the true faith or by force of arms be added to the Empire
of Spain.
For an ambition so inclusive, the American revenue was essential indeed.
And in the second half of the century it reached a substantial figure.
The yearly output of the mines rose to about eleven million _pesos_ per
annum, and the amount which the king received for his share, between the
years 1560 and 1600, was probably on an average not far from one and
three quarters millions, while at the same time other sources of revenue
from America became of considerable importance. It was a goodly sum for
those days, but it was not enough for the king's needs. When Charles
abdicated, the imperial treasury was indebted in the sum of ten millions
sterling; and much of the bullion which was carried by the treasure
fleets that plied regularly between Porto Bello and Cadiz was pledged to
German or Genoese bankers before it arrived, while some of it found its
way into the pockets of corrupt officials. What remained for the king,
together with the last farthing that could be wrung from his Spanish and
Italian subjects, was still inadequate, to his far-reaching designs; and
Philip II, reputed the richest sovereign in Christendom, was often on
the verge of bankruptcy.
It was a disconcerting fact, indeed, that although Spain and Portugal
had divided the world between them, the thrifty Dutch seemed to reap the
major profits of their discoveries. Within half a century Antwerp had
risen to be the chief _entrepôt_ and financial clearing-house of western
Europe. English wool was marketed there, and there English loans were
floated. There Portuguese spice cargoes, purchased while still at sea,
were brought to be exchanged at high prices for the gold and silver that
found its way into the hands of Spain's creditors in Germany, Italy, and
France. A wealthy people were these Dutch subjects of Philip II;
subjects, yet half free, escaping his control. It was intolerable that
the Netherlands, infested with heresy, drawing their wealth from the
enemies of Spain, and from Spain itself, should not contribute their
share to the service of the empire.
To control the Netherlands and to divert the profits of Dutch trade into
the Spanish treasury was thus an essential part of Philip's policy. When
the Duke of Alva left for Brussels in 1567 he promised to make the
Netherlands self-supporting and to extort from them an annual revenue of
two million ducats. But the methods of Alva were destined to failure. He
was a better master of war than of finance, and by ruining Dutch trade
he killed the goose that laid the golden egg. The Southern Netherlands
were finally conciliated by a more skillful policy than any known to
Alva; but the city of Antwerp never recovered from the ruin which
Philip's unpaid soldiers inflicted upon it in 1576, and when the war was
over, the commercial and industrial activities which had made it
prosperous were to be found in Amsterdam in the independent Netherlands,
and in London across the Channel.
Yet if the Netherlands escaped the direct control of Philip, their
wealth might be appropriated at its source. The Portuguese were still
intrenched in the East, and Dutch prosperity was in no small part
founded on privileges granted at Lisbon. Philip's opportunity came in
1580 when a disputed succession to the throne opened the way to
intervention and the rapid conquest of Portugal. At a stroke the
Portuguese dominions in Africa and the East Indies were added to Spain's
American possessions. Throughout Europe Philip was thought to have
played a winning card; for the most desired sources of the world's
wealth were at the disposal of the Catholic king if he could but police
the sea. But so complete a monopoly was not to be endured by his rivals;
and France, Holland, and England, as a necessary prelude to their
colonizing activities in the New World and in the Old, gathered their
forces to dispute the maritime supremacy of Spain.
II
It was well understood that the power of Philip II depended upon his
American treasure, and his treasure upon his control of the sea. "The
Emperor can carry on war against me only by means of the riches which he
draws from the West Indies," cried Francis I when Verrazano brought home
some treasure taken from Spanish ships in Western waters. And Francis
Bacon expressed the belief of the age when he wrote that "money is the
principal part of the greatness of Spain; for by that they maintain
their veteran army. But in this part, of all others, is most to be
considered the ticklish and brittle state of the greatness of Spain.
Their greatness consisteth in their treasure, their treasure in the
Indies, and their Indies (if it be well weighed) are indeed but an
accession to such as are masters of the sea."
It was not for France to contest the maritime supremacy of Spain in the
sixteenth century. The wars of Francis I and Charles V bred a swarm of
corsairs who harassed Spanish trade and penetrated even to the West
Indies; but before 1559 the resources of the French Government were
mainly devoted to resisting the Hapsburgs in Europe, and after 1563 the
country was distracted by civil war. The Mediterranean proved, indeed,
an attractive field for French commercial expansion. The common enmity
of French and Turk toward the Hapsburg found expression in the
commercial treaty of 1536 between Solyman and Francis I, and in the
following half-century the "political and commercial influence of France
became predominant in the Moslem states." But in Western waters the
activity of France was slight. Without the naval strength to resist
Spain, she could not afford to offend Portugal, who was her effective
ally. Francis I interdicted expeditions to Brazil because the Portuguese
King protested, and Coligny's Huguenot colony in Florida was destroyed
by the Spaniard Menendez in 1565. Breton fishermen plied their trade off
the Grand Banks; but in this century the only French expedition having
permanent results for colonization was undertaken in 1534 and 1535 by
Jacques Cartier, who sailed up the St. Lawrence as far as Montreal, and
in the name of Francis I took possession of the country which was to be
known as New France.
