American History - Promised Land

For most of the first part of the seventeenth century, nobody gave two shits about the area that became known as New England, except the people living there of course. Laying between the French controlled St. Lawrence River and Dutch controlled Hudson River, the two primary fur trading routes into the interior, it was largely only visited by fishermen and English fur traders who had few other options. As a result, the various and numerous Algonquian tribes in the area were largely left alone, subsisting off farming and hunting as they had since the introduction of agriculture some eight hundred years earlier. Fur traders who came to the area; exchanging metal tools, glass, and cloth for beaver pelts; reported countless coastal villages. Unfortunately, one of these fur traders brought small pox with them on a visit in 1616, resulting in some 90 percent of the inhabitants of the New England coast dying by 1619. It should go without saying that this really fucked up the political balance in the region, with unaffected tribes in the interior, such as the Pequot, taking advantage of the situation to expand their power over a wider area, though they avoided the most affected areas, fearing the spread of the curse that had so weakened their neighbors. It was at this point that a group of English Puritans, who we today call the Pilgrims, showed up.

To really understand the Pilgrims, you have to understand what the hell was going on in England at the time. Back in 1534, King Henry VIII, wanting to leave his old wife for a new hot young wife, got around the Catholic church’s refusal to grant him a divorce by creating his own church with himself as its leader. The creation of this new Anglican church did not sit well with many of the more hardcore Catholics in England, which Henry responded to with excessive violence, sparking a religious cluster fuck for the next century or so. Anyways, in the middle of all this, a new hardcore group began to form called the Puritans, who while down with the whole fuck the Pope vibe, didn’t think the Anglicans took things far enough. The Puritans held a mixture of beliefs which would blow our minds today given current stereotypes. Though ridiculously religious and severely against anything that might even be kind of viewed as a sin, even holidays, pretty much leaving them with working their asses off as their only source of fun, they also believed that church leaders should be democratically elected and that everyone, including women, should be given an education so that they could read the bible. In response, the English monarchy, not really being cool with a group challenging the idea that some people were in charge just because God said so, began forcing everyone to go to Anglican church services or face a fine or imprisonment. This didn’t sit well with some of the more hardcore Puritans who in response fled to Holland. These were the Pilgrims.

Now the Pilgrims did not really enjoy living in Holland. Though the Dutch were pretty cool with them doing whatever, the overall hedonistic anything goes vibe did not sit well with the more conservative Pilgrims, especially when their kids started abandoning them to live that sweet Dutch lifestyle. As a result, the Pilgrims started looking for a new place to live, eventually making a deal with some merchants in England to help them build a colony at the mouth of the Hudson River. A plan the King of England was down with given it would likely help England get better access to the lucrative fur trade. In the fall of 1620, a little over 100 men, women, and children set sail across the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. The two month voyage was miserable, with storms blowing the ship significantly off course, arriving at present day Massachusetts by accident. Not really having time to go searching for the Hudson River as planned, the Pilgrims just kind of said fuck it and decided to settle where they found themselves. They soon after built the colony of Plymouth on top of an abandoned native village, which had been ravaged by small pox so quickly the year prior that here was skeletons just lying around all willy nilly. They then created the Mayflower Compact, which was an agreement that the running of the colony would be decided by majority vote.

Things did not start out well for the Pilgrims. Half of the would be colonists had become sick on the voyage and died within the first three months of arriving. The remaining pretty much survived the winter by raiding the abandoned villages for food stored by the now dead inhabitants. The surviving locals at first avoided the Pilgrims, due to the propensity of English sailors over the past decade to kidnap random natives to take back to England. However, as time moved forward, some tribes began to make contact, mostly to see if there was any way the heavily armed Pilgrims could be useful in the post-apocalyptic chaos that was the New England coast at the time. This eventually led to several alliances being made with many of the local tribes, who in turn showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn, squash, and beans. This led to a joint celebration by the Pilgrims and some of the locals in November of 1621, the first Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, soon after the first Thanksgiving, a ship arrived from England with 40 new settlers but no supplies, putting a significant strain on the colony. The merchants in England were angry that they had not yet seen any return on their investment, something they decided to solve by shipping over more Pilgrims for some reason. However, thanks to the alliances with the Native Americans, the Pilgrims survived their second winter with few losses. Over the next decade another 200 Pilgrims would arrive, who through hard work paid back much of the debt owed to merchants, mostly through the sale of furs and tall trees perfect for use as ship masts. Despite this influx of new settlers, things remained peaceful, largely due to the Pilgrims chasing any tribes that refused to sign treaties with them put of the area via violence or the threat of violence. The tribes allied with the Pilgrims were more than happy with this chain of events, glad to be rid of the competition and confident that by putting their faith in the newcomers from across the sea, they were assuring the survival of their peoples.

