The ideas that form the foundation for the American Dream arose from the matrix of socioeconomic and political events that inspired exploration and settlement of the North American continent in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries. While some of these events may be traced generally to broadly pursued European efforts at global exploration, the principal sources of migration to colonial America were, of course, English in origin and thus can only be understood in the context of the English history of the period. The influences that led to establishing the English colonies may be divided into two primary onesâcommercial/economic and religiousâeach represented by the earliest settlements in Jamestown, Virginia, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, respectively. Jillson (2004:16), succinctly summarizing the impetus that drove early English settlers to the American shore, noted that they came âeither for quick wealth or to live in ways not permitted themâ in England. In each instance, however, a third influence that has been a distinctive characteristic of Americans ever since is evident. This is the quality and drive inherent in individualism. Thus, while those English colonists dominated by economic motivations and those inspired by religious concerns may be distinctly identifiable on those grounds, both groups exhibited a willingness to put their own interests as they conceived them first and then act on the hope of achieving a better life by cutting ties with English society.
Economic Struggle/Economic Opportunity
The economic climate of England and Scotland in the late Middle Ages and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries formed the background for those migrating to the New World for economic reasons. Until the fifteenth century, feudalism prevailed in England. In its common form, peasants received the right to work on plots of royal land (generally about 30 acres each) and keep a portion of what they produced in return for protection provided by the local nobleman. This systemâwhich had been in place for centuriesâbegan to break down toward the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. There were several factors at play.
First, there was a dramatically increasing rural population during this period. This mattered because farming and rural life dominated the medieval economy (Bagley 1960:23). Average life expectancy for all groups, but especially for children under the age of 5, was extraordinarily low in the early Middle Ages (Platt 1976:99). Consequently, it was quite easy for improved conditionsâsuch as elimination of the plague for more extended periods in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuriesâto support a doubling of the population in the countryside. Estimates suggest that as late as 1500, 95 % of Englandâs population might have been rural (1976:15). Internal migration to the cities eventually shifted much of the excess population there, but it took most of the next two centuries for the shift to urbanism to make London and other cities a significant proportion of Englandâs total population (1976:15). Thus, for a sustained period, a surplus population and an imbalance reigned in the countryside. This meant that there were more peasants than the land and local noblemen required for existing feudal arrangements in the villages for farming purposes. Responding to this pressure, the king authorized the nobles to âleaseâ certain parcels. Young workers, who would formerly have become peasants tied to the land, now became âfree wage workers,â a heretofore unknown economic category. Peasants would often be thrown off valuable parcels so that those parcels could then be leased (Brooks 2013:25â29).
Second, free wage workers, as the appellation implies, were free to leave their former feudal estates. Internal migration to the cities increased noticeably as leases became more expensive and competition for land to work increased. This, in turn, inspired further consolidation of lands under the direct control of large landowners and nobles through the practice of enclosure. Formerly, English lands were largely unfenced (Bagley 1960:29â30); since most lands were considered royalâand only held âin trustâ by those who worked a parcelâthere was little need for fencing. As the elite gained control of more and more acreage, they began enclosing their land with fences, thus more formally marking the termination of feudal arrangements and the ascension of private property rights in its place. Customary relationships between people and the land were upended and ârentsâ derived from former feudal peasants could now be extracted from them as âtenants at will upon the landâ (Brooks 2013:23â24).
Third, there was massive inflation in successive waves from 1520 to 1590 (Platt 1976:175). This was due in part to the long recovery from the economic and social dislocation caused by a severe outbreak of the Black Plague which first arose in 1348â49 and lasted for 3 years (Bagley 1960:157â58), followed again with a recurrence in 1361â62, and persisted in lesser outbreaks through the next century and a half. A later recurrenceâcalled the âGreat Plagueâ due to its virulenceâstruck southern England in 1664â65 (Moote and Moote 2004:5â6). Some estimates suggest, for example, that in certain regions the bubonic plague killed up to a third of the population of England during the fourteenth century. Since many who died were young and poor, the peasantry was decimated, making sufficient numbers of replacement workers in succeeding generations during the late Middle Ages often hard to find. Prices had remained stable for such a long period that the inflationary increases were sharp: the costs of food doubled between 1520 and 1550 as one example (Platt 1976:175). The combination of release from the stable social structure of entrenched feudalism, increased labor shortages, and a corresponding rise in wagesâwhich the landowners resistedâfurther destabilized the rural population. However, as the inflationary period came to an end, the contrary population dynamic replaced it as the population quickly met, and then exceeded, the necessary labor requisites of the countryside.
