Starting with Virginia

Virginia was the first “formal” English/British colony in North America. Chronologically it is the province that should be initially considered since the second major colony, Puritan New England was founded a decade–actually two-later. Two previous attempts at founding a colony were made earlier by Sir Humphrey Gilbert (Newfoundland) and Sir Walter Raleigh (Virginia-Roanoke). They both failed. Both were previous to the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada. In 1603 Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors died and James 1, the first Stuart launched the first successful North American colony, Jamestown in 1607.

The historical mechanics that led to the establishment of Jamestown are rather straight-forward, and hopefully helpful in understanding the larger picture of what was going on then. First, the reader should restrain her/his “hindsight” knowledge and realize there were no instruction manuals and no prior experience in doing this colony thing. There was no capitalism, industrialization or even banks as we know them. Just a half-century before Henry the VIII was lopping off heads right and left, and compelling Englishmen into their version of the Protestant Revolution.

James 1 was new on the throne and he simply wanted to exploit access into North America and focusing on areas with the least threat of foreign attack. He was following the instincts of an transition economic system, mercantilism, which in his mind meant acquiring resources and rewards for England, and wealth-power for himself. Jamestown was going to be principally and foremost a business enterprise–and establishing a permanent settlement was not a principal objective. Gold or furs or something that would bring wealth back to England was what he wanted out this colonialization.  The tools he used, the old English joint stock corporation, and the Crown Proprietary Charter, were those that were lying around, and seemed appropriate and useful to the task at hand. 

In 1606 James approved a charter which simultaneous created two joint stock companies (the London and the Plymouth Companies). The first was granted land between the 34th-38th parallels, and the latter between the 41st and 45th parallels; the land in between was held in reserve for future action- also the Dutch and Swedes had colonies there. The western boundaries were initially two hundred miles inland–later extended to an unspecific boundary the Pacific in 1609. The latter modification was to be the source of considerable colonial border friction among the several colonies, not to ignore France and Spain (and even Russia). No one knew what was inland in 1609 and so it really didn’t matter.

In 1607 the London-Jamestown corporation sent out three ships with one hundred men and four boys tasked to find the Chesapeake and under loose directions (on a waterway, not on the coast so Spain wouldn’t know it was there, and more inland to trade with the Indians. Little thought was given to what skills the settlement needed when it arrived and set to build a post. Gentlemen, a bunch of crass opportunists, and a few more or less useful types were on board. The actual site was left to the leadership on the spot–and they chose to build Jamestown on a swamp. That swamp would like more future colonists than the Indians did. As Forest Gump said: “stupid is as stupid does”; the location decision was “stupid”, and that is the first reason why contemporary American states are different from each other. 

From the first, the Virginia settlement was in trouble … the decision to settle in a low swampy area was not desirable from the point of view of health, and it directly contravened the instructions from London … Political direction [i.e. who was in charge] and the purpose of the colony, was in practical everyday operation, disarranged. To administer the day-by-day affairs of the settlement, a local council had been appointed by a council in London composed of influential stockholders … [held in secret until in Virginia, and then opened up and members notified] … John Smith [who had been placed in key positions, but had on the trip over made himself hated by everybody on board] was barred from accepting his post by his colleagues on the council… More significant the principal questions were not satisfactorily answered: What crops should be planted … what trade should be initiated [99] Clarence L. Ver Steeg, The Formative Years, 1607-1763 (Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 22.

As to the initial years at Jamestown, they were horrible. Jamestown was a hell; nearly all who went over died in some charming ways. Captain John Smith did eventually take command and restore some order, and in 1611 Sir Thomas Dale was brought in with dictatorial authority, running the camp as some sort of military boot camp. The period 1609-10, today known as the “starving years” provides some insight to the reader. The company never figured out that they needed to reinforce the settlement with new population very early in the Spring; instead they sent hundreds over in early-late fall when there was no time to grow the food they would need to eat over the winter. So the few old and battered residents grew what food they could, only to have the huge swarm of new colonists literally eat them out of house and home. 

Things did get somewhat better after the first decade. We will return to that later in this module. But although the company did send over supplies and new replacement settlers, company “lotteries” [stock subscriptions] were not successful and the venture was quickly and grossly underfunded–no investment capital was raised. As we shall see, the company did make one, on the whole good decision during this period–it set up a local democratic self-government–but that was too little too late and until the Corporation was fired in 1624–and the charter taken away by the King–Jamestown and Virginia conformed to the worst Hollywood stereotypes of the Wild West–complete with gold and tobacco rushes. That too will be picked up shortly.

But next we must provide the reader with a sense of what “the settlement strategy” should have been and what in some version it was for the remaining twelve colonies. To understand the early colonial period, and cull out the economic development elements and features, we need to appreciate the goals, functions, and tools that were needed to found a community in the New World, the American Wilderness. We also need to apply the lessons and tasks we gleaned from the Self-Sufficiency Strategy Nexus.

Settlement

From the start The reader ought understand there will be variations in the initial settlement of each of the thirteen colonies. These variations significantly affect their subsequent development, political economic and social; logically, the variations partially account for why American states are different today. These variations which occur from the very first day of its founding through its multi decade settlement period explains my earlier assertion that states are different today because they never were the same in the past. The past matters today, and it is my job to do the best I can to demonstrate how and why.

The past starts with our birth as a state. They were in fact a colonial province during the colonial period. They were “hacked out of the wilderness” (the reality behind the self-sufficiency nexus) during the settlement process. It is a birthing process that as any parent knows yields a baby whose body and mental functions need to unfold for a period of time before the baby can assume some level of responsibility for its survival. So does a state or city.

Their basic and vital functions need to to be established (we call this institutionalization), and it has to develop some level of capacity (crawling-walking for example, breathing for another, digesting and eliminating (policy-making, ha ha)). Since economic development is a policy that must be fashioned and approved by the policy system of the province, we focus first on the policy system because to make policy it must institutionalize and develop its capacity sufficient to the making of an economic development policy.

Policy can be made by private individuals acting collectively or on their own, or, policy can be turned over to a government. Economic development in colonial periods are most privately made (government is supportive and reactive in most colonial policy systems) so we have to give some thought to who these private decision-makers/actors are and how/why they entered into the policy making business.

