History
Proprietary Colonies
Proprietary colonies were colonies in which the land was owned by individuals or groups, rather than the government. These colonies were granted to individuals by the English monarch, giving them significant control over the colony's governance and land distribution. Proprietary colonies were a common form of colonial organization in early American history, with examples including Maryland and Pennsylvania.
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5 Key excerpts on "Proprietary Colonies"
eBook - ePub- Brian Smith(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge India(Publisher)
There is room, however, to think that Locke held some more ambiguous view of the political status of the North American colonies. As seen above, the exact nature of political jurisdiction in the seventeenth century was much more complicated than might be initially assumed. In other words, Locke may have viewed the Proprietary Colonies as being much more politically independent (radically and experimentally so), even though they subsisted in some formal sense under the sovereign umbrella of English authority, as stipulated by the colonies’ founding charters. This reading implies that even though the colonies were under the jurisdiction of English authority, Locke viewed them as novel, and indeed, utopian experiments in political living with a much greater degree of political autonomy.The relevant consideration in assessing the independence of the colonies was not whether they were absolutely independent of the jurisdictional umbrella of England, but whether the settler communities were free to “[set] up new governments,” which offered a high degree of practical political sovereignty.74 On this view, Proprietary Colonies, especially those designed with an eye to religious tolerance and free trade, would be freer than, say, corporate charters, which predicated membership on narrow denominational affiliation, and royal colonies, which were overseen by royally appointed governors. After all, in his critical assessment of the Virginia colony, Locke continually contrasts the lack of freedoms and provisions in Virginia, which was a royal colony, with those found in Proprietary Colonies. He writes, “It may be hoped that the hardships occasioned by the badness and arbitrariness of the [Virginia] Constitution (hereafter to be mentioned) will be remedied at leasure much as they are in any proprietorship or other English plantation.”75
- Gregory Feldmeth, Christine Custred, Christine Custred(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Research & Education Association(Publisher)
By the 1630s, the English crown showed more interest in exercising control over the colonies, and therefore turned away from the practice of granting charters to joint-stock companies and toward granting such charters to single individuals or groups of individuals known as proprietors. The proprietors would actually own the colony and would be directly responsible for it to the king in an arrangement similar to the feudalism of medieval Europe. Though this was seen as providing more opportunity for royal control and less for autonomy on the part of the colonists, in practice, Proprietary Colonies turned out much like the company colonies because settlers insisted on self-government.The first proprietary colony was Maryland, granted in 1632 to George Calvert, Lord Baltimore. It was to be located just north of the Potomac River and to be both a reward for Calvert’s loyal service to the king and a refuge for English Catholics, of whom Calvert was one. George Calvert died before the colony could be planted, but the venture was carried forward by his son Cecilius.From the start, more Protestants than Catholics came. To protect the Catholic minority, Calvert approved an Act of Religious Toleration (1649) guaranteeing political rights to Christians of all persuasions. Calvert also allowed a representative assembly. Economically and socially, Maryland developed as a virtual carbon copy of neighboring Virginia.The CarolinasIn 1663, Charles II, having recently been restored to the throne after a twenty-year Puritan revolution that had seen his father beheaded, moved to reward eight of the noblemen who had helped him regain the crown by granting them a charter for all the lands lying south of Virginia and north of Spanish Florida.The new colony was called Carolina, after the king. In hopes of attracting settlers, the proprietors came up with an elaborate plan for a hierarchical, almost feudal, society. Not surprisingly, this proved unworkable, and despite offers of generous land grants to settlers, the Carolinas grew slowly compared to other colonies.The area of North Carolina developed as an overflow from Virginia with similar economic and cultural features. South Carolina was settled by English planters from the island of Barbados. The planters founded Charles Town (Charleston) in 1670 and brought with them their black slaves; thus, unlike the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland, South Carolina had slavery as a fully developed institution from the outset.
