Slavery in the colonial United States
Slavery in the colonial area which became the United States developed from complex factors, researchers have proposed several theories to explain the development of the institution of slavery and of the slave trade. Slavery correlated with Europe's American colonies' need for labor for the labor-intensive plantation economies of the sugar colonies in the Caribbean, operated by Great Britain, France and the Dutch Republic. Most slaves who were brought or kidnapped to the Thirteen British colonies — the Eastern seaboard of what became the United States — were imported from the Caribbean, not directly from Africa, they had come to the Caribbean islands as a result of the Atlantic slave trade. Indigenous people were enslaved in the North American colonies, but on a smaller scale, Indian slavery ended in the late eighteenth century though the enslavement of Indigenous people did continue to occur in the Southern states until the Emancipation Proclamation. In the English colonies, slave status for Africans became hereditary in the mid-17th century with the passage of colonial laws that defined children born in the colonies as taking the status of the mother, under the principle of partus sequitur ventrem.
Until the early 18th century, enslaved Africans were difficult to acquire in the colonies that became the United States, as most were sold to the West Indies, where the large plantations and high mortality rates required continued importation of slaves. One of the first major centers of African slavery in the English North American colonies occurred with the founding of Charles Town and the Province of Carolina in 1670; the colony was founded by planters from the overpopulated British sugar island of Barbados, who brought large numbers of African slaves from that island to establish new plantations. For several decades it was difficult for planters north of the Caribbean to acquire African slaves. To meet agricultural labor needs, colonists practiced Indian slavery for some time; the Carolinians transformed the Indian slave trade during the late 17th and early 18th centuries by treating such slaves as a trade commodity to be exported to the West Indies. Historian Alan Gallay estimates that between 1670 and 1715, between 24,000 and 51,000 captive Native Americans were exported from South Carolina—much more than the number of Africans imported to the colonies of the future United States during the same period.
The first Africans to be brought to British North America landed in Virginia in 1619. They arrived on a Dutch ship; these 20 individuals appear to have been treated as indentured servants, a significant number of enslaved Africans earned freedom by fulfilling a work contract or for converting to Christianity. Some successful free people of color, such as Anthony Johnson, in turn acquired slaves or indentured servants for workers. Historians such as Edmund Morgan say this evidence suggests that racial attitudes were much more flexible in 17th-century Virginia than they would become. A 1625 census recorded 23 Africans in Virginia. In 1649 there were 300, in 1690 there were 950. Over this period, legal distinctions between white indentured servants and "Negros" widened into lifelong slavery for Africans. Slaves and Native American, made up a smaller part of the New England economy, based on yeoman farming and trades, a smaller fraction of the population, but they were present; the Puritans codified slavery in 1641.
The Massachusetts royal colony passed the Body of Liberties, which prohibited slavery in some instances, but did allow three legal bases of slavery. Slaves could be held if they were captives of war, if they sold themselves into slavery, were purchased from elsewhere, or if they were sentenced to slavery by the governing authority; the Body of Liberties used the word "strangers" to refer to people bought and sold as slaves, as they were not English subjects. Colonists came to equate this term with Africans; the Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven enslaved blacks who worked as farmers, fur traders, builders to New Amsterdam, capital of the nascent province of New Netherland. The Dutch colony expanded across the North River to Bergen. Slaves were held by settlers in the area. Although enslaved, the Africans had a few basic rights and families were kept intact, they were admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers, their children could be baptized.
Slaves could testify in court, sign legal documents, bring civil actions against whites. Some were permitted to work after hours earning wages equal to those paid to white workers; when the colony fell to the English in the 1660s, the company freed all its slaves, which created an early nucleus of free Negros in the area. The English continued to import slaves. Enslaved Africans performed a wide variety of skilled and unskilled jobs in the burgeoning port city and surrounding agricultural areas. In 1703 more than 42% of New York City's households held slaves, a percentage higher than in the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, second only to Charleston in the South; the French introduced legalized slavery into their colonies in New France both near the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. After the port of New Orleans was founded in 1718 with access to the Gulf Coast, French colonists imported more African slaves to the Illinois Country for use as agricultural or mining laborers. By the mid-eighteenth century, slaves
Colonial Beach, Virginia
Colonial Beach, Virginia is a river and beach town located in the northwestern part of Westmoreland County on Virginia's Northern Neck peninsula. It is bounded by the Potomac River, Monroe Bay and Monroe Creek and home to the second-largest beachfront in the state, it is located 65 mi from Washington, D. C.. Colonial Beach was named Best Virginia Beach for 2018 by USA Today; the population was 3,542 at the 2010 census. Colonial Beach was a popular resort town in the early to mid-20th century, before the Chesapeake Bay Bridge made ocean beaches on the Eastern Shore of Maryland more accessible to visitors from Washington, D. C; the family of Alexander Graham Bell maintained a summer home in Colonial Beach, the Bell House, which still stands today. Sloan Wilson, author of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and died in Colonial Beach. George Washington, the first President of the United States, was born near here at what is now the George Washington Birthplace National Monument; as of 2011, the James Monroe Family Home Site, birthplace of President James Monroe, now has a small monument to him.