American History - Sugar

When looking at American history, its important to understand that for a considerable portion of the colonial period, pretty much the entirety of what would eventually become the United States and Canada was considered much less important than the smattering of random small islands known as the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. The reason for this was sugar. Though sugar first became available in Europe in the twelfth century, thanks to new trade routes opened by the Crusades, it’s importation was largely dominated by the rich Italian city-states, who sold it to the rich and powerful as an exorbitant luxury. However, this began to change when the Portuguese started exploring down the coast of Africa, laying claim to various tropical islands off the African coast. Not being ones to miss an opportunity, they began growing sugar cane on these islands, turning the Canary Islands, Madeira, and Sao Tome into major exporters by the end of the fifteenth century. Making sugar was a fairly difficult and labor intensive process, but luckily, from their perspective, the Portuguese also had ready access to slaves from Africa.

Portugal dominated the European sugar market for the next century, flooding the continent with crystalized sweetness, turning it from a rare luxury for the uber wealthy to a regular enjoyment of the upper crust of society. As with today, sugar was super popular, being all addictively delicious and what not. However, one needed certain types of tropical locales in which to grow it. Luckily, the recently discovered islands of the Caribbean proved perfect. The Spanish first began growing sugar cane in the Caribbean in 1501, with Cuba and Jamaica becoming large producers over the next two decades. However, finding it much easier to just pick up gold off of the ground in other parts of the New World, the Spanish did little to expand the industry, leaving it largely under the control of Portugal, who began building sugar plantations in Brazil by 1540. At first, being complete and utter asshats, the Portuguese plantation owners enslaved the local natives to work for them, but when the locals began dying in large numbers, killed by Old World diseases, they began importing large numbers of slaves from Africa.

By the start of the seventeenth century, the rising popularity of coffee and tea in Europe, imported from the Middle East and Asia respectively, caused a significant spike in the demand for sugar. As a result, many other European nations began looking for places to grow their own sugar so they wouldn’t have to pay the exorbitant Portuguese prices. Luckily, though claimed by Spain, the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean had been largely left alone, not being seen as worth anything since they had no gold. Devoid of life, due to a series of pandemics after the Spanish visited them a century ago, the islands were perfect for sugar cultivation. England claimed Bermuda in 1611, the Dutch Republic claimed Saint Martin in 1618, and the French claimed St. Kitts in 1625. By 1650, pretty much all of the islands were claimed and producing sugar. From that point forward, nearly any war involving the powers of western Europe included attempts to secure each others’ sugar producing areas in the Caribbean. In 1630, the Dutch seized large parts of Brazil, which they held for the next twenty-four years, in 1655 the English seized Jamaica, and in 1670 the French seized what would later become known as Haiti. Following many wars, it was not uncommon for the losers to cede claims over wide swaths of territory in North America just to retain control of a few small sugar producing islands.

Growing and processing sugar cane was hard and difficult work. The sugar had to be cultivated and harvested under the harsh tropical sun, and processed in large boiling vats to create molasses, which was shipped back to Europe to be processed further into sugar. For some strange reason, nobody really wanted to do this type of work, so the powers that be began focusing on more coerced supplies of labor, including enslaved Native Americans and indentured servants. The enslaved Native Americans were largely captured from the nearby coasts of North and South America, but as disease ravaged their numbers and the survivors increasingly avoided the coast for obvious reasons, they became more scarce. Indentured servitude largely involved poor Europeans who were willing to sell their rights away for years at a time in return for passage to the opportunities of the New World, as well as various criminals and other unwanted groups, including unwanted religious groups. The French forced thousands of Protestant Huguenots into indentured servitude, and the British did the same to thousands of Irish Catholics. However, even this unwilling labor proved to be insufficient.

African slaves began being imported by the Caribbean sugar plantations in large numbers by the mid-seventeenth century. Growing from the early Portuguese slave trade, the English, French, and Dutch got into the act, shipping thousands of people across the Atlantic every year. Though at first treated similar to indentured servants, the pursuit of profit led to an increasing barbaric system over time. Slaves were crammed tightly into the holds of ships for the crossing of the Atlantic, some 10 percent dying on the way. Upon arrival, most were at first kept in seasoning camps, where they adjusted to their new climate, diet, and social environment, learning the language and the tasks they would be expected to carry out. Unable to adapt, another 20 to 30 percent would die at this stage. As for the survivors, most would be dead within twenty years, worn down by a poor diet and the harsh working conditions. This barbaric cycle required the almost constant importation of new slaves, even when laws were changed so that the children of slaves automatically became slaves at the start of the eighteenth century. Of the 10 to 15 million Africans enslaved and sent to the New World between 1500 and 1850, some 90 percent were sent to Brazil or the Caribbean. Though many died, some African slaves managed to become free, forming their own distinct cultures and even rising up the social ladder at times to the point where they could own their own plantations and slaves, because history is just that kind of fucked up. All of this just so the world could taste a little sweeter.