- Olaf Kaltmeier, Josef Raab, Mike Foley, Alice Nash, Stefan Rinke, Mario Rufer, Olaf Kaltmeier, Josef Raab, Mike Foley, Alice Nash, Stefan Rinke, Mario Rufer(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
who they were: a predominantly white population of English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish origin, who mixed very little with the indigenous population (→ Whiteness, I/46). The slave population also kept growing, primarily in the south, where the plantation economy (first cotton and tobacco, then rice and indigo) reached a significant level of development. The absence of a landed elite facilitated a certain degree of equality among the proprietors, who became the leading political and economic agents of the new colonial society.By the mid-17th century, the colonial economy no longer belonged to the two Iberian imperial powers. Rather, America had become a part of the multilateral, international web of exchange that stretched between the shores of the Atlantic.A look into the American interior
Yet how did the American colonial economy evolve in this context? This requires looking at the other side of the equation: the generative, inwardly oriented economy, with its robust domestic markets, a feature of the Iberian (and particularly the Spanish) colonial economies that distinguished them from the settlement and plantation economies.The discovery of resources in this part of the American world gave rise to regional specialization. For that reason, zones devoted to mining and metal production can be seen (plants for mining and refining); zones with the high population needed to perform this work (mining towns); production zones to meet the needs of those populations; and zones in which the products, raw materials, and metals were bought and sold. At the same time, it was necessary to establish fixed ports to gather the metals and merchandise, and to hold annual trade fairs. Distinct commercial zones were set up for this purpose (Havana, Cartagena, Veracruz, Lima), with warehouses equipped to store the merchandise, customs to regulate it, residences for traders to stay in, and headquarters and compounds to keep guard over the merchandise and also to determine the best routes through which to distribute these colonial products to the places where they would be used. Cities were founded (Potosí, Minas Gerais), connecting the routes on which metals, merchandise, and slaves were transported from the ports to the mining towns.
eBook - ePub- John Brewer, Susan Staves, John Brewer, Susan Staves(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Part VII The property of empire
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Property and propriety
Land tenure and slave property in the creation of a British West Indian plantocracy, 1612–1740
Michael Craton
Sine Justicia Magna Regna nil aliud sunt quam Magna Latrocinia:The best Common-wealths, without the due current of Law and Justice, are no other than open Robberies. (Augustine, quoted by John Jennings, Clerk of the Barbadian Assembly, in his preface to the Acts, 1654)Law is as the Soul in Government, that giveth it Life and Form, and is certainly the last Guard, as well of the King’s Prerogative, as of the Peoples Darlings, Liberty and Property. (William Rawlin, in "Epistle dedicatory" to Laws of Barbados, 1699)… this brief Narrative is an Instance and undeniable Proof, that Liberty and Property are the great Motives that induce Subjects to be faithful, or fight for the Glory of their Prince; and that an Encroachment on these is a sure Sign of a Sickly State, that is on the Decline, and hasting to be lost.(Charles Leslie, A New Account of Jamaica [1739], p. 83)However diverse were the motives, aims, and beliefs of those who founded the earliest English colonies overseas, all concurred in the convenient myth that they were occupying extensions of sovereign territory, and that this allowed them to implant an English society and institutions which had already demonstrated an effective adaptability throughout the British Isles, the Celtic natives notwithstanding. For the settlers and their patrons alike, the forms of land grant and tenure, and the creation of a system of law and order to guarantee them and settle disputes, were of critical importance in establishing an effective socioeconomic structure. For the settlers, the reconstitution of local government on the English model – including its pragmatic dichotomy between appointed and unpaid gentlemen JPs and juries of male freeholders – was more or less taken for granted. But the creation of an autonomous elective assembly with rights similar to those of the English House of Commons was regarded as most vital of all, not so much to ensure that socioeconomic and political standing would continue to be measured by the holding of land, as to guarantee that local statute laws would reflect local needs, conditions, and priorities.
eBook - ePubCredit Nation
Property Laws and Institutions in Early America
- Claire Priest(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Princeton University Press(Publisher)
By what source did the colonial officials get their power? The British Crown formed the colonies in America by means of charters that conveyed land and that granted lawmaking authority. Some colonies began as incorporated trading companies funded by investors, such as the early Virginia Company, the Plymouth Company of 1609, and the Massachusetts Bay Company of 1629. 1 Other colonies were proprietorships, which were grants from the Crown to an individual or a group of individuals, such as the charters to William Penn and Lord Baltimore, creating Pennsylvania and Maryland. 2 A third type of colony, the royal or provincial colonies, were directly ruled by the Crown. 3 In each case, a governor or proprietor appointed by the King served as the top executive official. 4 An appointed council (an advisory board or cabinet) typically consisting of twelve “councilors” or “assistants” as well as other lower-level officials, advised and assisted the colonial governors and their lieutenant governors. 5 Assemblies, constituted by elected representatives, quickly assumed the role of enacting laws in association with the governors’ offices. In each of the colonies, the originating documents (charters, proprietorships) granted colonial governments lawmaking powers as long as the laws were not “repugnant” to the laws of England. 6 The question whether colonial laws were “repugnant” at times worked its way from the colonial legislatures by appeal to the English Privy Council, which had judicial authority to review colonial laws. 7 The British also exercised oversight of colonial lawmaking through the Board of Trade (officially, the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations), an English governmental body formed to supervise colonial matters. The Board of Trade typically had the power to disallow colonial laws that were in conflict with English trade policies, to nominate governors and other appointed officials, and to advise Parliament on laws to enact for the colonies
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