Virginia Indians came to this area to harvest oysters during the 1st century. The town was first settled in 1650 by the great-great grandfather of President James Monroe, as Monrovia. Colonial Beach emerged as a bathing and fishing resort in the late 19th century known as the "Playground on the Potomac." Prior to automobile travel, most visitors arrived by boat from Washington, D. C; the town was incorporated on February 25, 1892 and there was extensive construction of houses, summer cottages, hotels. Arguably the most famous of these structures is the Alexander Graham Bell house which still stands on Irving Avenue as the Bell House Bed and Breakfast; the area was at the center of the Potomac River Oyster Wars between Virginia watermen and the Maryland State Oyster Police that lasted from the late 19th century to the 1960s. The town began to decline as the automobile made travel to more distant ocean beaches more feasible. However, because gambling was legal in Maryland and the Maryland state line ends at the low-water mark of Virginia's Potomac River shore, from 1949 to 1958, Colonial Beach offered slot machines in pier casinos extending into Maryland waters.
This temporarily revitalized the town, although it was sometimes called "the poor man's Las Vegas." However, the piers burned in the 1960s in a devastating fire and the town continued to decline. The town is ranked fifth-safest place to live in Virginia by Safewise. Colonial Beach is located at 38°15′14″N 76°58′8″W, in the northwestern part of Westmoreland County in Virginia's Northern Neck, 65 mi from Washington, D. C. and 70 mi from the state capital Richmond. The Potomac River forms the northeast boundary of Colonial Beach; the southern part of the town forms a peninsula which ends just above Monroe Bay and divides Monroe Creek from the Potomac River. A short distance north of Colonial Beach is the community of Potomac Beach and the mouth of Rosier Creek. Inland from Colonial Beach lie the settlements of Monroe Hall, near the birthplace of President James Monroe, Maple Grove. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 2.8 square miles, of which, 2.6 square miles of it is land and 0.2 square miles of it is water.
The town's 2.5 miles of beaches are second in length only to those of Virginia Beach in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Colonial Beach has a humid subtropical climate, abbreviated "Cfa" on climate maps; as of the census of 2000, there were 3,228 people, 1,437 households, 863 families residing in the town. The population density was 1,246.7/sq mi. There were 2,030 housing units at an average density of 784.0/sq mi. The racial makeup of the town was 79.21% White, 16.95% African American, 0.09% Native American, 0.62% Asian, 1.64% from other races, 1.49% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.38% of the population. There were 1,437 households out of which 24.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.9% were married couples living together, 15.3% had a female householder with no husband present, 39.9% were non-families. 34.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 18.2% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older.
The average household size was 2.20 and the average family size was 2.77. In the town, the population was spread out with 22.0% under the age of 18, 6.3% from 18 to 24, 23.2% from 25 to 44, 26.0% from 45 to 64, 22.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 44 years. For every 100 females, there were 82.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 77.6 males. The median income for a household in the town was $31,711, the median income for a family was $38,080. Males had a median income of $30,000 versus $19,535 for females; the per capita income for the town was $19,991.20 About 23.0% of families and 25.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 45.7% of those under age 18 and 16.6% of those age 65 or over. Colonial Beach is served by Virginia State Route 205, a spur of which bisects the town as State Route 205Y; the town is accessible by boat and is the last deepwater port for pleasure boats going north on the Potomac River. Ed Mirvish – Canadian businessman and philanthropist.