It may come as a surprise but the baby inherited much from its colonial parent, England, but it also on its own, out of necessity I suspect, adopted some forms and behaviors that were less developed than the parent possessed. Almost every colonial policy system adopted a government policy system that was in advance of the one existing in England at the time. In particular local self-government and provincial level legislatures exhibited more democratic features than their parent had at the time.

There is no inevitable reason why this happened; the Spanish/Portuguese in similar circumstances did not permit this local self government. England, however, entrusted the settlement process to a private joint stock company governed by Board of Directors, and that was imposed on Virginia in 1607 and would be imposed on other colonies. This was not universal to each of the thirteen colonies, however. 

South Carolina was never allowed local self-government and the company board of directors made the decisions and policies from London and Barbados. The local government of Charleston was created only during the first days of the American Revolution (weak advisory provincial legislature a few decades earlier). Its entire colonial period was governed by an absentee private individuals housed in a private corporation. Virginia started the settlement period under the auspices of a private joint stock company and its board of directors. The same will be true for Massachusetts and several other states.  In any case we will have to pay some attention to who is making the decisions in this period of settlement. 

The “who” of making decisions opens up our discussion to the question of the values, beliefs, and goals of those individuals making the settlement decisions in the province. This raises the issue of something we call political culture. We will find out that our colonies differed quite a bit from each other because the decision makers of each were not identical in their thinking, values or goals–even though they were English for the most part.

Colonies made different policies and conducted the settlement process differently because the values of the decision makers led them down different paths or directions. In our colonial period, religion play a seriously large role in affecting these decisions–as did the political events that were transpiring in what will be England’s most polarizing century (17th or the 1600’s), a century that witnessed a civil war, a religious transformation, and the development of a brand new economic system.

A good deal of those who came to American were trying to escape this stuff. So no surprise religion, property, the electoral franchise, and economic/social status will be linked in each provincial political culture in different, if interesting ways. This political culture thing will separate elites from masses, because as we shall discover the elites made the decisions and masses had to react. Some cultural value systems deal with cultures in their own cultural style and so the clash of cultures (a feature of our contemporary world) will be muted through much of the colonial period. Cultural clash usually takes time to express itself, so don’t expect to see it much during the birthing settlement process. But if we are sharp and perceptive we can see how each province will evolve its combination of elite/mass political cultures.

Hopefully, the reader senses the critical importance of the settlement period. In the paragraphs below I will offer several clues as to what to look for in Virginia–and will offer some comparison with other colonies as appropriate to develop your appreciation that each colony’s settlement period was in its way quite unique, and that subtle uniqueness will lead them down different paths to institutionalization and development of their political/policy-making life and economic bases. Remember “As the Twig is Bent, so Grows the Tree”. 

The London-Jamestown Company and its board of directors were not especially concerned with the colony’s settlement governance than they were with the economic base they hoped to establish. It will be of little surprise then to hear the policy-making during the first decade of Jamestown’s existence was literally a pretty rough, Wild West affair. Between 1607 and 1609 about 500 colonists were sent in; in 1610 after the starving season only about 60 survived.

In May of 1610, after a ship arrived, the decision was made by the locals Jamestown to abandon the location, and head back to England. They were stopped only when several more ships, with a new governor and three hundred plus colonists came in and ended the exodus. The new governor restored order, but ran the settlement in the manner of a Spartan military camp, complete with communal agriculture.

Other ships followed, with a few women, some cattle, and even a few artisans.  in the next few years, and a second settlement was established nearby on Henrico Island (1611). Warfare with the local tribes was intermittent to the extend it was constant, and cruelties and treachery on both sides meant coexistence was impossible for each. The Massacre of 1622 nearly wiped out the white European population, most of which was scattered in isolated farms and ventures along the coast. This was only the first in a string of 17th century Indian wars. Each summer the “summer sickness” wiped out large numbers, and so despite the fact ships arrived full of new inhabitants, who fleshed out the skills needed for survival, lack of food, Indians, and summer sickness meant the province survived but did not prosper.

The mortality rate did little to impress either potential immigrants or the corporate board of directors. The authoritarian style of its most effective governor, Sir Thomas Dale was so severe–it had to be probably–that only the toughest endured. The policy system, if such it could be called, was that of a military fort or a prison. “The most draconian penalties were imposed, such as shootings, burnings at the stake, hanging, and “breakings on the wheel” … a whipping for the first offense, a bodkin thrust through the tongue for a second, and death for the third “[99]  Virginius Dabney, Virginia: the New Dominion (the University Press of Virginia, 1971),  p. 22.

If this is an example of a policy system, then we ought to stop now. This was one hell of a settlement process,  infertile to establish a political culture, and no  economic base attempted.  Virginia’s first decade is the ultimate example of the complete failure of the self-sufficiency strategy.  was so bad even the board of directors realized something drastic had to be done. In 1619 the board sent instructions that the governor was to establish an elective provincial level assembly.

The actual instructions have since been lost but the governor upon receipt issued a statute that provided to every adult male (including indentured servants) the right to vote for the assembly. In July 1619 what was to become the Virginia Houses of Burgesses convened–it was the first representative assembly established in North America. The Virginia franchise was broader and more democratic than enjoyed by any English citizen. It is interesting to note its existence was not the result of agitation or demands from Jamestown’s residents, but from the decision of a corporate board of directors attempting to promote a more effective development of the Virginia economy, which would result of course in corporate profits.

Whatever the motivation, the establishment of a democratic provincial legislature, a near universal franchise. Two representatives  from each of the eleven jurisdictions that existed at that time were elected. Along with the House, the Governor (George Yeardley) appointed himself, and others to a upper house which was then called the Royal Council. From 1619 to 1643, the Burgesses In a single bold stroke the Board through its governor had installed Virginia’s first democratic policy system.

It would have been unthinkable for Spanish sovereigns … to have permitted this degree of self-government within the Spanish settlements … in the 1530’s the Spanish sovereign Charles I banned representative bodies in the new world … These [electoral] specifications were far more democratic than anywhere else in the world, including England. … Meeting in the [Jamestown] church building, this first assembly exercised legislative, executive and judicial authority, but its jurisdiction was naturally confined to local problems. [99] Clarence L. Ver Steeg, The Formative Years, 1607-1763 (Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 22.

