Kukla’s Military Regime

Change in Virginia’s Policy System: the Military Regime

The Virginia colony in 1610 replaced its founding policy system a local council initially appointed by the Company and self-perpetuating in operation, by a military-styled policy system headed by officials with military background, who governed according to military codes and standards. While that system gave way somewhat in 1618-9, it reverted back during the Second Powhatan War. The initial military policy system, to 1618-19 is an accepted and well published element of Virginia colonial history.

We will not contest or modify the consensual description of that period [99] I cite Herbert L. Osgood’s, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 1, pp. 63-79, one of many fine works, but who went into special detail, but the period viewed from its shift in policy regimes is less understood and appreciated.  For this history that policy regime shift was very significant, especially due to its incorporation into subsequent period of early Virginia history, The military policy system is key to explaining our thesis on the importance and centrality of the domestic Virginia policy system in early colonial Virginia. How the military regime figured so prominently in our history is a question which we cannot avoid if I am to defend my assertion that the foundations of early Virginian colonial government were set in the Company period, a period dominated by the military regime.

[999] For the moment, it is sufficient to observe that the events in 1609-10 Jamestown—and the reaction of the Virginia Company decision-makers to them—prompted the imposition of political order in Virginia that strongly impacted not only local governance, but also the characterization of such by American historians. Herbert Osgood devotes considerable pages and discussion on this matter (pp. 63-73). He disagrees with my assertion the change of regime occurred with De La Warr, arguing that Gates was similarly empowered, but he then goes on to demonstrate in considerable detail how the military regime was imposed on the colony, and continued through the succession of Gates, Dale, and Yeardley’s first administration. The earliest examination of the military policy regime characterized it having been imposed by a Virginia Company led by “the hard businessman” Thomas Smythe, who was “willing to subvert the rights of Englishmen by instituting cruel and harsh military rule, and [who] was thwarted in the end only by Sir Edwin Sandys, the parliamentary liberal who authorized the first meeting of a representative assembly in Virginia (and America]. Walter F. Prince (1899) [99] Quote from Darrett B. Rutman, “the Virginia Company and its Military Regime” in his “the Old Dominion: Essays for Thomas Perkins Abernethy” (the University Press of Virginia, 1964), p. 2. challenged this prevailing view arguing instead that it was not Smythe, nor even the Company who instituted this governance system, but was rather the “generals” themselves, in particular Gates and Dale. It was they who adopted, if not wrote the military code. Prince’s view held sway until it was challenged by Charles M. Andrews (1938) and and Wesley Frank Craven (1949). Both authors based their findings on Virginia Company records, and other English sources, which clearly demonstrated the military policy system was supported by the Company board and its leadership, including Sandys, and that the military code was authored mostly by Strachey, the Company Secretary. Correcting what was viewed as near-anarchy in Virginia, the military regime was deemed absolutely necessary to preserve order and stability while the Company itself reorganized and rendered itself capable of implementing a settlement strategy in Virginia. Rutman’s work fills in the details of this period, and comes to the conclusion that “Virginia’s military regime was, in actuality, only one in a series of experiments in colonization, [a policy initiative] begun in London and carried to a logical conclusion by soldiers in Virginia. As such it was as militaristic as the times allowed. The first experiment (that form of government established in the first charter) had proved a complete failure. Hence the Company turned to a second experiment, the military regime, which proved itself a fit scheme of government for the early years of the colony, a fact noted by [none other] contemporary Englishmen … Sir Francis Bacon writing his essay “Of Plantations” [99] Rutman, p. 20 [999]

The answer is simple, if wordy: the introduction and/or birth of a policy system almost by definition is fundamental to this history’s theme and purpose to understand how the different colony policy systems introduced in colonial America by the English were uniquely installed such that they were different and were reacted to differently in each colony. I am not aware of another colony having a near-decade long military regime-policy system other than Virginia. Moreover, that military regime was refreshed and reapplied during the Second Powhatan War (1622-32) and was woven into the governance structures, social system, and military defense of the colonists during that period.