Sloan Wilson – author of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Torrey Smith – Two-time Super Bowl winning NFL player. Sherryl Woods - Author of the Chesapeake Shore Series of novels and
Cavalier
Cavalier was first used by Roundheads as a term of abuse for the wealthier Royalist supporters of King Charles I and his son Charles II of England during the English Civil War, the Interregnum, the Restoration. It was adopted by the Royalists themselves. Although it referred to political and social attitudes and behaviour, of which clothing was a small part, it has subsequently become identified with the fashionable clothing of the court at the time. Prince Rupert, commander of much of Charles I's cavalry, is considered to be an archetypal Cavalier. Cavalier derives from the same Latin root as the French word chevalier, the Vulgar Latin word caballarius, meaning "horseman". Shakespeare used the word cavaleros to describe an overbearing swashbuckler or swaggering gallant in Henry IV, Part 2, in which Shallow says "I'll drink to Master Bardolph, to all the cavaleros about London". "Cavalier" is chiefly associated with the Royalist supporters of King Charles I in his struggle with Parliament in the English Civil War.
It first appears as a term of reproach and contempt, applied to the followers of King Charles I in June 1642: 1642 Propositions of Parlt. in Clarendon v. I. 504 Several sorts of malignant Men, who were about the King. 1642 Petition Lords & Com. 17 June in Rushw. Coll. III. I. 631 That your Majesty..would please to dismiss your extraordinary Guards, the Cavaliers and others of that Quality, who seem to have little Interest or Affection to the publick Good, their Language and Behaviour speaking nothing but Division and War. Charles, in the Answer to the Petition 13 June 1642 speaks of Cavaliers as a "word by what mistake soever it seemes much in disfavour", it was soon reappropriated by the king's party, who in return applied Roundhead to their opponents, at the Restoration the court party preserved the name, which survived until the rise of the term Tory. Cavalier was not understood at the time as a term describing a style of dress, but a whole political and social attitude. However, in modern times the word has become more associated with the court fashions of the period, which included long flowing hair in ringlets, brightly coloured clothing with elaborate trimmings and lace collars and cuffs, plumed hats.
This contrasted with the dress of at least the most extreme Roundhead supporters of Parliament, with their preference for shorter hair and plainer dress, although neither side conformed to the stereotypical images entirely. Most Parliamentarian generals wore their hair at much the same length as their Royalist counterparts, though Cromwell was something of an exception; the best patrons in the nobility of Charles I's court painter Sir Anthony van Dyck, the archetypal recorder of the Cavalier image, all took the Parliamentary side in the Civil War. The most famous image identified as of a "cavalier", Frans Hals' Laughing Cavalier, shows a gentleman from the Calvinist Dutch town of Haarlem, is dated 1624; these derogatory terms showed what the typical Parliamentarian thought of the Royalist side – capricious men who cared more for vanity than the nation at large. The chaplain to King Charles I, Edward Simmons described a Cavalier as "a Child of Honour, a Gentleman well borne and bred, that loves his king for conscience sake, of a clearer countenance, bolder look than other men, because of a more loyal Heart".
There were many men in the Royalist armies who fit this description since most of the Royalist field officers were in their early thirties, married with rural estates which had to be managed. Although they did not share the same outlook on how to worship God as the English Independents of the New Model Army, God was central to their lives; this type of Cavalier was personified by Jacob Astley, 1st Baron Astley of Reading, whose prayer at the start of the Battle of Edgehill has become famous "O Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not forget me". At the end of the First Civil War Astley gave his word that he would not take up arms again against Parliament and having given his word he felt duty bound to refuse to help the Royalist cause in the Second Civil War. However, the word was coined by the Roundheads as a pejorative propaganda image of a licentious, hard drinking and frivolous man, who if thought of God, it is this image which has survived and many Royalists, for example Henry Wilmot, 1st Earl of Rochester, fitted this description to a tee.
Of another Cavalier, George Goring, Lord Goring, a general in the Royalist army, the principal advisor to Charles II, Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, said: would, without hesitation, have broken any trust, or done any act of treachery to have satisfied an ordinary passion or appetite. Of all his qualifications dissimulation was his masterpiece; this sense has developed into the modern English use of "cavalier" to describe a recklessly nonchalant attitude, although still with a suggestion of stylishness. Cavalier remained in use as a description for members of the party that supported the monarchy up until the Exclusion Crisis of 1678–1681 w
Henry Cabot Lodge
Henry Cabot Lodge was an American Republican Senator and historian from Massachusetts. A member of the prominent Lodge family, he received his PhD in history from Harvard University; as an undergraduate at Harvard, he joined Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity. He is best known for his positions on foreign policy his battle with President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 over the Treaty of Versailles; the failure of that treaty ensured. Born in Beverly, Lodge won election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives after graduating from Harvard, he and his close friend, Theodore Roosevelt, opposed James G. Blaine's nomination at the 1884 Republican National Convention, but supported Blaine in the general election against Grover Cleveland. Lodge was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1886 before joining the United States Senate in 1893. In the Senate, he sponsored the unsuccessful Lodge Bill, which sought to protect the voting rights of African Americans, he supported the Spanish–American War and called for the annexation of the Philippines after the war.