Start Here –View the Word latest addition for transfer from C2ER and my subsequent additions. Cut and paste and integrate new, modifications, and the old

Religion played a very minimal role in these years. This was more a “gold rush” than a settlement process. One can well imagine none of this impressed the local Indian tribe, and relations were rocky to say the least. As the reader will discover relations with the Native Americans will be a very important element in the settlement process, and Virginia did not do much more than dispossess the tribes and sporadically war-than-negotiate with them.

The colonists were overwhelmingly male–younger and single–on the make (opportunistic), and these demographics are not likely to yield a policy system that anyone wants to live under. Say it another way, there were very few families and women in Virginia in these early years. Population growth was not explosive but Indian relations were. 

, and only through the determined innovation of John Rolfe, was it able to stumble upon an agricultural product, tobacco, whose European demand was sufficient to support the development of a plantation-indentured servant/slave-export economic base. In its drive for profit, tobacco plantations diffused along the coastline rivers and inlets, and by 1625, when the corporation collapsed and the Crown took over, the settlement pattern and economic base of Tidewater Virginia was well-established and continued by the Crown-appointed Governors.

As the reader will see this Wild West initial settlement period will take well over thirty years to settle out into something like a community. Accordingly, the reader will legitimately be wondering if anyone is really in charge of Virginia’s birth and settlement. The policy system that will scratch its way into a more mature era, will resemble more a “king of the hill” style than any consensual and rational discussion. One might also sense the “elites” will be quick to emerge and the masses will be sure to follow. Suffice it to say, this was not the experience Massachusetts went through.

To provide some order these first Crown governors necessarily created a rudimentary local government system, based on counties, administered by a county court led and controlled by these plantation owners. Dominating the county court, the Anglican parish, the militia, and the economic base of the surrounding area, these plantation owners incrementally extended the economic base through the coastal Tidewater and became the de facto pillar of Crown colony governance. Appointed to serve on the Governor’s Royal Advisory Council, and then elected to the first democratic colony-level representative body, the House of Burgesses, these locally-based plantation elites developed into a force that could, through its connections of British political institutions/king, challenge the Governor himself. By the early 1640’s the essential institutional and policy-making features of the future Virginia policy system were already in place. With dominance over the local political and religious institutions, the core pillar of the local economic base, the plantation owners were able to dominate gubernatorial appointments to the colony Royal Council, and the colony’s representative body, the Burgesses. This was in reality a bottoms-up, decentralized policy system dominated by county-level plantation elites.

In the 1640’s, several events combined to cement this policy system into a coherent and sustainable policy system that in essential form continued until the 1850’s Early Republic. The first was the English Civil War–and the subsequent Cromwell Puritan Revolution. In the near-anarchy of this period, the British Crown was literally killed, a Parliament was victorious, and in the 1660’s the Crown was “restored”–a shell, however. of its former self. In this period, Crown administration and Cromwell lack of interest, left Virginia on its own–a void which was significantly filled by Virginia plantation elites. The second event was the appointment (1642) of perhaps Virginia’s strongest, most controversial Crown governor (William Berkeley), a Royalist in a Puritan British policy system, who autonomously, oft-times in conjunction with local plantation elites, embarked on a series of economic development initiatives over a thirty-five year period (1642-77). While not consciously intended, the aggregation of these ED initiatives, produced what is now called the Tidewater political culture.

Berkeley combined two ED strategies, people-attraction and land development. Over three decades Berkeley attracted British Royalist elites to Virginia through promotional campaigns that promised an offer to refugee Royalists they couldn’t refuse. Providing each with sizable land grants, and incentives to import an indentured servant workforce, Berkeley established a series of new plantations into the Tidewater, eastern shore, and southeast Virginia, thereby replicating the manor-like local county policy systems and extending them to fill in the entire Tidewater area, and to cross, for the first time, into the above the Fall Line Piedmont plateau–a dramatic growth in Virginia, its size, economic base and population. Berkeley in effect, through elite recruitment, land grants and incentives to import a dependent workforce, generated Virginia’s “take off”.

Naturally, the growth generated tensions, and the vulnerable point in the Virginia policy system was indentured servants who lived through their period of service, and unable to establish themselves in a mass plantation economic base became, in effect, an agricultural lumpen-proletariat. In the 1660’s they revolted (Bacon’s Rebellion), and came within a stone’s throw of overthrowing Berkeley. Berkeley made his deal with the plantation elites, he altered the election franchise to remove those adult males who did not own property, making plantation owners and their associates the dominant force in local elections. White former indentured servants, as well as indentured servants were dispossessed of much of their civil, political and individual rights, often driven to the dangerous and undeveloped peripheries of Virginia, leaving behind Tidewater and Piedmont counties to American manor-lords and their families. Royalist British aristocrats and gentry had recreated in America as best they could, the English pre-Civil War manor-driven policy system and economic base. Under these new manor-patriarchy elites, indentured servants were replaced by imported black slaves, so by the turn of the eighteenth century (1710 or so) all of European-settled Virginia–to the foothills of Appalachian Mountains –had set in place a coherent tobacco export plantation economy, with a black slave workforce, and a largely disenfranchised white lumpen-proletariat.

That change, over the next fifty, years cemented a local oligopoly-patriarchy who was able to dominate the House of Burgesses, the Governor’s Royal Council, and isolated the Royal (Lieutenant) Governor. During this period, of necessity, Berkeley empowered local county governments/county courts, giving them ample policy discretion over important policy areas (including Anglican parish affairs) and issues, leaving most of day-to-day Virginia policy-making and implementation in the hands of counties dominated by the patriarchy. The Virginia Tidewater’s key and essential policy-relevant system rested on its counties, dominated by a manor-patriarchy, who served or or were elected to the key institutions of Virginia colony-wide policy-making bodies. What follows from this post 1700 Virginia policy system is that at minimum:

(1) the policy system is not a modern democracy even though it involves “democratic” elections. The House of Burgesses, for example, as do the county court system excludes from participation not only women, and slaves/indentured servants, but a considerable portion of the adult white, male residency. This is not an accident in that until the 1670’s that element did enjoy the write to vote. Exclusion came following Bacon’s Rebellion. In any case land ownership or lifelong lease were prerequisites. In that the determination of franchise eligibility was made at the county level, and since land was usually granted to individuals in bulk by the colony or governor, acquiring land was controlled by the few land grantee landowners in the community. In practical terms, the area’s plantation owners likely owned or could influence the sale of land to buyers. Indirectly, they could limit the electoral franchise and determine whether an individual was to rent, sharecrop, or own land. This affected indentured servants who completed their contract mostly. Post 1650 colony legislation, for the next half-century, significantly curtailed the rights of indentured servants, and also imposed limitations on the contract provisions that required sale of land on expiration of contract. Finally, not only did this matter affect the performance of the policy system, but, in economic development terms, it came close to ensuring a cheap, controlled workforce;

