Companies, in the early centuries, merely existed in the form of organizations. However, the traditional form of company was reshaped during the fifteenth century, by means of a special document referred to as charters. This writing will initially provide a concise depiction on how charters provided different companies with fairly convenient privileges that led to an innovation for business development. This essay will also shed light on the first company that settled in the New World with charter protection – the Virginia Company. Furthermore, the paper will incorporate greater emphasis on this company’s significant influences toward three main aspects, its effect on business development, which started off by means of the tobacco commerce throughout the New World and Europe; the impact on colonization, which was essentially portrayed by the headright system that took shape during the seventeenth century, and its influence towards politics, fundamentally due to the creation of the House of Burgesses that provided some measurement of self-government.
During the fifteenth century in Europe, the emergence of chartered companies have brought forth a distinct new era for trades as well as a strong influence that altered business developments.
Charters were first granted to municipalities and guild of all sorts, whose operations were necessarily limited to particular localities within the State. When communities extended their operations beyond the seas, when they develop commercial relations between their own and foreign countries, these operations in semi-barbarous times become risky, and need the protection both of their own rulers and of the foreign States.
Charters enables municipalities, in other words, companies with special ...
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... E. The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624. Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1957.
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A fundamental difference between the New England and Southern colonies was the motives of the founders. In 1606, the Virginia Company was formed, motivated primarily by the promise ...
Anthony Johnson was a black man who arrived in Virginia around 1621 and was purchased to work as a slave in the tobacco fields of the Bennett Plantation. At that time he was merely known as “Antonio a Negro”, as it wasn’t common for black slaves to have last names. On March 22nd, 1622, an Indian attack on the Bennett plantation left only 12 surviving slaves, one of them being Anthony. In that same year a woman named Mary arrived at the plantation. Being that she was the only woman living at the Bennett plantation in 1625, Anthony could be considered fortunate to have received her as his wife. Together they had at least four children. It isn’t known how Anthony received his full name of Anthony Johnson, but the time that it is believed that this happened leaves some clues for speculation. It is presumed that someone named Johnson helped Anthony and his wife escape to freedom, apparently sometime between 1625 and 1650. In the 1640’s it is believed that Anthony and his family owned a small farm in Northamton where they raised livestock, which was mostly des...
In a similar economic revolution, the colonies outgrew their mercantile relationship with the mother country and developed an expanding capitalist system of their own. In England, the common view was that the colonies only purpose was to compliment and support the homeland. This resulted in a series of laws and protocols called th...
Virtual Jamestown. "Indenture Contract of Richard Lowther." Personal Narratives from the Virtual Jamestown Project, 1575-1705. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/jamestown-browse?id=J1046
Outline the goals of the directors of the Virginia Company and the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Where did they succeed? In what ways did they fall short?
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One facet of this unique system involved the numerous economic differences between England and the colonies. The English government subscribed to the economic theory of mercantilism, which demanded that the individual subordinate his economic activity to the interests of the state (Text, 49). In order to promote mercantilism in all her colonies, Great Britain passed the Navigation Acts in 1651, which controlled the output of British holdings by subsidizing. Under the Navigation Acts, each holding was assigned a product, and the Crown dictated the quantity to be produced. The West Indies, for example, were assigned sugar production and any other colony exporting sugar would face stiff penalties (Text, 50). This was done in order to ensure the economic prosperity of King Charles II, but it also served to restrict economic freedom. The geographical layout of the American colonies made mercantilism impractical there. The cit...
Northup, Solomon, Sue L. Eakin, and Joseph Logsdon. Twelve years a slave. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968. Print.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. “Thomas Morton, Historian”. The New England Quarterly, Vol. 50, No.4 (Dec., 1977), pp. 660-664. The New England Quarterly, Inc. .