Further a series of what I call “plantation conquistadors” emerged and dominated the post charter royal governance of that period. In essence, excepting  three year interlude, a military regime of some degree governed the colony for the better part of a generation. That the leadership of the First Migration arose to a prominence in the Virginia colonial policy systems that persisted through the 1650’s, their early background and experience provides much insight into their governance. For example

I can add that the period of the First Migration (1607 into the 1650’s) has been subject to serious controversy that has left its mark in Virginia’s colonial history—a mark that included leaving out the first fifty years or so from historical discussion by many of its commentators. Even wonderful and excellent scholars such as Warren Billings, on whose shoulders this history stands, traces the development of its political-policy structures in depth only in the 1630’s. Others, such as Lorena S. Walsh, whom we respect greatly, and will employ much of her work throughout pertinent topics, finds this period so unstable they can be incomprehensible, noting “As Pares, Fausz, and Kupperman observe, only when settlers got clear title [1639] to land and gained control over the local economy did sustained development occur”.

She further notes that not even “New forms of corporate organization and new incentives to invest, and to emigrate were not enough to overcome these obstacles”. In case study [99] she compares the settlement techniques used in the early days of the Gates’s regime with those of private investors a decade later, remarking on “the similarity of their outlook”. The case study clearly demonstrates that much of the tenor and reality of the early military regime period persisted through the 1620’s and even 1630’s.

Her in depth description of that early settlement period reinforces my strong belief this period lasted so long, and was successful enough to settle Virginia, spread the plantation and its tobacco economy, and establish the foundations of a future society and polity that it cannot be ignored and ought be discussed in depth. This is the period, more than any other, that “bent Virginia’s political development and economic base institutionalization twig”. It is the First Migration that must be given both credit and blame for the future polity, social system and economy that the Second Migration inherited and built upon.

[99] See Chapter 1, Lorena S. Walsh, Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607-1763 (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

That the period was unstable, rough, harsh, and not the best soil on which to establish successful polity simply cannot be ignored or neglected. I suggest it was those very conditions and realities that characterized the period, and they shaped the polity system and the economic base that was established in those years. After all, as I stated earlier, it was not pre-Civil War Stuarts nor the Virginia Company that was solely responsible for the colony in this time; the residents of the colony were the primary drivers of what was to emerge and what the Second Migration was to inherit. Having had a military regime installed in their early years, the residents retained much of its spirit, practices, structures/institutions, and leaders after it was formally or officially ended in 1619.

The story is of a general as well as special interest, for it touches upon the question of the extent to which our institutions were borrowed from England. To that question there is no simple answer. More than once our forefathers proclaimed the borrowing of some English institutional usage, and the origins of the county in Virginia provides one of the more familiar examples … In truth our institutions, like those of other peoples, were shaped by a long succession of separate decisions made by men [and women] who were seeking a practicable solution to an immediate problem rather than consciously shaping an institution.

That problem was in most instances the product of a situation peculiar to America. In so far as any one rule of action was followed, the rule was to do what appeared to be reasonable under the circumstances … that Englishmen would always adopt identical courses is well enough disproved by the distinctive institutional patterns making their settlements in Virginia and New England. Though there were, of course, important similarities … the chief thing that bound Massachusetts and Virginia to a common institutional heritage was a thing of the spirit, a feeling for what was appropriate in a community of Englishmen.

Overshadowing all differences is the fact that early Americans laid hold of the cardinal principles of local administration—a somewhat unusual combination of central authority and local representation. [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century,  pp. 171-2

Observations and Introductory Perspective Regarding Virginia’s Military Policy System

De La Warr/Gates were the first Company-appointed governors in residence. De La Warr, Gates, Dale, and even Yeardley were as soldiers by background, skill and experience. The first three born into gentlemen-aristocratic backgrounds; each were knighted.. The powers granted to them by the Company bordered on those of a military commander. While there was never a doubt their tenure was determined in London, they held considerable, relatively unsupervised, autonomy in day-to-day decision-making—and after 1612 extended to  policy-making of some importance.