The Lure of Economic Opportunity
The increased population and growing migration to English cities at the end of the sixteenth century also meant that competition for employment became more intense there as well. Having left the rural countryside for economic reasons, many were also prepared to leave the cities for the same reason. Yet, where could one go? This question was answered for some by opportunities in Englandâs expanding colonial empire. The age of exploration in the sixteenth century opened up new country and unleashed simmering ambitions to share in the wealth reputed to have been secured by Spanish and Portuguese adventurers. Those in England with capital, commercial ambitions, but no land began to look to toward the English claims in the New World as potential sources of wealth and profit. Joint stock companies, beginning with the Virginia Company of London, were formed to act as investment vehicles to support the costs involved in establishing trade settlements in the English colonies. The âfree wage workersâ had, by now, become a new permanent, roving proletariat of landless laborers who could be recruited to migrate and supply the labor these new enterprises would require. Trading their freedom for opportunity in the New World, many signed on as indentured servants to secure their passage. Brooks (2013:36) states that 60 % of seventeenth-century English migration to mainland colonial North America consisted of âboundâ laborers. These she described as âtypically young laboring men from disrupted rural areas and exhausted small industrial towns.â In some of the American colonies, the percentage of indentured workers was even higher (2013:36).
Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement on the North American continent, was an early beneficiary of these social and economic trends. The town was founded in 1607 by 104 settlers who ventured to the New World under the auspices of the Virginia Company of London, a joint stock company chartered by King James I the year before. Also called the London Company, the association was inaugurated to develop colonial settlements in North America in order to produce profits through trade for the Companyâs investors. The lure of great wealth with less labor appealed to a number of Englishmen willing to expose themselves to the risk involved by investing in such an expedition (Breen 1980:109). The Company struggled financially due to labor shortages in the early years but also due to the fact that the colony failed to develop a viable export crop or product. Although tobacco was used since its earliest discovery by the settlers, it was not exported to England and the European continent until 1617, 10 years after the settlement was founded (1980:111). Its use remained a novelty at first that produced only a small commercial trade, but boosters trumpeted the riches to be gained from tobacco farming and there were many who would listen. Eventually, sweeter hybrid strains of tobacco replaced the native variety originally cultivated and these proved more attractive and more commercially successful with the English public. However, the years of losses the Company incurred and the constant battle between plantation owners and dependent workers could not be overcome. In 1624, the Company lost its charter and was absorbed into the royal colony of Virginia (1980:114).
Although financially unsuccessful, the Company represented the economic opportunity and profit-seeking impulses that have, forever since, defined a significant drive within American culture. The original Jamestown settlers were willing to throw their lot in with an unproven enterprise in the hope that they would be rewarded with a materially better life in what was then a largely unknown land. They were, in short, risk takers who would venture far on the slim chance that they would find better economic opportunity at the end of their difficultâand for many, fatalâjourney. These settlers embodied a self-seeking restlessness that forms an important underpinning for American individualism to this day. Ready to uproot themselves from the established order of life in England, the settlers thought first of themselves, not their community. The Jamestown adventurers were exclusively motivated by the economic benefit they hoped to personally acquire (1980:109). These Englishmen were, in short, the prototypes for contemporary Americans whose pursuit of economic success through competitive individualism within the context of a postindustrial capitalist economic order consumes their lives today.
Freedom and Religious Expression
In contrast, the settlers who formed the Massachusetts Bay Colony were inspired by a different set of overt motives. England since the time of Henry VIII was Protestant in religious orientation and English Protestantism was dominated by the Church of England. Although Henry broke with Roman Catholicism, the Church of England retained many âhighâ church practices and many groups opposed to practices and belief systems reminiscent of Catholicism arose. Breen (1980:8) quotes appreciatively an essay that argues a âfragmented sectarianismâ appearing after 1604 produced scores of small religious groups at odds with Anglican policies. Among these were the Separatists and the Puritans. The distinction between these two groups opposing various elements of the Church of England is evident in their names.