(2) the political culture that formed after 1650, our Tidewater political culture, not only reinforced the policy system under discussion, but arguably as important it was primarily an elite political culture which may, or may not, have included significant elements of the general population. This Tidewater culture was reflective of the manor-patriarchy-plantation owners, their families, and allies in an area’s population. The Tidewater culture therefore was more relevant to colony-wide bodies, such as the Royal Council and House of Burgesses, and would likely have heavily impact the county court decision-making and implementation. Bacon’s Rebellion might alert us, however, that other elements of the general population did not necessarily embrace the Tidewater culture. Also as will be evident in these following modules, the Tidewater political culture evolved particularly in the middle eighteenth century when young generational cohorts, affected by the Enlightenment, the First Great Awakening, and the all-too-evident weaknesses of a slave-based plantation tobacco export economic base became obvious

Conclusion and Segue Way

Starting our history with Virginia, I consciously focus on the agrarian roots of the Early American Republic, the colony that first imported black slaves, but also on a state that played a vital role played by that state in in our colonial history and the Early Republic. I do so because at the time of the Revolution Virginia was the nation’s most populous state, and during the first fifty years of the Early Republic its representatives were the largest state delegation in the House of Representative–one of five representatives in our 1789 First Congress was Virginian. Virginians dominated the Executive Branch. Four of the first five Presidents were Virginians, and the sole exception, the Adams administration included a Virginian as its Vice-President. The first major incursion into the trans-Appalachian hinterland interior originated from Virginia; the first in a series that finally ended in Hawaii and Alaska.

So Virginia Tidewater elites were prominent and very early advocates of independence from Britain, and their leaders were exceedingly critical to key documents such as the Declaration of Independence, and the Early Republic Constitution. Virginia delegate votes provided the muscle that approved both documents. Virginia elites played the central role in the initial political institutionalization of the Early Republic. It was the same Virginian that led the Continental Army during the Revolution who launched the political institutionalization of the the Early Republic national government during its first eight years after 1789. The polarization political institutionalization caused formed the first two political “Tribes” (Federalist and Anti-Federalist/Democrat-Republican) both led by Virginians. The political chasm that clash created, the contested relationship of national to state levels of government, remains with us today (states rights, even Red and Blue States). In short, Virginia is a natural to lead off our bottoms-up history of American state and local economic development.

Political Culture

This history rests on its assertion that each state possesses its version of a political culture(s) it inherited or configured from the original thirteen colonies and brought to that state by its first residents and taxpayers. In this module we begin the outline of Virginia’s settlement and the development of its distinctive political culture–a culture I take great pains to impress on the reader greatly impacted our nation, its politics and values. In short order in the following chapters we will encounter other such colonial-Early Republic political cultures such as Yankee, Midlands, Deep South, and Scots-Irish, Midwest and Heartlands, Left Coast, (and New Orleans-Louisiana), Texan Southwest, and Mountain political cultures. We will even make a wild stab at explaining a New York City’s and San Francisco’s political culture. In later chapters we will explore Black American political culture, and open up the idea of Hispanic and immigrant cultures–but that is many chapters in the future. Today, after nearly two hundred and fifty years, our states, cities, counties–and even to a certain degree, census regions–have evolved, developed their distinctive political cultures which affect economic/community development policy-making and implementation.

Each state and its local policy systems rests on its somewhat unique political culture and its ever-changing mix of new-comers exiting and entering their boundary confines. From this the reader might rightfully sense that my notion of state political culture does not imply the existence of a single monopolistic political culture, but an ever-volatile clash and cooperation of a mixture of political cultures that struggle to be heard in its policy systems. While at some level we probably think “a state is a state” and “a city is a city”, in our heart of hearts we fully appreciate that states and cities differ hugely from each other. The formulation, definition, approval and implementation of policy, certainly economic and community development, can, despite being called by a common name, vary greatly across cities and states. A tax abatement in Maryland is not the same tax abatement one is likely to find in Missouri–except in a classroom or an academic work.

In each state there may, or may not, be a dominant political culture–but there is a culture–or a compromise/clash between cultures–that has been embedded into its constitution and political structures, institutions, and relationships that it creates. These initial institutions and practices have, of course, been amended–but not replaced; it is hard to replace a branch of government like a legislature or governor. Separation of powers, however, is quite another matter. Local governments, created by the state, are more volatile at least in theory. These initial structures of the 17th century, with their procedures and institutions, were created for reasons and reflect preferences as to “the who “and “how” policy-making should be conducted. Practice and reality being what it is, the original intentions can be easily subverted and bypassed–but then then is the matter of rule of law and judicial review, not to ignore policy-relevant intrusions from the environment (like the federal government) which compel their input. All these factors and dynamics offer plenty of opportunity for creative and idiosyncratic adaptations which over time become cemented into a distinctive way to conduct state and local business and politics–and to make and implement policies such as economic development.

I am not inclined to engage in a long theoretical discussion of what constitutes a political culture, a discussion which inevitably culminates in a formal definition of political culture–which is promptly tossed aside (thankfully) soon after. Let’s be content to ground ourselves with my amended adaptation of James Anderson’s description of political culture as “widely held values, beliefs, and attitudes on what governments [and economies, and society] should do, how they should operate, and [key] relationships between citizen and government [consumer and producer, and private and public]. Political culture is transmitted by one generation to another by socialization, a process in which the individual through many experiences with parents, friends, teachers, [religious and] political leaders … learns politically relevant values, beliefs and attitudes … [becoming] part of his or her psychological makeup [and value priorities] [1]. Every policy system, state, local or national, rests on a bed composed of political cultures. It is why we have the Red and Blue states today; it is why we had the Union and Confederacy. If there is a truth that really exists in reality, it might be that America as a nation never has enjoyed a single political culture–and to let the reader know where I stand–hopefully will never have such a single American culture. From the get-go, like it or not, we were based on a diversity of cultures–even when we were predominately white and European in background.