With Smythe dominant in this period, it is likely these were  “his” chosen leaders. Seemingly, to me, he delegated much to them. Clearly sent over to bring the colony back from the brink of extinction, London, I believe, seemed much inclined to let them restore order and some sense of stability without their micro-management. In any case, the weak, fragmented, semi-representative Company-appointed shareholder council, with its weak executive, was replaced by a governor and captain-general, who named his own advisory council.

Gates in July 1609 had been empowered as the “sole and absolute governor”, rendering Virginia into a military colony. This title and power was also entrusted to and implemented by De La Warr. The governor’s dominance over court administration, policy-making, trade, and Indian affairs was complete, although London did offer some direction and monitoring. It does appear that while this style of rule overlapped that of John Smith, the latter exercised what powers he could assemble through charisma, a very strong personality all combined with a desperate situation and governmental paralysis. The Jamestown “plantation system” whereby the settlers worked in gangs with overseers, ate at common tables and lived in a common barracks all were compatible with Gate’s instructions and were put in place by De La Warr.

De La Warr, however, in accordance with his instructions, imposed formally the new governance council set up by 1609 charter; his title was transformed into “governor, commander, and captain general both by land and sea over the said colony, and all other colonies planted or to be planted in Virginia” [99] pp. 65-6.  Upon De La Warr’s arrival “for the first time at Jamestown appears the elaborate official system of a military type [as] which [had] been instituted at Sagadahoc. Of the six members of the Council [he appointed]. One held the special title of lieutenant general, another of admiral, and still others that of captain of fifty, master of ordinance,[and] vice-admiral. Only one bore the title of a civilian … who was secretary and recorder. The other officials of the settlement were almost wholly military in character. [99] Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol 1 pp. 68-9

The harsh control-oriented regime would remove any incentive a Jamestown indentured servant had to remain in Virginia once having survived their term of indenture. This issue, however, would become more tangible as terms began to expire, some as early as 1612. While serving their indenture, the harsh treatment received did little to inspire creativity and hard work (productivity)—even regarding planting/harvesting of staples for their own consumption. For them to stay in Virginia they needed some “opportunity” congruent with their hopes and dreams. As to the Gentlemen, they of higher status fared little better, and that put a damper on the willingness of other gentlemen to travel, or allow themselves to be sent by their families to pursue better opportunities than in England. Little remained of the original business recruitment plan of the Company by this period. As before the “content” of each arriving ship was determined in London, and they arrived in Jamestown whenever they arrived. This, I remind the reader, was not a small problem—the timing of settler arrival seriously complicated the mortality rate.

What do we mean by a “military regime”: Jon Kukla carries this theme into what it was in reality, the establishment of a regime whose purpose was to maintain not just order but “control”. For him this will be the first “stage” in what would be a four-stage political development evolution of Virginia. “First came the disorder of the initial settlement, then between 1612 and 1630, the military regime of  Lord De La Warr and the councilor-commander oligarchy [I will in later modules refer to them as ‘plantation conquistadors] [99] Jon Kukla, “Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in Pre-Restoration Virginia”, the American Historical Review, Vol. 90, No. 2 (Apr, 1985), pp. 281-2”.

