The large landholders did not resist this power-sharing because they viewed their interests as much aligned with the small landholders. Small landholders were able to obtain a greater voice in the government (usually as voters and supporters not as actual candidates for office).
Slaves brought greater prosperity to white Virginians. Once the survival rate improved, it made economic sense to invest in slaves (obviously the slaves took a different view of the matter, but were powerless to act on those views).
As Morgan tells it, slavery was slow to catch on in Virginia mainly because of the frightful death rate of new servants. Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 was more the result of small landholders' desire to exterminate the local Indians than an attack on Governor Berkeley's administration.The Crown began to pay a bit more attention to the plight of the small landholders, but progress in that direction remained slow - until the advent of slavery. This artificial scarcity of good land pushed the small landholders farther away from the main settlements, which exposed them top greater risk of Indian attacks. Large landholders had collected many of their acres without actually farming it (in violation of the law). After tobacco prices dropped, the only people making money in Virginia were the members of the Royal Council who flagrantly used their places to assign government revenues to themselves.Small landholders had very little ability to resist the council members. The English elites sent to govern the colony instead took the lead in exploiting the labor of servants and small landholders. Despite regular and sizable infusions of new immigrants, the population of Virginia grew at a snail's pace.Early Virginia verged on the lawless. The death toll of diseases and, yes, starvation, were fearsome. Once tobacco emerged as a cash crop it became almost impossible to get any English Virginian to grow mere corn. They either could not or would not perform the tasks necessary to feed themselves. Morgan's focus, however, is on the Europeans (almost entirely English) and their relations amongst one another and vis a vis the Crown in England.For many years, the English struggled to survive. It became inhospitable for the Indians because of the Europeans attitudes and actions towards them (that is, after the Indians kept them alive for the first number of years). Morgan finds Virginia to be a most inhospitable place after the arrival of Europeans. Edmund Morgan departs from his usual topic of colonial New England for this painstaking, yet incisive examination of colonial Virginia.
0 kommentar(er)