We are a nation composed of a federation-coalition of cultures who work to fashion a shared vision. Without a majority-consensus the system is tiled to non-action. But the perhaps controversial starting point of this history, as suggested by Colin Woodard, is that “Americans have been deeply divided since the days of Jamestown and Plymouth. The original North American colonies were settled by people from distinct regions … each with their own religious, political and ethnographic characteristics … All of these centuries-old cultures are still with us today, and have spread their people, ideas and influence across … the continent. There isn’t and never has been one America, but several Americas. ..(O)ur divisions stem from this fact: the United States is a federation comprise of the whole or part of … regional nations, some of which truly do not see eye to eye with one another. … Few have shown any indication that they are melting into some sort of unified American culture. On the contrary since 1960 the fault lines between these nations have been growing wider, fueling culture wars, constitutional struggles, and ever more frequent pleas for unity“[2].

Let’s look inside this political culture thing.

There is an elite political culture and also a larger set of political cultures held by non-elites. That distinction is important to economic development. One form of economic development, Mainstream Economic Development (MED), is closely associated with a closed, elite dominated pro-“capitalist” policy system. The other form of economic development, Community Development, works with non-elites, often seeing itself as the delegate of the distressed and dis-empowered who not unusually look askance at capitalism. From this it is but a small step to talk of things like populism. Indeed, in the next Chapter 1 we will discover that Federalists and western populists were already at war in the Pennsylvania’s statehouse during the 1780’s. In this chapter we will introduce the notion that the American Revolution itself, was started by populists and taken over by elites who became Federalists, were the architects of the Early Republic. This gave rise to the notion of an “interrupted revolution” that will be placed on the hot burner when we talk about Andrew Jackson, and if we live long enough Donald J. Trump. The larger point of bringing up populism is that while rare, populism has played a great role in shaping American economic and community development.

We will discover the strength and the content of each economic development approach ultimately is derived from different sets of political cultures as applied by its policy systems in a given state, city or county. That easily results in intra-state variation, between suburb and central city, different economic bases, and among the sub-regions of the state. Equally important, one can sense that elites and “masses” benefit differently from various economic development policies, strategies and tools, and that policy-making in economic/community development can easily assume an elite-mass dimension. While (mainstream) economic developers (usually not community developers) often decry politics in their policy-making, preferring of course to rely on their bureaucratic and professional expertise as criterion for policy, that too is a usually a chimera. Few policy systems at the state and local levels leave ED policy-making solely to the undisturbed preferences of its bureaucracies and professionals. That may be an important reason why community developers and economic developers are currently at war with each other.

Where do cultures start and how do they move around, you may ask?

They started in the thirteen original English colonies that became the Articles of Confederation (1776) and the states of  American Early Republic (1789). Each of these colonies were settled by different people, for different reasons, in different time periods. Migrants to each of these colonies found a distinct geography and climate–which in an agricultural, pre-industrial time meant a great deal to the formation of distinctive colony-specific economic bases–obviously pretty important to a definition of what economic development is supposed to do. Broadly speaking, each colony was settled by its own specific set of “migrants” in distinctive time-specific migrations from mostly Europe. None to my knowledge came with the invitation of the original settlers (migrants themselves from 10,000 or so years previously), our Native Americans. We will not ignore that topic, but will discuss how it impacted our American ED beginning in this chapter.

Bernard Bailyn described four “circuits” (Virginia the third) or routes–waves of migration that carried distinctive groupings of people to a distinctive geography (destination in America) [3]. Bailyn was by far not the first who described these colonial era migrations–a literature so vast, it defies summary–but he is among the best. He outlines different value-systems–economic bases occupied separate geographies of each, and leads us to understand that in aggregate these separate migrations created a separate regions. North and South is the easy natural region which all can grasp easily, but even within the distinct created by the Mason-Dixon Line, we will see other regions emerge, such as New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Tidewater and so on. So intense and so pervasive, regions remain critically important not only to our history but to Contemporary United States. That these distinctive value systems, economic bases and regional variations is central to American economic development policy and strategy is one of the weight-bearing pillars, a “driver” of this history. Regions were created by distinctive migrations.

Value differences, different configurations in economic bases, and the importance of regions emerge when we look up from the perspective of where we live. Viewed from the bottoms-up we can see how states differ, why Cincinnati is not Cleveland, Minneapolis is not St. Paul, St Louis is not East St. Louis, Dallas is not San Antonio, or even El Paso, and Boston is not San Francisco–which is not Oakland. New York is almost unique among American cities–and has little in common with Los Angeles, except of course, the statistical correlations whose explanation imply a commonality encased in meaningless ideological distinctions stripped of people and historical legacies. I dare not even mentions suburban distinctions. Don’t get me started on SMSAs.

Time, being what it is, redistributes the weight of migrations, but time also in its own way hardens these differences often by forcing change into its distinctive patterns, value priorities, procedural mannerisms. In so doing  regions and their member states find a way to express change in their distinctive skeleton-like political and economic structures/institutions core to each state. Thus our values systems and political cultures are both timeless and timely. They are also so basic, like our DNA that they remain obscured by the fog of history and submerged so deep into our procedures, institutions, and political structures they defy our ability to sense their presence. That–by the way (BTW) is the real importance of our bottoms=up approach to history.

Values are felt most keenly in the streets, malls, grocery stores, city-halls–schools and EDOs– of the policy systems most close to the individuals who hold them. What I am saying is that values of hundreds of years in the past are encased in the key political structures of our states and shared within distinctive regions–the state constitution is the primary political structure, but the institutions of policy-making, the relationship of public and private, the legislatures and executives, and the rule of law also contain past embedded political cultures. That conception may not be easy to grasp at this point, but hear me out, as I develop the concept I think you will see the logic and see how it persists to the present day.

When people migrate, across our nation and from other nations, they do not pack their values, experiences, expectations and memories in their suitcases. They carry them in their hearts and minds–and pass them on as best they can to their offspring–and to the governments and businesses with which they deal. It would be a real frustration if such migrants were diffused randomly across geography and time periods–no single migrant would theoretically stand out, and all would be crushed in a deluge of humanity. Talk about alienation. Fortunately, that was not the usual case.