Under a new charter issued on May 9, 1609, the company gave charge of the colony to ‘one able and absolute governor” and imposed martial law. De La Warr, Sir Thomas Gates, and Sir Thomas Dale, soldier-governors chosen from the circle of English officers experienced in Ireland and the Low Countries brought garrison government to Virginia and military regimentation stabilized the colony’s day-to-day existence” [99] Kukla, Order and Chaos, pp. 283

What we describe in this early period of Virginia’s history was not a “temporary” intrusion, but a long-standing and impactful one, by no means a period that can be ignored or pushed to the margins. Hence one can sense the importance in the description provided by noted historian Charles A Andrews:

… the decision was reached, probably at the end of 1609, to alter fundamentally the manner of governing the colony in Virginia, and instead of a local president and council which had been the form of organization until this time, to appoint a single head entrusted with exceptionally large powers. The company made up its mind to try a new experiment by sending to America a single and absolute governor, with authority so extensive as to make him almost a dictator for life … He was called Lord Governor and Captain General [99] Charles A. Andrews, the Colonial Period in American History: the Settlement, Vol. 1, p. 107-108

Underneath the governor were a different local council, packed with advisors and seeming chosen by the governor. This council over the years would evolve into the Governor’s Council, Council of State and after 1643, the upper chamber of the Virginia legislature.

For much of Virginia’s colonial history, the Governor’s Council possessed such impact that it was seen both in London and Jamestown/ Williamsburg as virtually an extension of the governor’s office. That the institution was a creation born during the “military” period of Jamestown should provide support for its importance as a significant period of Virginia’s early colonial period. This body did lose power on the threshold of the American Revolution—to the House of Burgesses—but through the colonial period it was a first-ranking policy-making body.

Hence, from 1610 to the end of 1616, the Jamestown colony would be administered by former soldiers and admirals, whose view of order and discipline was beyond harsh. Their governance did restore order and was able to stabilize—thus saving—the colony—at a cost of creating an image of a military colony back in England. That image plagued recruitment, and created a permanent frost in investor hopes for the Virginia Company. Logical at the time, and in light of future events seemingly the right move, De La Warr, Thomas Gates, and his successor Thomas Dale/Yeardley were all cut from the same cloth.

That cloth elevated one thread of  Elizabethan merchant adventurer-privateer-military commercial trade-colonization pre-history at the expense of the Company’s budding permanent settlement innovative experiment. From chaos came control at the cost of productivity and a settlement attractive to individual hopes and enterprise. That image also challenged the investment and financing business model. It, as we shall soon see, rendered a new start in Bermuda as a viable alternative.

First Powhatan War

As to the attacks initiated by the English against the Powhatan and other tribes in late 1610 reflected the strategy England used in Ireland at the time. It also reflected a religious mission to convert the natives to the Anglican religion. Perceived self-defense, attack is the best defense, was yet another motivation. Frustration with the natives who were as unwilling as they were incapable of serving as effective trade partners, aka a trading factory relationship with native populations, struck at the heart of the futility of the Jamestown outpost and left the definition of Indian relations undefined, except for religious conversion.

The obvious reality of that period was unless they “pulled a Cortes” the Jamestown English were outnumbered, hopelessly surrounded, and three thousand miles away from any possible relief effort. One can sit in 1610 Jamestown, or one can sit in a 2024 classroom, to view the situation at the time; I chose the former. Instructions from London encompassed all of the above to enter into the decisions of De La Warr-Gates-Dale to intensely launch raids, strikes, and engineer kidnappings such as Argall’s seizure of Pocahontas. The ineffectiveness of the Powhatan response belied their obvious numerical superiority, and exposed their cautious strategy on how to deal with Europeans. The English interpreted this response through a mental prism that served their felt needs and set of values and objectives. That observation could describe the First Powhatan War about as well as is offered for World War I.

The Powhatan, possibly believing their enemy would implode on its own weaknesses, did not or could not, engage the English in a serious war. It is likely such a strategy may have been beyond Powhatan’s dominance of his Confederation. The English on the other hand, starving behind their collapsing palisades, welcomed the low intensity war, though it is hard to believe the blockade the tribes imposed on Jamestown was much better. Events suggest Powhatan’s 1609 gamble was not unreasonable. With the arrival of hundreds of soon to be sick and die immigrants, Jamestown had a passing opportunity to act. They did.