The Dutch did yeoman service against the navy of Philip during the war
of independence, but the task of breaking the maritime power of Spain
fell mainly to England in the age of Elizabeth. Cabot's notable voyage
was without immediate result. Neither the frugal Henry VII, who gave
"£10 to him that found the new isle," nor his extravagant son, who was
engaged in separating England from Rome and in enriching the treasury
with the spoils of the monasteries, coveted the colonies of Spain or
greatly feared her power in Europe. But Elizabeth, seated on the throne
by precarious tenure, confronted at home and abroad by the rising
fanaticism of the Catholic reaction, found the ambition of Philip a
menace to national independence. And she knew well that Spain must be
met in the Netherlands and on the sea. Yet the task which confronted her
was one for which the naval resources of the state were inadequate, and
the politic and popular queen turned to the nation for assistance in the
hour of need.
And not in vain! For year by year the national opposition to Spain
gathered force. Products seeking markets and capital seeking investment
were increasing, while opportunities for profit abroad were diminishing.
Merchant and capitalist were everywhere confronted by the monopoly of
Spain and Portugal, and thus the maritime and commercial supremacy of
the queen's chief enemy was at once a national menace and a private
grievance. English Protestants, driven into exile in the days of "Bloody
Mary," returned in the time of Elizabeth, bringing back the spirit of
Geneva, and imbued with an uncompromising hatred of Papists which was
fanned to white heat by the Jesuit plots, supposed to be inspired by
Philip himself, against the queen's life. The rising opposition to Spain
thus took on the character of a crusade: for statesmen it was a question
of independence; for merchants a question of profits; for the people a
question of religion. And so it happened that in time of peace the ships
of Spain were regarded as fair prize. When piracy wore the cloak of
virtue there were many to venture; and the queen was ready to reward the
buccaneer for the crimes that made him a popular hero. Cautious in her
purposes, devious in her methods, too frugal and too poor to embark on
great undertakings or open hostility, Elizabeth encouraged every secret
enterprise and every private adventure which had for its object the
enrichment of her subjects at the expense of the common enemy.
John Hawkins will ever be memorable as the man who first openly
contested the double monopoly of Spain and Portugal, and taught English
merchants "how arms might signally help the expansion of trade."
Descended from seafaring ancestors, his own apprenticeship was served in
voyages to the African coast. Negroes were plentiful there, and laborers
scarce in the West Indies. Well considering that the slave trade would
insure the salvation of the benighted heathen and redound to the profit
of thrifty planters, the devout Hawkins set about serving God and mammon
for the advancement of his own fortunes and the glory of England. With
capital supplied by City merchants, three vessels were equipped; and in
1562 Hawkins sailed for Sierra Leone, where he procured by force or
purchase three hundred negroes, who were exchanged with no great
difficulty at Hispaniola for a rich cargo of merchandise. An enterprise
which netted sixty per cent profit was not to be abandoned, and in 1564
a second voyage was made, with greater profit still. But the third
voyage, in 1567, came to grief at San Juan de Ulloa, where Hawkins fell
in with the Spanish plate fleet. The fleet might have been plundered,
but the naïve Hawkins, relying in vain upon the pledged word of the
Spaniards, was treacherously attacked and his ships mostly destroyed,
while he himself barely escaped with his life.
Accompanying Hawkins on this voyage, and escaping with him from San Juan
de Ulloa, was "a certain Englishman, called Francis Drake." Reared in a
Protestant family which had felt the effects of the reaction under Queen
Mary, he had an instinctive hatred of the Roman Church, and his
experience at San Juan de Ulloa inspired him at the age of twenty with a
lifelong animosity toward all Spaniards. Renouncing the semi-peaceful
methods of Hawkins, Drake devoted his life to open privateering, never
doubting that in plundering Spanish ships he was discharging a private
debt and a public obligation. And of all the gentlemen adventurers who
made plunder respectable and raised piracy to the level of a fine art,
he was the greatest. He carried himself in the "pirate's profession with
a courtesy, magnanimity, and unfailing humanity, that gave to his story
the glamour of romance." No other name struck such fear into Spanish
hearts, or so raised in English ones the spirit of adventure and of
contempt for the queen's enemies. He is known in Spanish annals as "the
Dragon," and before he died the maritime power of Spain had passed its
zenith.