He supported immigration restrictions, becoming a member of the Immigration Restriction League and influencing the Immigration Act of 1917. Lodge served as Chairman of the 1908 Republican National Conventions. A member of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, Lodge opposed Roosevelt's third party bid for president in 1912, but the two remained close friends. During the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, Lodge advocated entrance into World War I on the side of the Allied Powers, he became Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, emerging as the leader of the Senate Republicans. He led the opposition to Wilson's Treaty of Versailles, he most objected to the provision of the treaty that required all nations to repel aggression, fearing that this would erode Congressional powers and commit the U. S. to burdensome obligations. Lodge prevailed in the treaty battle and Lodge's objections would influence the United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations.
After the war, Lodge participated in the creation of the Washington Naval Treaty, which sought to prevent a naval arms race. He remained in the Senate until his death in 1924. Lodge was born in Massachusetts, his father was John Ellerton Lodge. His mother was Anna Cabot. Lodge grew up on Boston's Beacon Hill and spent part of his childhood in Nahant, Massachusetts where he witnessed the 1860 kidnapping of a classmate and gave testimony leading to the arrest and conviction of the kidnappers, he was cousin to the American polymath Charles Peirce. In 1872, he graduated from Harvard College, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, the Porcellian Club, the Hasty Pudding Club. In 1874, he graduated from Harvard Law School, was admitted to the bar in 1875, practicing at the Boston firm now known as Ropes & Gray. After traveling through Europe, Lodge returned to Harvard, in 1876, became one of the first recipients of a Ph. D. in history and government from Harvard. His dissertation dealt with the Germanic origins of Anglo-Saxon land law.
His teacher and mentor during his graduate studies was Henry Adams. Lodge was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1878. In 1881, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. In 1880–1882, Lodge served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Lodge represented his home state in the United States House of Representatives from 1887 to 1893 and in the Senate from 1893 to 1924. Along with his close friend Theodore Roosevelt, Lodge was sympathetic to the concerns of the Mugwump faction of the Republican Party. Nonetheless, both reluctantly supported protectionism in the 1884 election. Blaine lost narrowly. Lodge was a staunch supporter of the gold standard, vehemently opposing the Populists and the silverites, who were led by the populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan in 1896. Lodge was reelected time and again but his greatest challenge came in his reelection bid in January 1911; the Democrats had made significant gains in Massachusetts and the Republicans were split between the progressive and conservative wings, with Lodge trying to mollify both sides.
In a major speech before the legislature voted, Lodge took pride in his long selfless service to the state. He emphasized that he had never engaged in self-dealing, he campaigned on his own behalf but now he made his case, explaining his important roles in civil service reform, maintaining the gold standard, expanding the Navy, developing policies for the Philippine Islands, trying to restrict immigration by illiterate Europeans, as well as his support for some progressive reforms. Most of all he appealed to party loyalty. Lodge was reelected by five votes. Lodge was close to Theodore Roosevelt for both of their entire careers. However, Lodge was too conservative to accept Roosevelt's attacks on the judiciary in 1910, his call for the initiative and recall. Lodge stood silent when Roosevelt broke with the party and ran as a third-party candidate in 1912. Lodge voted for Taft instead of Roosevelt. In 1890, Lodge co-authored the Federal Elections Bill, along with Sen. George Frisbie Hoar, that guaranteed federal protection for African American voting rights.