Although the First War did complicate and limit Virginia’s political development in the long run, the experience of that period generated a rationale for developing an internal cohesiveness. Since tobacco farming is still a half-decade in the future, and the colony itself confined to mostly Jamestown and a few select defensive sites on the James River, it did inhibit economic diversification by restricting the search for mines and raw minerals. The Somers Islands were free from this inhiations, and ambergris found there gave an early edge to that location.

Hindsight suggests any worries felt at that time were appropriate. In Virginia, the “workforce, tasked under military supervision to both export and feed itself—and push back the close neighboring Powhatan–was not noted for its exuberance toward an 10-12 hour workday—or independent thought and action., The hostile military culture drained from their soul as much the mosquito sucked their blood, and the swamp evacuated from their bodies. A strong governor had asserted authority, its imposition brought order and the semblance of stabilization, but how long would that hold? Decades it turned out.

 [999] Dale was an excellent, politically well-connected, probably of aristocratic background soldier, , a very close friend of James’s heir apparent, Prince Henry (who would sicken and die in 1612). Unexpectedly,  the return to England of a sick De La Warr, and our 1609 hero Thomas Gates returning to Virginia as governor, Dale, was the  captain-general sent to carry out this mission impossible: find an export crop and get it to market—and if that meant ending the Indian war by conquest or peace treaty—so be it. Alternating with Gates as Lieutenant Governor, Dale would be a dominant force through 1616. [999]

For the next seven years, at minimum, Virginia struggled to find a way to both decentralize order, and to introduce some measure of economic opportunity from which individual settlers could prosper. It was not until Governor Wyatt in early 1622 that the Company sent in “one of its own” to govern the colony. He arrived in October 1621 and his administration was tossed into the tempest on Good Friday March 22, 1622. That fateful event, fundamentally and practically, ended the period during which the Company was, on its own terms and resources, able to “govern” Virginia.

The reader should assume that during the Second Powhatan War the Virginia policy system would remilitarize itself, that new elites we call plantation conquistadors would emerge. As counter to this, however, a discernible decentralization to the rudimentary march shire-the hundred–would check the power of the governor and his council. The point of this intruding long-term diversion of time is to convey to the reader that the “military” style continued in other forms to the mid-1630’s.

Implications from Imposition of the Military Policy System

Thus the period between mid-1610 to early 1622 was a policy system whose character and top leadership were military, and under which the Virginia-based Company officials granted their measure of deference—although the all-powerful Cape Merchant alone, and likely the Secretary of the Colony possessed autonomy of the governor- both had clearly defined responsibilities to the London Company. All this would change with the installation of the Greate Charter in 1619-22, but would come to a screeching halt after the March 1622 Massacre.

That the governor’s office was entrusted to a military leader who collectively imposed on the colony the discipline associated with a military entity imparted a measure of long-standing military-like association that either “tainted” the perception of its occupant, or set the office apart from Virginia’s “common” freeholders and indentured settlers. The rather small size of the colony, and its limited geography, in reality a microcosm of today’s perception of a “colony” we can sense, having removed the “representativeness” of the past policy system, left the military period as much more oligarchical, if not feudal. To my mind, governance of Virginia was not dissimilar to an medieval English frontier/border or march shire; this is reinforced by the creation of “hundreds” as early as 1613. This certainly would provide the preconditions useful for a more hierarchical society to develop and sustain itself over the decade it persisted.

From the perspective of those outside the charmed circle, deference to its authority likely carried with it some antipathy, and from this even in such a microscopic entity as the Jamestown colony we can sense the rudiment social order emerging. Even George Yeardley, himself a military leader during these time, was not well received when he became governor in 1616 and that persisted into his later period from 1618 to late 1621.