Three years after the disaster at San Juan de Ulloa the trend of events
favored the bolder course. In 1570 the Pope's Bull deposing Elizabeth
from the English throne was nailed to Lambeth Palace; and in 1572, not
without the tacit approval of the Government, and backed by the rising
national hostility to Spain, Drake set out for the Indies, where he
operated for two years, planning attacks on Cartagena and Nombre de
Dios, or rifling the treasure trains as they came overland from Panama.
Henceforth the watchfulness of Spain was redoubled in the West Indies;
but the Pacific, which Drake had seen from the Peak of Darien, was still
regarded as a safe inland lake. Into the Pacific, with its coasts
unprotected and its ships scarcely armed at all, he therefore determined
to venture. Authorized by the queen and with Walsingham's approval, he
set out in 1577. Quelling a mutiny as his great predecessor had done at
St. Julian, he passed the Straits of Magellan, and sailed northward
along the coast, harming no man, but taking every man's treasure until
the ship was full. He would have returned home by some northeast
passage, but failed to find any, and so at last crossed the Pacific--the
second to circumnavigate the globe. We are told that the queen "received
him graciously, and laid up the treasure he brought by way of
sequestration, that it might be forthcoming if the Spaniards should
demand it."
It is not recorded that the treasure was ever restored, but it is known
that Drake was knighted by the queen on the deck of the Golden Hind. And
it is recorded that in 1588 Philip prepared the Invincible Armada, which
appeared in the English Channel to demand the submission of England. It
was a decisive moment in the history of America; and it is doubtful
what the issue might have been had the queen been dependent upon the
royal navy alone. But round the twenty-nine ships of the royal navy
there gathered more than twice as many of those privateers who in a
generation of conflict had become past masters in dealing with the ships
of Spain. Manned by sailors seasoned to every hardship, equipped with
the best cannon of the day, rapid and dexterous in movement, the English
ships, outnumbered though they were, sailed round and round the unwieldy
galleons of the Armada, crippling them by broadsides and destroying them
with fire-ships, without ever being brought to close quarters. And so
the "Invincible navy neither took any one barque of ours, neither yet
once offered to land but after they had been well beaten and chased,
made a long and sorry perambulation about the northern seas, ennobling
many coasts with wrecks of noble ships; and so returned home with
greater derision than they set forth with expectation."
The defeat of the Armada was followed by a carnival of conquest. Within
three years eight hundred Spanish ships were taken; and in 1596, shortly
after the deaths of Drake and Hawkins, Sir Thomas Howard of Effingham
captured the city of Cadiz and returned home with ships full of plunder.
It was the last great operation of the war, and the beginning of the end
of the Spanish Empire; for the way was now clear for the maritime and
colonial expansion of her rivals. The Dutch, with independence assured,
organized those India companies through which they ousted the Portuguese
from the spice islands, and established, at the mouth of the river
discovered by Henry Hudson in 1608, the colony of New Netherland in
America. With the civil wars of religion happily closed, France was free
to complete the work of Cartier. In 1603 Champlain, in the service of a
St. Malo merchant, sailed up the St. Lawrence to Montreal; and five
years later he established a post on the Heights of Quebec, destined to
be the capital of the great inland empire of New France. And England,
whose ships now sailed the sea unchallenged, began to build a more
lasting empire in America and the Orient. It was in 1607 that Virginia
was planted; and three years later Captain Hippon, in the service of the
East India Company, established an English factory at Masulipatam in the
Bay of Bengal.
III
A notable result of the struggle with Spain was the growth of an active
interest in colonization. Knowledge of the wide world, which Richard
Eden had freshly revealed to Englishmen in the reign of Mary, was
greatly enriched by the voyages of the Elizabethan seamen. John Davis,
returning from the Far East, made known "as well the King of Portugal
his places of Trade and Strength, as of the interchangeable trades of
the eastern Nations among themselves"; and Cavendish, who was the third
to "circompasse the whole globe of the world," brought to the queen
"certain intelligence of all the rich places that ever were known or
discovered by any Christian." By the side of Drake and his followers,
whose ambition it was to destroy the power of Spain in the New World,
stand the brilliant Gentlemen Adventurers, who labored to plant there
the power of England: Frobisher and Davis, the gentle and heroic
Gilbert, and Raleigh, poet and statesman, the very perfect knight-errant
of his age, whose faith in America survived many failures and is
registered in words as prophetic as they are pathetic--"I shall yet live
to see it an English nation." The adventurous and pioneering spirit of
the time is forever preserved in that true epic of the Elizabethan age,
the incomparable _Voyages_ of Richard Hakluyt; and in the _Discourse on
Western Plantinge_, which he wrote at the request of Raleigh for the
enlightenment of the queen, as well as in the general literature of the
next fifty years, are revealed to us the ideas, mostly mistaken and
often naïve, which gave to America the glamour of a promised land.