Puritans were dedicated to restoring the âpurityâ of the Church of England andâcorrespondinglyâreforming society to comport with their understanding of Godâs laws. Thus, Puritans were not motivated to leave the Church of England; rather, they were intent on reforming it to embrace what they considered to be its âtrueâ or original vision. This goal was in line with the importance they placed on personal conversion as an essential article of individual faith: just as the Church which had fallen away from its religious mission needed to be restored, the individual was conceived as needing to experience a regeneration of the soul. This spiritual revival was thought to occur through a process of remorse for oneâs sins, despair at the impossibility of attaining eternal life, discovery that one can still be redeemed from waywardness through oneâs faith, and celebration of the fact that one has been saved by their newly found, intense devotion to Godâs word.
The fact that Puritans disagreed with the Church of Englandâs theology and religious practices in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England made them unpopular dissidents in conflict with the Church hierarchy. James I (1603â25) was among the many powerful antagonists the Puritans faced, but Charles I (1625â49) far exceeded him in his intense, unrelenting mission to curtail religious dissent (Breen 1980:10). The Puritans were unsuccessful in their efforts to change the Church but remained nonconforming members whose presence inspired repressive measures. In particular, William Laudâs ascension to Church of England leadership as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633 refocused the Puritansâ dissatisfaction. Laud moved to restrict Puritansâ liturgical rituals which led further to harassment of Puritan ministers and their congregations. Laudâs interference, allied with the Kingâs avowed mission, agitated many people but especially aroused religious dissenters (1980:12).
The Separatists represented an even more disgruntled minority within the Church. They left the Church of England because they believed it could not be reformed. Since the Separatists directly challenged the exclusive ecclesiastical legitimacy of the Church of England, the Separatistsâlike the Puritansâevoked persecution and oppression. They emigrated, going first to the Netherlands, considered a haven for religious dissenters. However, they did not fully adapt to life there. As outsiders, they suffered economic hardship, feared absorption into Dutch life, and disdained what they considered their Dutch neighborsâ religious laxity. About a third of those in the Netherlands decided to resettle in the New World and joined the Mayflower expedition that established the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620. The term âPilgrimsâ was applied to those who formed the new colony as they had demonstrated a willingness to pursue a religious journey by any means, and to any place, in search of religious freedom.
The Puritans, responding to many of the same pressures as the Separatists, mounted their own expedition to Massachusetts in 1630 under the direction of John Winthrop. Thousands of Church of England religious dissenters followed over the next decade. The Puritans quickly established mutually supportive governmental and religious structures based on congregations formed through voluntary âgatheringsâ of like-minded observers who wished to pray together. Winthropâs address to his followers on the deck of the Arbella (sometimes Arabella) as it sat offshore in anticipation of disembarkation to the new land, united, perhaps for the first time, some of the universal themes to which the American Dream has given a later, more secular, form. Winthropâs âA Modell of Christian Charityâ (1630) called upon the Puritans to form a true community where those with wealth and power recognize their responsibility to the poor and powerless. Winthrop argued that his followers should stand united in a special relation in the face of the rigors and challenges the new land would force upon them. Contending that if one member of the community suffers all must suffer, Winthrop urged that each person would learn to care for others as a mother learns to care for her child: by recognizing a resemblance in the human capacities that each shares and developing thereby the sympathy and sentiments that reciprocal exchange encourages. Having explained the means and reasons by which the community of his followers should function, Winthrop suggests that the final reason the community must cohere is that the colony will be looked upon hard by others as if âwe shall be a city on a hill.â Thus, the call is not simply to do oneâs duty but to create a standard for the world to seeâboth a claim, and a call, to American exceptionalism. Although acknowledging throughout that there are those with much and those with littleâand always will beâWinthropâs sermon is in its living sense a true call for equality. Thus, Winthrop urges that community members all deserve to be protected and supported. They should expect those above them to help when needed and expect themselves to reach down to others below them in need when circumstances require it. In short, although members are not equal, each followerâs claim on the communityâs concern for his or her welfare should be accepted as equal. Thi...