Several versions of harsh military codes were issued in the years that followed. Most historians concede they were not implemented with the spirit of harshness implied and stipulated in the written code. Seriously mean-spirited and controlling  their bark was worse than their bite; nevertheless the colony was run as a military post with its inhabitants under military command. So while twenty crimes were listed as punishable by death, ordinary operation of the colony and its various tasks and activities minimized individual freedoms and action, and treated the settlers as as a military unit.

Behavior and response to commands were similar to a military unit, to the extent that Sunday church attendance was required and settlers were assigned to a military unit for defense purposes—and constantly trained for military actions. The daily work routine was posted, and “the beat of a drum” marked their timing. That this period coincided with the First Powhatan War, the first large military action being ordered in 1610 by De La Warr, this military period was very much linked to both military attack and self-defense against the Powhatan.

Sociologically, the 1610 military system had the effect of  making the colony a semi-socialist/corporate economy (if that makes any sense) with the Company making and enforcing obedience to its decisions, made with the intent of complying with London instructions and its business plan-goals. Repressed individualism and a preponderance of settlers being indentured and reduced in status to company property probably rendered their performance in daily tasks similar to working on the chain gang. With nothing to buy, there was no need for currency—saving barter and trading one’s labor for one’s wants. Diaries and letters sent are outright depressing, and degrading. One can understand it did not take long for this to get back to families in England.

In fact, communal living in barracks and eating in company food in an assembly building reminds one more of Sparta than anything English. This quality of life and living experience lasted well into 1612-13, and while tempered by Dale (see in next module) Virginia settlers were clustered in small chunks of James River geography and confined to the central area with work in the fields strictly monitored, and then return to barracks or, after 1613, the plantation’s homestead complex.

It was not until 1616 and after that the penal colony gave way to individual land holdings and plots; the plantations were very sparsely settled, and individual holdings dispersed at their peripheries. With individual holdings an extreme burst of individualism quickly took root as the land holding, and the crop planted—almost always dedicated to tobacco with very small household gardens. Even logical infrastructure such as palisades and churches were left to the larger plantation owners in the small settlement. We will also focus on that in another module.

To be sure it is difficult to conceptualize the colony as being so small and sparsely populated. Buildings of any type were small and rudimentary—even for the high status they were nothing to brag about. I think it important to remind oneself of this small military unit we call today a colony—we cannot expect much from it, and should not be surprised fundamental social relationships, an oligarchy, for example, could easily emerge. “Everybody knew your name”.

That this smallness should persist for the entire first decade of the colony’s existence—and for another generation– has to have exerted impact and left a heritage. One suspects authority was negatively perceived (probably carrying over to the governor), and when recognized law and courts assumed an importance in each settlement. His reinforced the individual’s propensity to local self-governance, better the devil you know and the local court you can access, and locals who know you.

The reader should take away from the five or six years that followed 1610 that the colony was bleeding population, was still a death factory, and there was, in these pre tobacco years no real economy, other than work gangs, staples production and militia-style defense or attack, with an almost total lack of respectably functioning infrastructure, Lost to economic and political development, the early period of the military policy system left its mark on the political culture that slowly crawled out of it, and setting almost in stone an elite-mass society.

Inequality in very early colonial Virginia came almost naturally, and in that inequality those employed by the company were high status and moved in their own circles. When the military colony was dispersed, broken up by fulfilling indenture term, and resettled in small plantations along the James much of the military community was carried over—until the number of women increased and families and children created some version of a true community.

In this manner we see how, without formal plan, but likely with conscious thought, an elite formed composed of company officials, transforming themselves into military mode, in the absence of a company charter after 1624 evolved into plantation conquistadors fighting the Second Powhatan, and installed themselves into the structures of the Greate Charter to become a private and government oligarchy that set them apart from those Virginians that did not, could not follow that path. Kukla describes it as thus:

… an imposed militia-based stability continued to shape Virginia’s development throughout the 1620’s. The decade of Indian warfare after the Powhatan uprising of 1622 forged colony leaders regardless of their social origins into what J. Frederick Fausz called an ‘unlikely oligarchy’ that dominated the other colonists, the neighboring Indians, and commerce in tobacco, maize and furs.