Of the motives which inspired the colonizing activity of England at the
close of the sixteenth century, the desire to spread the Protestant
religion was no unreal one. The war for independence, having taken on
the character of a crusade, had touched with emotional fervor the
Englishman's loyalty to the national faith. Religion became a national
asset when it was thought to be served by an extension of the queen's
domain. The pride of patriotism, as well as the sense of duty, was
stirred by the fact that whereas Spanish Papists had been "the
converters of many millions of infidells," English Protestants had done
nothing for "thinlargement of the Gospell of Christe." It was felt to be
the duty of Englishmen to take on this "white man's burden," and for the
sake of the true faith plant "one or two colonies upon that fyrme,
learn the language of the people, and so with discretion and myldeness
Instill into their purged myndes the swete and lively liquor of the
Gospell."
Yet the religious motive was buttressed by others more material and less
disinterested. Until well into the seventeenth century, when much bitter
experience had proved the contrary, America was still thought to be a
land of wealth easily acquired--"as great a profit to the Realme of
England as the Indies to the King of Spain." Many credible persons, said
Hakluyt, had found in that country "golde, silver, copper, leade, and
pearles in aboundaunce; precious stones, as turquoises and emaurldes;
spices and drugges; silke worms fairer than ours of Europe; white and
red cotton; infinite multitude of all kindes of fowles; excellent vines
in many places for wines; the soyle apte to beare olyves for oyle; all
kinds of fruites; all kindes of oderiferous trees and date trees,
cypresses, and cedars; and in New founde lande aboundaunce of pines and
firr trees to make mastes and deale boards, pitch, tar, rosen; hempe for
cables and cordage; and upp within the Graunde Baye, excedinge quantitie
of all kinde of precious furres." So that one may "well and truly
conclude with reason and authoritie, that all the commodities of our
olde decayed and daungerous trades in all Europe, Africa, and Asia
haunted by us, may in short space and for little or nothinge, in a
manner be had in that part of America which lieth betweene 30 and 60
degrees of northerly latitude."
Little wonder that the New World of America, thus portrayed in
heightened colors, proved attractive to gentlemen adventurers dreaming
of personal dominion, to merchants intent upon profit, or to kings
seeking revenue and prestige. The colonizing activities of the time were
but incidental to the larger movement of commercial expansion and the
extension of political power. The founding of the East India Company in
1600 and of the Virginia Company in 1609 were but two expressions of the
same purpose: America was but one of the two Indies whose exploitation
would redound at once to private advantage and to national welfare. That
the individual and the state had a common and inseparable interest in
the expansion of commerce and the settlement of colonies is, indeed, one
of the most characteristic and significant ideas of the time:
characteristic, since it pervades the literature of the period;
significant, because it is an index of those profound political and
economic influences that were transforming the old into the new Europe.
For at the opening of the seventeenth century the old order was fast
disappearing. The ideal of a single Christian community, so long
symbolized by the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy Catholic Church, was
losing its hold upon the minds of men as the result of the
differentiation of European culture on lines of racial or national
distinction. In politics this movement was embodied in the rise of the
centralized national state; and the sixteenth century ushered in the era
of international wars, of which the struggle between Elizabeth and
Philip II was one, and one of the most important. When such conflicts
were always impending, it was essential that the resources of the nation
should be at the disposal of the Government. The national state could,
therefore, neither share authority with the Pope at Rome, nor endure
independent feudal or municipal jurisdictions within the realm; and in
its military and administrative organization, feudal officers, since the
thirteenth century in France and England, had been steadily replaced by
paid agents appointed by the king, whose hostility to the Pope was
chiefly inspired by the desire to secure from the Church the money
necessary to maintain them. A well-filled treasury was thus the first
need of the sixteenth-century state, and so it fell out that in western
Europe the middle class--the merchant and the capitalist and the
money-lender--was the chief resource of kings in conflict with feudal or
ecclesiastical privilege. The prosperity of the trading class and the
efficiency of the Government were thought to be inseparable; and that
commerce should be regulated in the interest of the state was,
therefore, the unquestioned maxim of the age.
Two things above all the interest of the state demanded: that the supply
of precious metals should not diminish; and that the nation should not
be dependent upon rival countries for staple commodities. The supply of
gold and silver actually present in the king's coffers, or within the
radius of his tax-gatherers, was of far greater moment then than now.
The issues of war, in an age when credit was relatively undeveloped,
were likely to depend upon it. Scarcely less important was the question
of staples. To be dependent upon rivals for necessities was thought to
threaten at once the prosperity of the trading class and the strength of
the Government: giving hostages to the enemy in time of war and a
diplomatic advantage in time of peace; carrying off the supply of gold
and silver; and likely, therefore, by raising the value of money, to
disorganize industry and deplete the sources of the state's revenue. To
be economically self-sufficing in order to be politically independent
was the cardinal doctrine. "That Realme is most compleat and wealthie
which either hath sufficient to serve itselfe or can finde means to
exporte of the naturall comodities [more] than it hath occasion
necessarily to import," said an English writer, expressing in a phrase
the essential principle of mercantilism, which, indeed, was only the old
feudal or municipal ideal adapted to the needs of the national state.