Although the proposed legislation was supported by President Benjamin Harrison, the bill was blocked by filibustering Democrats in the Senate. In 1891, he became a member of the Mas
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is a publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, reference works, fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults. The company is based in Boston's Financial District; the company was known as Houghton Mifflin Company but changed its name following the 2007 acquisition of Harcourt Publishing. Prior to March 2010, it was a subsidiary of Education Media and Publishing Group Limited, an Irish-owned holding company registered in the Cayman Islands and known as Riverdeep. In 1832, William Ticknor and John Allen purchased a bookselling business in Boston and began to involve themselves in publishing. James Thomas Fields joined as a partner in 1843 and with Tickner gathered an impressive list of writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau; the duo formed a close relationship with Riverside Press, a Boston printing company owned by Henry Oscar Houghton. Houghton founded his own publishing company with partner Melancthon Hurd in 1864, with George Mifflin joining the partnership in 1872.
In 1878, Ticknor and Fields, now under the leadership of James R. Osgood, found itself in financial difficulties and merged its operations with Hurd and Houghton; the new partnership, named Houghton and Company, held the rights to the literary works of both publishers. When Osgood left the firm two years the business reemerged as Houghton and Company. Despite a lucrative partnership with Lawson Valentine, Houghton and Company still had debt it had inherited from Ticknor and Fields, so it decided to add partners. In 1884 James D. Hurd, the son of Melancthon Hurd, became a partner. In 1888, three others became partners as well: James Murray Kay, Thurlow Weed Barnes, Henry Oscar Houghton Jr. Shortly thereafter, the company established an Educational Department, from 1891 to 1908 sales of educational materials increased by 500 percent; the firm incorporated in 1908. Soon after 1916, Houghton Mifflin became involved in publishing standardized tests and testing materials, working with such test developers as E. F. Lindquist.
By 1921, the company was the fourth-largest educational publisher in the United States. In 1961, Houghton Mifflin famously passed on Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, giving it up to Alfred A. Knopf who published it in 1962, it is considered by many to be the bible of French cooking. Houghton Mifflin's strategic error was depicted in the 2009 film Julia. In 1967, Houghton Mifflin became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol HTN. In 1979, Houghton Mifflin acquired the children's division of Seabury Press. Under president Nader F. Darehshori Houghton Mifflin acquired McDougal Littell in 1994 for $138 million, an educational publisher of secondary school materials, the following year acquired D. C. Heath and Company, a publisher of supplemental educational resources. In 1996, the company created their Great Source Education Group to combine the supplemental material product lines of their School Division and these two companies. In 1998, HMH announced a sub-brand called LOGAL Software, to release a new line of interactive science software called Science Gateways, to support the United States curriculum.
As of 2017, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is offering the "Logal Science" brand as a licensing opportunity on its website. In 2017, it was announced that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt would be getting involved in TV production with a planned 2019 Netflix series that will revive the Carmen Sandiego franchise. Mergers and acquisitions activities have had major effects on this company. In 2001, Houghton Mifflin was acquired by French media giant Vivendi Universal for $2.2 billion including assumed debt. In 2002, facing mounting financial and legal pressures, Vivendi sold Houghton to private equity investors Thomas H. Lee Partners, Bain Capital, Blackstone Group for $1.66 billion, including assumed debt. On December 22, 2006, it was announced that Riverdeep PLC had completed its acquisition of Houghton Mifflin; the new joint enterprise would be called the Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group. Riverdeep paid $1.75 billion in cash and assumed $1.61 billion in debt from the private investment firms Thomas H. Lee Partners, Bain Capital and Blackstone Group.
Tony Lucki, a former non-executive director of Riverdeep, remained in his position as the company's chief executive officer until April 2009. Houghton Mifflin sold its professional testing unit, Promissor, to Pearson plc in 2006; the company combined its remaining assessment products within Riverside Publishing, including San Francisco-based Edusoft. On July 16, 2007, Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep announced that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Harcourt Education, Harcourt Trade and Greenwood-Heinemann divisions of Reed Elsevier for $4 billion; the expanded company would become Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. McDougal Littell was merged with Harcourt's Rinehart & Winston to form Holt McDougal. On December 3, 2007, Cengage Learning announced that it had agreed to acquire the assets of the Houghton Mifflin College Division for $750 million, pending regulatory approval. On November 25, 2008, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced a temporary freeze on acquisition of new trade division titles in response to the economic crisis of 2008.