Beginning in September 1623 the councilors and commanders monopolized the entire Indian trade along the Chesapeake and all its tributaries. Combining their civilian and military offices with commercial connections, twenty-eight men who were members of the Virginia Council [Governor’s Council] between 1622 and 1632 had powers to issue land patents, regulate indentured servants, set the prices of domestic and imported commodities, administer the estates of deceased colonists, and appoint local militia offers. After the dissolution of the bankrupt Virginia Company in 1624, the oligarchs also became the ‘guardians’ for the property and servants once owned by the company. The councilor-commander oligarchy of the 1620’s had no challengers.

Charles I was preoccupied with other affairs. The unicameral General Assembly [founded mainly as a vehicle for the company to secure the colonist’s support of company policies [and insure its effective implementation] was in many respects before 1643 only an expanded meeting of the governor and council. Not until the 1630’s did Virginia’s population growth give the councilors reason to delegate any of their consolidated military, executive, and judicial authorities [99] Jon Kukla, “Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in Pre-Restoration Virginia (American Historical Review, Vol. 90, No. 2 (April, 1985)),  pp. 283-4

They did the latter, in the last sentence, mostly because the oligarchy fractured into the powerful elite faction I call “Claiborne’s Clique” which did battle to impose itself over the “Mainstream Planters” composed of large plantation owners, who also included the smaller free holder “homestead plantations” of the formerly indentured and others who unsuccessfully tried to become a larger plantation owner. That evolutionary development will be a major theme in a following module series, and followed during the administration of Governor Berkeley. In any case, the formation of this oligarchy, encased in a tobacco-export economy, blossomed into Virginia’s tobacco monoculture.

This extended transformation, described above, that evolved out of the 1610 military policy system, is in my mind the single most important element of the Virginia Company heritage. That assertion, I also add, will be explained in more detail in future modules, because the Virginia Company did not abandon its hope to resurrect its charter and continued to be major force in Virginia policy and politics, indeed the ally that brokered the “1639 Deal” the finally established Virginia’s first true, functional, comprehensive policy system. The Company was not finally tossed from Virginia’s politics until 1642, but most Virginian commentators push it to the side and margins of discussion—if they include it all.

One final, but compelling summary observation concerning the imposition of a military-style provincial governance and policy system in 1610, is that during its existence—even at minimum to 1619 when the Greate Charter clouded its character—was the incredible outputs put into practice by the military policy system to that point. Those outputs were central to Virginia’s colonial and Early American history, governance, economy and society.

Rather simply I contend the military colony period could be compared to an egg that hatched key formative and durable institutions, programs, and relationships such as: the creation and use of the most formidable colonial economic development incentive package, the headrights, land as a commodity and currency, seizure of land from Powhatan and tribes as the dominant feature of Indian relations, innovation of the “colony within a colony” that led to the first creation of a county-like government—the hundred in 1613, the empowerment of a Company-elite nexus that essentially governed the colony, and its crown jewels—the making of the plantation as the chief economic unit of Virginia—and the adoption of tobacco as its chief export. All this was commenced in the period previous to 1619. All were not only ratified by the Greate Charter, but were the superstructure on which that series of  programs/policies were built upon.

Kukla’s Military Regime

What’s more, as Craven also suggests, the shareholder assembly set up in Virginia/Jamestown, a seemingly advisory council to the Company-appointed governor and deputy, developed in a fashion that the Company, “established a [local] council [which was] representative of the leading men of the colony” … “Notice should be taken“, he emphasizes, “of the close parallel to the organization existing among the adventurers [shareholders] at home” [the assemblies]. This local council turned out to be the forerunner of the Governor’s Council and the Council of State—which became in 1643 the upper house of the legislature and the cabinet of the governor.