American History - Going Dutch

For the better part of a century, the Spanish and Portuguese dominated global trade, making them the primary source of silks and spices from the Far East and gold, tobacco, and sugar from the New World for the rest of Europe. This trade became even more monopolized in 1580, when Spain took control of Portugal and its overseas empire. However, despite this massive amount of power and wealth, the Spanish pretty much completely squandered their new found wealth. The Spanish government spent lost the equivalent of billions of dollars in fruitless religious wars and failed political machinations, and the Spanish elite wasted their new found wealth on the purchase of extravagant luxuries, leaving little left to improve the country. As a result, the country a stagnated and by the start of the seventeenth century Spain’s global hegemony was already waning rapidly, creating new opportunities for the other powers of western Europe. However of all the great powers, it was a relative new comer which took full advantage.

By the start of the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was just turning twenty years old, having only gained its assured independence from Spain in 1581. Not really wanting to go back to being ruled by a some random asshat, the nobility of the region instead created a confederation centered on several port cities with an unusual for the time focus on religious tolerance and supporting the growth of the merchant class. At the time, most nations required all trade to pass through their borders, a system known as mercantilism which guaranteed the monarch was able to get their cut via taxing ships as they arrived. The Dutch just said to hell with this system, instead deciding to let their traders go wherever the hell they wanted, moving goods in whatever fashion resulted in the highest profit. This combined with the designing of new super efficient trading ships, called fluyts, and new efficient sawmills to make them, quickly turned the Dutch into the dominant traders throughout northern Europe. Arguably the Dutch Republic was the first free trade capitalist nation in the world.

Of course, if you are a nation pretty much run by merchants always looking for the next big score, its only going to be a matter of time before you start looking at the biggest sources of wealth in the world. For a century, the Portuguese had jealously guarded their charts for sailing to the riches of Asia via going around Africa, hiding important details about prevalent currents, winds, and the locations of reefs. Unfortunately, when Spain took over things got rather sloppy, and a number of Dutch mariners hired as sailors on Portuguese ships turned out to be spies, resulting in several Dutch expeditions around Africa to eastern Asia between 1595 and 1600. To better coordinate this new trade, in 1602 the Dutch formed the Dutch East India Company. Previously, investors would only invest in a single expedition, getting paid off when the expedition returned. The Dutch East India Company instead paid back a portion, re-investing the rest to pay for further expeditions, allowing investors to get in and out as they chose via the buying and selling of stock. It was the world’s first joint stock company, and it proved extremely profitable, so much so that the Dutch copied the structure for all sorts of endeavors and then founded the first national bank to support it.

Thanks to having the best trading ships in the world and not having to worry about how to fund each new expedition, the Dutch East India Company quickly began to outdo the Portuguese in importing spices. Within twenty years, they pretty much had a monopoly over the spice trade, controlling numerous trading posts across Africa, India, and southeast Asia, many once controlled by the Portuguese. By 1630, their ships were travelling as far away as Japan, not only dominating the shipment of spices back to Europe, but also trade amongst the various nations of east Asia, the profits of which funded the purchase of spices. The Dutch East India Company grew so powerful that it built its own military, which not only attacked its trade rivals, but even went to war with local Asian powers. Throughout all of this, a ridiculous amount of wealth flowed into the Dutch Republic, which led to the development of the largest urban middle class in European history up until that point, as well as major public works projects such as large scale hydraulic engineering works which claimed new farmland from the sea. The sheer amount of wealth pouring in also attracted numerous artists and scientists looking for rich benefactors to fund their endeavors. The Dutch Republic became the center of science and culture in Europe, eclipsing the old Italian city-states which had dominated such things since before the beginning of the Renaissance.

The Dutch East India Company was such a huge success that the Dutch West India Company was founded in 1621. Though not as successful as its precursor, it did enjoy some success. Initially meant to open a new trade route to Asia via sailing around South America, it quickly devolved into funding the raiding of Spanish shipping in the Caribbean, which in turn was used to fund further ventures, such as the founding of New Amsterdam at the mouth of the Hudson River in an attempt to dominate the northern fur trade, the conquest of parts of Brazil in 1630 to get into the sugar industry, and the purchase of slaves from Africa to ship to the new Brazilian colony of New Holland to grow said sugar. Unfortunately, an ongoing war to retain New Holland sapped the company’s resources, eventually resulting in the loss of the South American colony by 1654. However, despite this setback, the Dutch West India Company continued, primarily as a shipper of slaves from Africa to the New World.

What would later be referred to as the Dutch Golden Age lasted into the eighteenth century. However, it would not last forever. Competitors such as England and France copied the successful Dutch model model, eroding the Dutch trade monopoly; Dutch investors increasingly invested in highly profitable foreign loans, helping further develop other nations while leaving the Dutch economy stagnant during a time of increasing industrialization; and the Dutch increasingly found themselves on the losing end in their military and political endeavors. However, that shift is a tale for a different time.