A theory which crystallized the practice of two centuries must have been
more than "an economic fallacy." And, indeed, in the time of Elizabeth
and the first Stuarts it was a condition and not a theory that
confronted England. Many essential commodities had long been imported
from countries which, toward the close of the sixteenth century, were
disposed to place obstacles in the way of English trade. From Baltic
lands came naval stores, and potash so necessary to the woolen industry.
Mediterranean countries furnished salt, dried fruits, sugar, and the
staple luxuries wine and silk. Dyes, saltpeter, and spices from the Far
East were sold to English merchants by the Portuguese or the Dutch; and
at exorbitant prices, for the thrifty Hollanders no sooner got control
of the spice islands than they raised the price of pepper from three to
eight shillings per pound. And it was the Dutch, intrenched in the
European fisheries partly through favors granted by Elizabeth, who
imported into England two thirds of the fish so extensively consumed by
the nation.
While England was dependent upon rivals for many necessities, the
foreign markets for her own products were now becoming inadequate. Apart
from wool, England exported little; but the confiscation of the
monasteries, the ruin of Antwerp, the rising prices resulting from the
influx of silver from New Spain, contributed to stimulate English
industry and to increase in some measure the volume of commodities
seeking markets abroad. Yet the markets were closing in some places and
becoming less accessible in others. "It is publically knowne that
traffique with our neighbor countries begins to be of small request, the
game seldom answering the merchant's adventure, and foraigne states
either are already or at the present are preparing to inriche themselves
with wool and cloth of their own which heretofore they borrowed of us."
English traders were persecuted in Spain; English exports were checked
by tariffs in France and by Sound dues in Denmark; privileges formerly
enjoyed in German towns were being withdrawn in retaliation for the
exclusion of Hanse merchants from advantages long enjoyed in London; and
as for Flanders, heretofore the great mart for English wool, the civil
wars had, as Hakluyt says, "spoiled the traffique there."
The desire to change this untoward condition of things was what inspired
the unwarranted enthusiasm of the time for American and Indian
colonization. The voyages of Willoughby and Frobisher, seeking some
northeast or northwest passage, were but the prelude to the later
voyages by way of the Cape of Good Hope and to the foundation of the
East India Company, the specific purpose of which was to procure the
products of the Orient independently of the Dutch and at lower cost. The
colonization of America it was supposed would serve a similar purpose.
It was still thought to be rich in precious metals; its soil well
adapted to commodities now purchased in the Levant. Its waters would
furnish England with the herring now purchased of the Dutch, and its
forests would make her independent of the Baltic countries for naval
supplies. Once gain a footing in India and America, and the commerce of
England, now so largely foreign, would be diverted into national
channels to the benefit of all concerned: "Our monies and wares that
nowe run into the hands of our adversaries or cowld frendes shall pass
into our frendes and naturall kinsmen and from them likewise we shall
receive such things as shall be most available to our necessities, which
intercourse of trade maye rather be called a home bread traffique than a
forraigne exchange."
The identification of the industrial and political interests of the
nation with the fortunes of the centralized state was necessarily
accompanied by a marked change in the character of international trade.
The national king, whose power rested so largely upon the industrial
class, could not leave in the hands of municipal councils the control
which they had formerly exercised; while long ocean voyages, and traffic
with countries inhabited by alien and often hostile people, required the
combined capital of many men and a more powerful backing than any
municipal council could furnish. Individual trading, therefore, gave way
to corporate trading; the joint-stock company, assisted or controlled by
the state, replaced the individual merchant operating under municipal
encouragement and protection. It was accordingly in the age of
Elizabeth, when English merchants were lamenting the want of markets,
and when English ships were pushing into every part of the world, that
such chartered trading companies made their appearance in rapid
succession, taking their names from the distant regions in which they
obtained a monopoly--Cathay, the Baltic, Turkey, Morocco, Africa. Of
these, and of all subsequent organizations of a similar character, the
most famous in England was the East India Company. By the charter, which
bears date December 31, 1600, two hundred and fifteen knights and
merchants were incorporated into a self-governing association competent
to acquire property in land, and enjoying a monopoly of English trade
with all countries lying east of the Cape of Good Hope as far as the
Straits of Magellan. The laws of the company were required to conform to
those of England, and its officers to take the oath of allegiance to the
Crown. Encountering many obstacles and some serious reverses, the
Company soon established a thriving trade in the Indian Ocean; its
great East Indiamen acquired a fame unique in the annals of commerce;
and the corporation itself, with privileges confirmed and extended by
Charles II, was destined in the eighteenth century to be the chief
instrument in the establishment of England's Indian Empire.