Migrations in particular periods of time, were seldom random–until and unless we put quotas of immigration. Migrants in a time period usually shared much in common–and most importantly whenever possible they settle together in a common location. While the numbers are small compared to today’s standards, they are large in Early Republic terms, and it does not taken many to overwhelm an isolated wilderness geography. Essentially, I argue that migrations are what we call today, Big Sorts. What Bill Bishop described is something that happened in the 1600’s, and continued throughout our history. Colonial migrations were the First Big Sort.

The history will first concentrate on several of the larger, hugely critical migrations that settled the trans-Appalachian interior, straight to the Mississippi River. Accordingly, the New York/upper Midwest Diaspora Yankee Diaspora, the Deep South Rise of the Cotton Belt, and the two migrations that settled the states bordering on the Mason-Dixon line–a migration composed mostly of Tidewater and Pennsylvania Midlands groupings. In later chapters we will also deal with the unspoken black slave migration, the settlement of Texas, and the Far West. Left for its own special treatment is New York City–and by implication New Jersey. Each of these migrations is of sufficient volume that its migration into new wilderness states noticeably impacted the formation of that state’s political culture. Virginia being the first, arguably the single most impactful in the first half-century of the Early Republic, and among the most complicated, we will also introduce key concepts useful in applying to the other migrations.

All told, between 1607 and 1775 little more than 700,000 Europeans, and 300,000 African slaves immigrated into the thirteen colonies. The first Early Republic census in 1790 uncovered 3.9 million plus citizens, 3.1 million whites and 750,000 blacks. Nobody counted Native Americans [4]. One implication from those numbers is that “chain” migration, immigrants and their natural (organic)-born offspring, were quite mobile, and having spent some indeterminate time in a port city, moved on to hinterland and points elsewhere. Daniel Boone, for example, was born in Pennsylvania, his father and mother English-born Quaker immigrants, who later moved to Maryland and Virginia. Boone considered himself Virginian, moved to North Carolina, and founded Boonesborough in Virginia’s Kentucky county with the intention of founding a brand new state. Despite his notoriety, he was not all that atypical.

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The Tidewater elite would fragment into factions, each with their variations of cultural values, beliefs and priorities. In each historical period there were dissidents, and individual members could be positioned on a cultural continuum. As the Revolution appeared on the horizon, it too further fragmented the Tidewater culture. George Washington and his neighbor and close friend, George Mason, shared much, but parted as political enemies as Washington headed a Federalist administration and Mason led the Virginia “anti-Federalist-states-rights” faction. As the Revolution appeared on the horizon, it too further fragmented the Tidewater culture.What will be counter-intuitively evident in 19th century chapters, the Tidewater culture would enter into a more “romantic” revisionist version, the so-called “cavalier” that would in its time be “gone with the wind”. Culture is important but its impact shifts over time, as does the content of the culture. As we proceed deeper into our history, we will sharpen and add depth to the role of political culture. This module is an introduction, not the last word on that topic.

(3) a body of political culture literature makes reference to a “deference” political culture amid the general population, to which I do not completely subscribe. While considerable elements of the general population did not expect their opinion to matter, that need not be because they “deferred to their betters”. There were many practical reasons why participation in political matters in the 17th and 18th centuries was secondary to most in the general population. Living in a small, isolated, wilderness-hacked community, with a semi-controlled access to its economic base, a state religion prescribed by the colony and heavily influenced by local elites, who also controlled the physical and regulatory powers of local government made political participation an oft-times risky affair. Voting was by “voice”, not ballot–usually to the sheriff, a member of the local elite community. Finally, the day-today realities of an agricultural community imposed time limitations, isolated homesteads in hostile territories, and a skill-set not congruent with political involvement. Local elites did provide critical resources including seed, grist mills, and even financing.

The reader should realize the view of political culture followed in this history deviates significantly from textbook conventional descriptions of “hard and fast” list of beliefs, values, and principles.

 

Pre-Capitalist, Agricultural Economic Base Economic/Community Development Strategies

I no doubt am shocking the reader when I make the incredible statement that economic/community development in colonial and Early Republic America is not identical to contemporary American economic and community development. I also host crazy ideas such as a one year old baby is not the same as the seventy-two year old adult. So much for sarcasm. To say, however, the two have nothing in common–that one is not relevant to the other–is the real crazy idea. I have evolved over the years, but I still am that baby–with its DNA, parentage, life experiences, and latent ability and weaknesses now expressed. So too American economic development. It was born in 1607 and through the colonial years it grew up, matured into its teens during the Early Republic, and grew to early adulthood after the Civil War. If this metaphor works for the reader than the historical period described in this book is American ED’s pre-adulthood. If I may make one more assertion, I suspect that most of us would agree that our experiences in that period of our lives are still remembered, did affect and tilt our evolution, but did not necessarily “cause” or compel what we eventually became. Future events shaped us as well as what we experienced in these early years. This history agrees with that position. One last thought, at seventeen I chose to become a history major in college–and I still trying 55 years later to weave my way in that profession. There are some things that don’t change.

To make this book understandable to a contemporary reader, a realization that George Washington’s world was radically different from ours is essential. Like a fantasy novel we must be willing to understand the world in which our principal characters live, and do our best not to force them to live in our world. We have hindsight, but hindsight can allow us to project today backward to the past. That is fatal to our enterprise. We must live in George’s world to understand why he made the decisions he did, and thought the way he thought. We never have to agree with these; owning slaves for example, but only to recognize that in George’s world this was not unusual, even if controversial even then. George died of an infection that was easily treatable today; he also was one of the very first in 1776 to inoculate the American army against smallpox. His venture capital injection pioneered the steamboat innovation that matured nearly a decade after his death. Washington was a frontiersman as we have already learned; he fought Indians–and was defeated by them. He personally crossed several times the Appalachians and saw the then American west. He outlined the path for a canal in New York state, forty years before it was built.

So too with the realities of his world. America for all practical purposes was a remote isolated wilderness when George was born in 1732. Moreover, George was born in a period when England’s economy was beginning a huge revolution–the industrial revolution which many believe began “formally” about 1750 in England, and over the next hundred years or so expanded to the European continent, and as we will see cross over the Atlantic to our eastern seaboard. Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations in 1776, Dickens, a commentator on capitalism, was born in 1812 and wrote Oliver Twist in 1839. Just saying … finance-industrial capitalism did not spring up wholly formed in 1750; it evolved over a considerable period of time to become the hated thing it is today. America, wilderness and all, lived and grew during capitalism’s pre-adulthood, and it reflects that evolution, warts and all. The capitalism Washington knew, was not the same as Henry Clay’s capitalism, nor Abraham Lincoln’s. The period of time described in this book was a period of constant change as disruptive as any created by the internet–I think considerably more.

