Everything revolved around money in Virginia
- Official Corruption
- Death Rate
- “A charnel house”
- land and labor
- Indentured Servitude
- Seven ears labor
- need for labor
- extent of indentured servitude
- Lack of Rights
- lack of concern
- inhumane treatment
- treated as a thing
- treated all non-elite badly
- Corruption
- cheat immigrants and own company
- food as monopoly
- Massacre of 1622
- New Indian Leadership
- English arrogance
- Revocation of Charter
- English of government takes over
- “a society founded on smoke”
*draw a parallel to the cocaine economy
- Charnel House - there was a lot of deaths - there was only so much holy ground, as people died others were dug up, broke the bones, and put them in a charnel house.
- Tobacco was hard to do and needed partners
B. Indentured Servitude - Indentured servants didn't have a lot of money. For most people traveling to America, 7 years of labor was required, if you were athletic maybe 5, all women had had 4 years of service. The people who came across were a commodity. This was a development of a system that “evolves into slavery”. Indentured servants were necessary anyone who had the money wouldn’t want to work. Indians would rather die than do the work, and many stuck to their words. It was established that indentured servitude wasn’t a bad deal. In england apprenticeship lasted 7 years. If you worked in a plantation for 7 years, you would know the business, and they would be housed and fed for 7 years and at the end they would receive 50 acres of land. These people could get a chance and start over again. Over 100,000 came as indentured servants. People who came to Virginia were either middle class who were desperate to start over again, or working class poor people. 80% of indentured servents were men ages between 18-24. Close to 60% of Indentured servants didn’t make their seven years. There was a lot of death. It wasn’t for the lack of doctors but doctors required a lot of money to do anything. The owners would prefer the young who had just started their service over those who stayed there a long time. Devastation among the native america tribes - Small pocks, the food was pork and corn, except only when you wouldn’t get pork. The pigs were suppose to root hog or die. There was a lack of vegetables and fruit. The Key problem was that the servants had no rights. The English had started giving rights to its men. But this was far away from England, so no one knew what was going on. Once you bought the servant, you could do anything with the property. They would be wagered and sold. This was the beginning of slavery. There was a couple who would kill a servant, killed with a rake, 500 lashes at one time. The puritans believed they didn’t have the power to punish. If you slandered anyone or critic owners or members of high society, the punishment was severe. Ex, broken arms and drilled tongue. Another punishment was kicked by 40 men and then banished. There was execution for killing a calf. It was an Authoritarian state. A servant going to Virgina becomes for a number of years a thing. A commodity for a price, a machine to produce.
D. The corruption met new levels. The fact was that the owners didn’t want to give away 50 acres. The cocaine economy doesn’t want everyone to grow. They want to keep supplies low to inflate prices. When people came to try to challenge it (people who had money to pay for travel and land) they would get tricked into getting in debt or getting drunk to turn them into indentured servants. Judges would sentence people to servitude and at the end they would be the ones running the plantations. There was a constant problem of not growing their own food, depending on the indians. By the last part of 17th century. The rule and law as that there had to be so many acres of corn, but it wasn’t enforced. The people who were there forbid people to plant corn. They had an exclusive deal with the indians and would sell the corn at high prices to the settlers.