IV
When English knights and merchants set out to establish colonies in the
New World, two familiar institutions were convenient to the purpose--the
proprietary feudal grant, and the chartered trading company; noblemen
ambitious for personal dominion turned naturally to the former, while
merchants intent upon profits turned as naturally to the latter. The
first hapless ventures in American planting, dominated by the idealistic
and militant temper of the Elizabethan age, were initiated and directed
in the spirit of the gentleman adventurer: in the spirit of Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, who identified America with the fabled Atlantis and lost his
life in a pathetic attempt to establish an English colony in
Newfoundland; in the spirit of Sir Walter Raleigh, whose famous lost
colony, settled in the year 1587, exhausted his fortune and disappeared
at last, leaving no trace. These men were less interested in profit than
in reputation; less intent upon commercial expansion than on the
extension of the queen's dominions. But their resources were too
limited, their ideals too little practical for the realization of their
dreams. The patents to Gilbert and Raleigh took the form of a grant of
lordship by feudal tenure; and from the papers left by the former we
can create again, even to details, his vision of a transformed
wilderness, America's future state: an America of extensive proprietary
domains; an America reproducing, in its lords and landed gentry
surrounded by freeholder and tenant, in its counties and boroughs and
parishes, the social and political aristocracy of old England.
The proprietary feudal grant was destined to play its part in the
colonization of America, but the resplendent vision of Gilbert did not
survive the reign of Elizabeth. Raleigh was the last of the great
Elizabethan adventurers, and with the accession of the pedantic James I
the New World was beginning to be regarded in the dry light of a
commercial opportunity. To the knights and merchants who had witnessed
the vain efforts of Gilbert and Raleigh, the chartered company seemed
better adapted to their purposes than the proprietary grant. The methods
that had proved fortunate in the Old World would doubtless prove equally
so in the New; and in the year 1609, men who were already netting one
hundred per cent profit from their investments in the India Company were
prepared to venture something in a solid business scheme to exploit the
resources of America.
A tentative scheme, failing for want of efficient organization, had
already been set on foot. Three years earlier, in 1606, James had been
induced to license sundry of his loving subjects "to deduce and conduct
two several colonies or plantations in America." Among those active in
the undertaking were Bartholomew Gosnold, recently returned from a
Western voyage, Richard Hakluyt, Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers,
and Edward Maria Wingfield, a London merchant. Though not incorporated,
the patentees were formed into two companies, the London Company, so
called because its members were mainly London merchants, and the
Plymouth Company, consisting mainly of merchants from Plymouth and the
west of England. Each company was permitted to establish one colony
having a jurisdiction one hundred miles along the coast and one hundred
miles inland; the London Company anywhere between 34° and 41°, the
Plymouth Company anywhere between 38° and 45°, north latitude; provided
only that no colony should be located within one hundred miles of one
already established. The patent provided that there should be in each
colony, for managing its affairs, a resident council of thirteen members
which was to take instructions from the Royal Council for Virginia, a
body of fourteen men--afterwards enlarged--residing in England and
appointed and controlled by the king. The patentees were permitted to
trade freely within the limits designated by the grant, and to enjoy the
customs dues exacted from other Englishmen and from foreigners who might
wish to compete with them.
After a single vain attempt to establish a colony at Sagadahoc, the
Plymouth Company confined its activities to trade and exploration within
the region to which John Smith in 1614 gave the name of New England. Sir
Fernando Gorges was one of the patentees actively interested in these
ventures; and in 1620 he procured, for himself and associates to the
number of forty, a charter which transformed the old company into a
close corporation under the title of the New England Council or
Corporation for New England. Upon the patentees the charter conferred
the sole right to trade, to grant title to land, and to establish and
govern colonies within the region between 40° and 48°, north latitude,
in America. The New England Council possessed neither the capital nor
the popular support necessary for engaging in colonizing ventures; and
during the fifteen years of its existence it did little but sublet to
others the rights which it possessed. Of the council's land grants, of
which there were many both to individuals and to corporations, and
which, often conflicting, furnished the grounds for innumerable future
disputes, four only are important as the basis of permanent colonies in
New England. The territory at Plymouth was granted to the Pilgrims in
1621; in 1628 the territory between the Merrimac and the Charles Rivers
was conveyed to the Company of Massachusetts Bay; and two grants made in
1629, of territory between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua to John
Mason, of territory between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec to Fernando
Gorges, mark the beginnings of the colonies of New Hampshire and Maine.
All its ventures profited the New England Council nothing. February 3,
1635, the territory within its jurisdiction was parceled out among the
patentees, and on June 7, its charter of fruitless privileges was
surrendered.