The point is not that George is a great guy, but that America was a wilderness when he was president–and would remain so for quite a few decades after. The economic development we describe in these early chapters then is a pre-capitalist, wilderness American economic development.

Crown pushback, migrations, port and town building, tobacco regulation, county empowerment, the rise of land development and tobacco realities

In the beginning it began with land, and land was the first economic development strategy. In an age of kings, transitioning their power to the nobility and upper gentry, the initial primary ED strategy necessarily fell into the domain of what we call Mainstream Economic Development. Land “for the people” will soon make its appearance, and Community Development and the land strategy will in the future have its day–but not in this chapter. Virginia was the first British colony, and it evolved under different conditions and factors than, for example, Massachusetts which started its settlement in the 1620’s and 1630’s. That is my gentle way of reminding the reader that American states are different today, if only because they never were the same. They were always different from each other. Virginia’s version of ED will be different from Massachusetts’s, even in the 17th century.

There are three separate factors-dynamics that I wish to isolate which affected greatly the economic development strategies described in these early chapters. The first, already discussed, is population movement, i.e. migration/immigration. In 1780 the United States had a bit less than four million inhabitants. in 1880 over fifty million. Since America was a wilderness that meant inevitably a critical task of economic development was to create the places in which these folk could live. This is city/town/settlement-building and it will be a first-order economic development strategy, with many associated strategies such as people-attraction. How migrants/immigrants got to the place they finally settled in was an element of city-building strategy, as well as an ED strategy in its own right. People-attraction today is closely associated with tourism, but also includes suburb developments, gated communities, new cities for special groupings–and more. That strategy has, of course, evolved. In colonial/Early Republic America economic developers didn’t attract businesses–few existed–they attracted people. The people they attracted became entrepreneurs, wage-earners, or homesteaders. More on this shortly.

The second factor-dynamic is the evolution of American economic bases during this period of time. It was only in 1920 that urban residents finally outnumbered rural-agricultural residents. In these early chapters (the entire book, in fact), American economic bases, state and local, were overwhelmingly agricultural. Manufacturing, finance, and commercial trade/logistics was about five to ten percent of the population before 1800. By the end of the Civil War Big Industrial Cities had developed (in certain states), and agriculture no longer was the primary economic base (in certain states). The rise of manufacturing, commerce/trade, and finance/communication, the Early Republic sector gazelles, developed first alongside agriculture, then (in certain states) displaced agriculture–and where that happened cities grew hugely. They call it urbanization today, and economic development as we know it is very closely connected to this urbanization and the industrialization that fueled it.

Economic development strategies will be caught up in this–and from them one wing of our profession, Mainstream ED will find a home. As these cities grew, as Dickens in England discovered, there were some very negative consequences–and that would fuel a second wing of economic development, community development. in these very early chapters, we will necessarily focus on Mainstream ED which takes the lead in city-building, people-attraction, and fostering sector change in a community’s economic base. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, the economic base pre-1800 is overwhelmingly agricultural so that was the economic base pre-18000 economic developers had to work around.

The primary ED strategy that could combine both city-building and agricultural growth was “land development”. America was an unsettled wilderness, and economic developers were in the business of settling it. So they had to acquire land in the wilderness, market it to attract people, build an infrastructure so they could access it and live in it. Then they had to sell it to the migrant. That’s what George Washington was trying to do on a mass scale. He also, as we shall discover, personally laid the cornerstone and directed the building of his “Federal City”, which, BTW, he hoped would be Virginia’s export port. Also, frustrated with the progress in his steamboat innovation, Washington tasked Thomas Jefferson with writing the nation’s first patent law (1790)–a job Jefferson botched up so badly that we do not call him the “Father of American Innovation”.

If you combine this land development and city-building one inevitably creates a “point A” and a “point B”. There’s money to be made if one can find a way to for A to connect to B. So another economic development strategy came into play. I give it a very fancy long-winded name: developmental transportation infrastructure strategy (DTIS). They called it “internal improvements” and it meant building roads, bridges, ferries, ports, canal, and eventually railroads. Washington pioneered this ED strategy with his Patowmack Canal and steamboat innovation. That strategy will consume many a chapter in our history. Since it really took off after 1815, we will leave this strategy for future chapters–even though it is evident even in colonial America.

We will, however, tackle an element of that strategy–how to finance civic, economic base and internal improvements and how individual migrants/people were able (or not) to access funds to pay for their migration and settlement in these new-fangled cities, homesteads and settlements. A word of introduction on that topic–banks did not yet exist, neither did mortgages or even loans as we know them today. Finance is going to be an important strategy for economic developers to get involved with during this period. Clue … have you ever heard of a lottery? Have you ever heard of “export” financing or tariffs? “Buy American (i.e. import substitution)”?  “Land Grant”? A Squatter? Hard Species vs. Paper Money?  Tax Abatement? Eminent Domain? Where, oh where, did investment capital come from? The reader must be beside herself with excitement at the prospect of dealing with all this? These topics saturate our following modules.

The third factor-dynamic that consumed this historical period is to evolve from a late medieval/early modern policy system into a early modern democratic policy system. You cannot escape the reality that economic development strategies and programs are policy outputs from a policy system of some sort. When we start this tale the American states were English colonies, ultimately governed by a King, Parliament, and some weird thing called the Board of Trade located in London. England extracted goods and services, and profit from the colonies and that really limited economic growth in America. So for that and taxation without representation we “drifted to” and finally fought and won a War of Independence. In 1783 we had a national confederation of thirteen sovereign states, the Articles of Confederation, and then prodded by Washington and Madison wrote in 1789 an entirely new Constitution that created our United States.