The publisher of the trade division resigned in protest. Many observers familiar with the publishing industry saw the move as a devastating blunder. Harcourt Religion was sold to Our Sunday Visitor in 2009. On July 27, 2009, the Irish
Planter class
The planter class, known alternatively in the United States as the Southern aristocracy, was a socio-economic caste of Pan-American society that dominated seventeenth- and eighteenth-century agricultural markets through the forced labor of enslaved Africans. The Atlantic slave trade permitted planters access to inexpensive labor for the planting and harvesting of crops such as tobacco, indigo, tea, sugar cane, oil seeds, oil palms,hemp, rubber trees, fruits. In the American South, planters maintained a distinct culture characterized by its similarity to the manners and customs of the British nobility, whom many planters were related to, with an emphasis on chivalry and hospitality, the latter becoming a marked trait of modern Southern society; this southern culture with its landed gentry was distinctly different from areas north of the Mason–Dixon line and west of the Appalachians that were characterized by small land holdings worked by yeoman farmers without slave labor. After the American Civil War, many in this class saw their wealth reduced as the enslaved Africans were freed.
Union forces under Generals William T. Sherman and Phillip Sheridan had cut wide swaths of destruction through portions of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia destroying crops, killing or confiscating livestock, burning barns and gristmills, in some cases torching plantation houses and entire cities such as Atlanta in scorched earth tactics designed to starve the Confederacy into submission. After emancipation, many plantations were converted to sharecropping with freed Africans working as sharecroppers on the same land they had worked as slaves before the war. During the Gilded Age many plantations, no longer viable as agricultural operations, were purchased by wealthy northern industrialists as hunting retreats; some plantations became museums on the U. S. National Register of Historic Places. Planters were prolific throughout the British, French and Spanish colonies of North and South America, the West Indies. Members of this class include colonists Robert "King" Carter, William Byrd of Westover, many signers of the Declaration of Independence including Benjamin Harrison V, Thomas Nelson, Jr. George Wythe, Carter Braxton and Richard Henry Lee, Founding Fathers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Mary Chesnut, Valcour Aime, Sallie Ward, the fictional Scarlett O'Hara from the movie Gone with the Wind.
The search for gold and silver was a constant theme in overseas expansion, but there were other European demands the New World could satisfy, which contributed to its growing involvement in the Western-dominated world economy. While Spanish America seemed to fulfill dreams of mineral wealth, Brazil became the first major plantation colony in 1532, organized to produce a tropical crop – sugar – in great demand and short supply in Europe; the other major powers, England and the Netherlands, soon thereafter hoped to establish profitable colonies of their own. Presented with new opportunities, Europeans disenchanted by the rigid social structures of feudalism emigrated to the abundant virginal lands of the colonial frontier. Arriving through the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, settlers landed on the shores of an unspoiled and hostile countryside. Early planters first began as colony farmers providing for the needs of settlements besieged by famine and tribal raids. Native Americans friendly to the colonists taught them to cultivate native plant species including tobacco and fruits, which within a century would become a global industry itself funding a multinational slave trade.
Colonial politics would come to be dominated by wealthy noble landowners interested in commercial development. In an effort to reduce the financial burden of continental wars, European governments began instituting land pension systems by which a soldier an officer, would be granted land in the colonies for services rendered; this incentivized military professionals to settle in the Americas and thus contribute to colonial defense against foreign colonists and hostile Natives. John Rolfe, a settler from Jamestown, was the first colonist to grow tobacco in North America, he arrived in Virginia with tobacco seeds procured from an earlier voyage to Trinidad, in 1612 harvested his inaugural crop for sale on the European market. During the 17th century, the Chesapeake Bay area was immensely hospitable to tobacco cultivation. Ships annually hauled 1.5 million pounds of tobacco out to the Bay by the 1630s, about 40 million pounds by the end of the century. Tobacco planters financed their operations with loans from London.
When tobacco prices dropped precipitously in the 1750s, many plantations struggled to remain financially solvent. In an effort to combat financial ruin planters either pushed to increase crop yield or, with the depletion of soil nutrients, converted to growing other crops such as cotton or wheat. In 1720, coffee was first introduced to the West Indies by French naval officer Gabriel de Clieu, who procured a coffee plant seedling from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Paris and transported it to Martinique, he transplanted it on the slopes of Mount Pelée and was able to harvest his first crop in 1726, or shortly thereafter. Within fifty years there were 18,000 coffee trees in Martinique enabling the spread of coffee cultivation to Saint-Domingue, New Spain and other islands of the Caribbean; the French territory of Saint-Domingue began cultivating coffee in 1734, by 1788 supplied half the global market. The French colonial plantations relied on African slave laborers. However, the harsh conditions that slav