It was reserved for the London Company to begin the planting of the
first American commonwealth; but it was by happy chances rather than by
wise foresight in the promoters that the colony outlived the company.
The first comers, who were set down at Jamestown in 1607, would soon
have perished but for the harsh good sense of the redoubtable Captain
John Smith; and two years' experience with the wilderness and the
Indian, with dissensions among settlers and councillors, demonstrated
that the patent was unsuited to the purposes for which it had been
granted. More colonists were needed in the colony, more capital required
to transport and maintain them, more authority to direct and control
them. To meet these needs, a charter was obtained in 1609 which created
an incorporated joint-stock company under the title of "The Treasurer
and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the
First Colony of Virginia." Shares were offered for subscription, to be
paid for in money by the adventurers who remained in England, and in
personal service by the planters who went to the colony. Each
shareholder, whether adventurer or planter, was a member of the company,
and was to receive such dividends as his shares might earn. The
undertaking was widely advertised; and when the charter passed the
seals, shares had been subscribed by 659 individuals, including 21
peers, 96 knights, 58 gentlemen, 110 merchants, and 282 citizens, and by
56 of the companies of the City of London.
The affairs of the new company were to be managed by a treasurer and
council, resident in England, and appointed and controlled by the
freemen assembled in general court. The little colony in Virginia was
but an adjunct to the company, and its management was left, without
other than conventional and perfunctory restrictions, to the treasurer
and council, subject to the approval of the freemen. The first treasurer
was Sir Thomas Smythe, who was also the first president of the East
India Company, a great merchant in his day, whose influence in Virginia
was a predominant one until he was succeeded as treasurer by Edwin
Sandys in 1618. Smythe and his associates were little interested in the
transmission of English institutions to the New World. They did not
regard Virginia, as the historian is apt to do, in the interesting light
of an experiment in constitutional liberalism, or conceive of the
company as the mother of nations. Their object was to pay dividends to
the shareholders, and the colonist was expected to exploit the resources
of Virginia for the benefit of the company of which he was a member.
Virginia was in fact a plantation owned by the company; its settlers
were the company's servants, freely transported in its vessels, fed and
housed at its expense, the product of their labor at its disposal for
the benefit of all concerned.
With these ideas in mind, and enlightened by past experience, the
company appointed Sir Thomas Gates to be "sole and absolute Governor,"
and sent him out in 1609, together with five hundred settlers in nine
ships. Two vessels were wrecked, and what with plague and fever less
than half the new colonists ever reached Virginia. The governor was
himself stranded on the Bermudas; and when he finally arrived after nine
months, sixty starving settlers were found scattered along the James
River. Men who had been reduced to eating their dead comrades or the
putrid flesh of buried Indians were scarcely good material for
regenerating a feeble plantation. Sir Thomas Gates, therefore, decided
to abandon the colony. But by a happy chance, as he was sailing with the
survivors down the river, he met Lord de la Warr come from England with
fresh supplies and new recruits; whereupon he turned back, still hoping
to retrieve the desperate fortunes of Virginia.
The decision proved wise in the event. But it was doubtless due to the
drastic measures of the company that the misfortunes of previous years
were not repeated. The governor returned to England, leaving the colony
in the hands of De la Warr, who governed in the spirit of the
instructions issued to Gates at the time of his appointment. Popularly
known as "Dale's Laws," the regulations under which Virginia was finally
made self-supporting were published by Gates after his return in 1611,
under the title of "Articles, Laws and Orders, Divine, Politique, and
Martial for the Government of Virginia." The new code was based upon the
military laws of the Netherlands, and was enforced in the spirit with
which the experience of Gates and Dale had made them familiar. From
blasphemy to disrespect, from murder to idleness or embezzlement of the
common store, the company's servants were liable to meet the knife, the
lash, or the gallows at every turn. Until 1618 the régime of martial law
was maintained; and the settlers stood guard or marched to the fields at
the word of command, scarcely aware, doubtless, that they had been
granted all the liberties enjoyed by men "born within this our realm of
England."
The military régime which made Virginia self-supporting did not make it
prosperous, or profitable to the company. In December, 1618, after an
expenditure of £80,000 sterling, there were in the colony "600 persons,
men, women and children, and cattle three hundred att the most. And the
Company was then lefte in debt neer five thousand pounds." The
hard-headed Smythe saw little prospect of the dividends which the
shareholders were demanding; and he was ready to give way to any one who
still had faith to sink yet more money in the enterprise that for a
dozen years had disappointed every expectation. Such an idealist was Sir
Edwin Sandys. Son of a Puritan Archbishop of York, he had studied at
Oxford under Richard Hooker, whose famous book he had read in
manuscript. The _Ecclesiastical Polity_ had perhaps confirmed Sandys in
a republican way of thinking; and in the year 1618 he was probably a
nonconformist--a "religious gentleman," as Edward Winslow called him: at
all events, a man of humanitarian and anti-prerogative instincts; a
friend of the Earl of Southampton, and leader of those in the company
who were in sympathy with the rising tide of liberal sentiment in
English politics.