So within half-a century we had to create political policy systems that moved from colony, to sovereign state, to a federal republic. Economic development was in the center of all that policy system adjustment. So central was economic development as a principal agenda priority, it was caught up in the never-ending transformation of policy systems. A key strategy in which economic development was inescapably a participant was something we will call “institutionalization”.  For the moment, we will simply mention one element of institutionalization, setting up a banking, currency, and fiscal budget–all of which are preconditions for any effective economic development. Enter Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson with two conflicting paths to economic institutionalization that led to the formation of two conflicting political Tribes, the Federalists and the Democrats. If you don’t think this dynamic left a lasting legacy on our ED history, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Finally, one last dynamic left unmentioned, which greatly affected American economic development in colonial and Early Republic America. It is not an economic development strategy per se, but like political institutionalization, economic development got caught up in it. Everything we have talked about in the above paragraphs in this section necessarily meant seizing land from Native Americans, and transferring it to English and then American sovereignty. To put it bluntly: no American sovereignty, no American economic development. A recent excellent book, the Indian World of George Washington [5], introduces us to the tenuous, brutal, and sad tale of how “Indian-fighting” and “Indian Removal” saturated economic development strategies in colonial and then Early Republic America. As a profession we cannot escape talking about it, because economic growth was a central objective or at least byproduct. I call it “Site Control”, and regretfully call it what it was: conquest. Land development, city-building, economic base building and DTIS all required site control, the transfer of sovereignty from Native Americas to European Americans. Obviously, this topic will have to be further discussed in future modules–and it will be.

Geographies become saturated with migrants who share critical commonalities (ethnicity, religion, occupation-class status, risk-taking, sometimes even sex and age)–and succeeding migrants who share those commonalities whenever possible follow them. Migrations almost inherently involve momentum surges–and do lead to “busts”. Busts really have huge effects on our economic development history. Migrations swarm into particular geographies which either are endowed with expectations or already home to the like-minded. Migrations can, and usually do, persist for decades. This, as we shall discover, gives rise to what we call a land rush atmosphere which usually exerts strong effects on the fragile policy system (if one exists) and often plants the seeds for long-term side effects and disruption. The very first settlers–those who survive and stay that is–often are in a unique position to seize benefit from later migrants, and can form a core of the geographies later elite. They, BTW, are the ones who write the first state constitutions. There are many other political structure, but the initial state constitution usually sets them up for the first time. These political structures are not value-neutral rational policy-making institutions and procedures; their DNA are the values, experiences, hopes and priorities of the folk that wrote and approved them. Like DNA they produced many an unexpected result as they take their course over time.

To place a speed bump in the reader’s mind–because I sense what many of you are already thinking that 1789 state constitutions are irrelevant–today’s 2019 Massachusetts state constitution, for example, was written in 1780, by no less than John Adams. Have patience and a little trust. I will in the chapters of this history provide what I hope is a credible case for how these original value-laden state constitutions have endured to the present.

Finally, in the time periods of these starting chapters, we have to understand the wilderness environment in which the migrations settled. Forests are not known for their policy systems. The foundations of an economic base and political policy system slowly emerge, as do the tenuous political structures of what is often called the frontier policy system and economy. Given the lack of established “site control” Indian-fighting and physical security are primary on the loosely structured policy agenda–and elites that emerge demonstrate skills essential to frontier survival. These skills may not always be suitable to later period of political and economic development. Again, lost in the fog of history, the impact of these personalistic dynamics strengthen the role of individuals in a very turbulent, poorly institutionalized, and free-flowing policy system. Individuals’ matter–they matter greatly–and they can leave a lasting heritage that is not much appreciated in the 21st century.

In time the initial–frontier state policy system, and its underlying constitution, is overwhelmed by succeeding migrants of different groups. During this initial period, settlement-building occurs, and for the lucky few eventually city-building follows. Lacking both business and political institutions with capacity and experience, these geographies undergo a period in which “civilization” and its discontents sort of develop almost instinctively–leaving its legacy residue on the slow-congealing policy culture. Long-forgotten today, these Stone”ish” stories and legacies can exert very significant pressures on a young policy system for considerable periods of time–some of which harden sufficiently to become a long-term geographic characteristic.

So in this chapter we introduce the reader to the development of political cultures starting with their beginning in the migrations of colonial North America. The introduction has two main elements the outline of the key migrations that populated the original colonies, and the initial depiction of the shared values and ED-relevant cultural beliefs that will impact our history. In the Chapter we will start out with Virginia, move onto to Pennsylvania, and finish up with Massachusetts. The final section will develop our notion of how political cultures can become elements in a larger populist movement–how elite–mass divergence can reach levels that prompt the formation of an informal coalition of political cultures.

Virginia elites were driven by the values of their rough-hewed political culture, and the Virginia policy system from which they drew their experience. That culture, while not entirely unique to Virginia, was forged during its colonial experience, a history that commenced in 1607–the first English colony in North America. Much of the story told in this chapter describes how (and why) that culture developed as it did. Enormously controversial, immoral, and undemocratic as it was, that culture produced individuals who defined and set up what has become the oldest, and arguably greatest, democracy on the planet today.  That culture infused other colonies (North Carolina, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia), and the states of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia–and greatly influenced other states such as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas. The Virginia-Tidewater political culture, formed by Virginia’s peculiar pattern of migration, economic base, and political experience, defined and implemented its own version of economic development, approved by the policy systems created from the state constitutions approved in these states. That too shall be detailed in this chapter.

Finally, political cultures can and do affect economic/community development policy and strategies. They do so, however. through their impact on the policy-making of particular policy systems in each community, colony-state, and (census) region. Economic and Community Development is a policy that is “defined” and approved (or not) by some policy system. Certainly, ED and CD can be sanitized of these policy and cultural distinctions, and collapsed into a general, one-size-fits-all manual or textbook, but the day-today reality of how those textbook manuals fit into a policy system produces the variability that all economic/community development observe as they practice their profession and occupation. Policy Systems, in any case, are the womb of ED/CD policy and strategies. A great deal of this chapter outlines the particular formation of the Virginia, Tidewater, policy system.

 

Footnotes

[1] James E. Anderson. Public Policy-Making (6th ED) (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), p.39

[2] Colin Woodard American Nations (Viking Press, 2011), p. 2-3

[3] Bernard Bailyn, the Peopling of British North America (Vintage, 1986), Part III: a Doomsday Book for the Periphery, pp. 87-134

[4] Roger Daniels, Coming To America (2nd ED) (Harper, 1991 and 2002), pp..30-1

[5] Colin Calloway, the Indian World of George Washington (Oxford University Press, 2018)