He concludes, and I disagree, that after the 1612 third charter, all that was lacking in a Virginia autonomous “government” was a general assembly  drawn from all members of the corporation, and provided with more fundamental powers. That they did not closely correspond to the evolution of local “government” of other states during the colonial period, and in reality developed distinctly undemocratic features, not to mention considerable societal, political, and economic inequality that persisted through the American Revolution can likely be attributed to its corporate nature, than from the experience of others which were driven by bottoms-up non corporation dynamics–dynamics which in Virginia hardly penetrated into these corporate-based decision-making structures. It is very much too early to start thinking in terms of the evolution of American democracy.

Virginia Company corporate democracy had little to do with “the real thing”–in fact and in practice it was not a political democracy at all. It would create so-called corporate political institutions, that on the surface could be used for more modern democratic purposes, but their reality at the time was they were “shareholder” democracy–and a very imperfect one at that. Future commentators would call attention to these structures as harbingers of future American greatness. They were not in 1612 or 1642 for that matter. I think we do ourselves little good in fabricating a modern democratic myth from this rudimentary 17th century shareholder democracy al la decentralization of some decision-making. It came to an evil end as far as the Company was concerned–and like an empty mansion, somebody else eventually moved in.

Grizzard Jr., and Boyd Smith take a different tack which alerts us to differences between the two and their constituencies over the direction of the company’s economic base. Within their line of thought, the exhaustion of Smythe’s governance and the opening up of Virginia to shareholder governance in the form of private investor plantation-hundreds altered fundamentally the original governance of the Colony as a London Company-driven enterprise. By 1618, with the Argall affair causing a rude recognition the colony had become more autonomous than ever imagined, and steps were needed to close that chasm that had developed over a half decade. De La Warr was again sent over to redo his role back in 1610. He died on in route.

A new governor had to be found and the issue could have been whether a local company official could replace De La Warr or was there a London alternative. We don’t know the internal dialogue that followed, but my bet is that from it arose the forthcoming Sandys coup. Smythe seems to have won the selection of a new governor, one of his long-standing resident officials, (Dale’s Lieutenant Governor) Yeardley was in London and he got the nod, was quickly knighted, married to high status and sent off with instructions that Sandys probably had considerable impact on. Smythe chose the governor, Sandys the strategy for action?

Concurrent company affairs in London had not followed a smooth course. Fundamental disagreement between Sir Thomas Smythe and Sir Edwin Sandys and their followers over economic goals for Virginia [would lead] to the ouster of Smythe as the Treasurer and the elevation of Sandys to the post, then to bitter factional fighting at the stockholders meetings, and finally dissolution of the company.

Sandys desired a return to Hakluyt’s broad program of economic self-sufficiency. Along with many gentry he had invested in Virginia out of patriotism as well as personal gain. The merchant leadership, including Smythe, were no less patriotic, and strongly supported silk, iron, glass, wine an naval stores production, but once tobacco and [its associated] carrying trade developed, they were willing to direct their attentions to those profitable ends.

Tobacco, however, tended to benefit merchants more than it did the rank-in-file stockholders who were willing to believe stories that the merchants benefited from the subcompanies [hundreds and plantations and] the Bermuda and cape merchant operations [the company Magazine] which they were told drained potential dividends from the parent company. Sandys, a full partner with Smythe in several tobacco enterprises, worried along with the king that Virginia was abandoning national goals, for the “vile weed”. Actually, the very success of the tobacco may have rekindled interest in [economic] diversification. Many believed that if tobacco could succeed in Virginia, so could other more useful staples. [99]  Frank e. Grizzard, Jr., and D. Boyd Smith, Jamestown Colony: a Political, Social and Cultural History-the 400th Anniversary of the Founding of Jamestown (ABC CLIO, 2007), pp. xlvii-xlviii [999]