The liberal policy which Sandys favored in England, he was now prepared
to adopt for the management of Virginia. Convinced that the military and
joint-stock régime, even if it had ever served a useful purpose, was
retarding the development of the colony, Sandys and Southampton
determined to reverse the policy of their predecessors by instituting
private property in land and conceding a measure of self-government. A
popular assembly was accordingly established in 1619; restrictions on
conduct and religious opinion were relaxed; and land grants, both to
individuals and to corporations, in small and large tracts, were made on
easy terms. It was hoped that an appeal to self-respect and to
self-interest would encourage immigration and foster thrift and
industry. When Sandys became treasurer in 1618 the time seemed
propitious; for it had already been discovered that Virginia tobacco
could be sold at a profit in London; and it was the expectation of
Sandys, by obtaining for the company its fair share of the profit
arising from the importation of tobacco into England, to repay to the
shareholders the long-delayed interest on their investments.
The scheme was not without great possibilities, and the company spared
neither money nor effort to make it a success. Within three years more
than thirty-five hundred emigrants crossed to Virginia. In 1621 the
expenditures of the company had reached a total of £100,000, and in 1624
the amount had been doubled. Yet, quite apart from the high death-rate
which depleted the colony, or the Indian massacre of 1622 which
threatened its existence, all the efforts of Sandys ended in failure.
Drawn into the main current of English politics, the Virginia Company
was unable to live in those troubled waters. James regarded with little
favor the liberalism which Sandys and Southampton were promoting in
England as well as in America. On high moral grounds he disliked the
use of tobacco, and for economic and fiscal reasons was opposed to its
cultivation in Virginia. He was determined, at all events, that such
profits as might arise from its importation should enrich the royal
exchequer rather than a powerful corporation controlled by men who were
carping at the king's prerogative. And the king found support in the
company itself; for Smythe and Warwick turned against the corporation
and furnished pretexts to prove that it had betrayed its trust and
should forfeit its rights. In 1624 the charter was accordingly annulled,
and Virginia became a royal province.
Thus ended the most serious attempt of a commercial company to make
profit out of American planting. Famous and successful in the annals of
colonization, it proved a complete disaster as a financial speculation.
During the reign of Charles I, merchants were therefore but little
disposed to venture their money in enterprises of that kind. Nor was
Charles himself, who guarded the royal prerogative more jealously even
than James had done, likely to look with favor upon the creation of
corporations which would prove useless in case of failure and might
prove dangerous if they succeeded. The rough sea of politics in the time
of the second Stuart was unsuited to floating successful colonial
ventures of any kind under governmental sanction; but in so far as he
was disposed to further the development of America, it was natural
enough for Charles, who found that his usurping Parliament was backed by
the mercantile interest, to frown upon colonial corporations, and to
make use of the proprietary feudal grant as a means of rewarding the
courtiers and nobles who supported him. The very year that the New
England Council surrendered its charter, Archbishop Laud was urging the
king to recall that of Massachusetts Bay. It was a few years later that
Fernando Gorges was made Lord Proprietor of Maine; a few years earlier
that Lord Baltimore, a loyal supporter of the House of Stuart, received
a feudal grant after the manner of the Durham Palatinate of that part of
Virginia which was to be known as the Province of Maryland.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The best accounts of early exploration and settlement in America are in
Channing's _History of the United States_, I, chaps. III-VII; and
Bourne's _Spain in America_, chaps, VI-IX. An admirable account of the
activities of English seamen in the sixteenth century is given by Walter
Raleigh in volume XII of his edition of Hakluyt's _Voyages_. An
interesting contemporary narrative of Drake's voyage around the world is
in Hakluyt's _Voyages_ (Raleigh ed.), XI, pp. 101-33. Hakluyt's
_Discourse on Western Plantinge_ is in the Maine Historical Society
Collections, series II, vol. II. For the rise of the chartered trading
companies, and their connection with early American colonizing
companies, see Cheyney's _Background of American History_, chaps.
VII-VIII. The best discussion of the English interest in colonization at
the opening of the seventeenth century is in Beer's _The Origins of the
British Colonial System_, chaps. I-III. The most elaborate and learned
account of the colonies in the seventeenth century is that of Osgood,
_The American Colonies in the 17th Century_, 3 vols. Macmillan, 1904.
The most readable account of the founding of Virginia is in Fiske's _Old
Virginia and Her Neighbours_, I chaps. I-VI. John Smith's account of the
settlement of Jamestown is in his _True Relation_, printed in Arber,
_Works of Captain John Smith_. Birmingham, 1884.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Pesos_=approximately $3.00.