Money Talks

“But in truth, should I meet with gold or spices in great quantity, I shall remain till I collect as much as possible, and for this purpose I am proceeding solely in quest of them.” - Christopher Columbus

When I looked at a list of city foundation dates, I was surprised to see that Albany, NY predated the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth. Yet who studies the founding of Albany in American History?

The reason we are taught about Plymouth but not Albany is the different motive behind the settlements. The Pilgrims represent religious freedom (wrongly as described yesterday). Albany represents the commercial side of America; it was built as a key location for the fur trade. (The state mammal of NY is the Beaver.) While America was a land of religious freedom for some, for many more it was the land of opportunity, an “unexplored” continent of boundless natural resources.

For St. John’s, Newfoundland the resource was Cod and other fish found in abundance in the Grand Banks. The settlers of Jamestown did not find gold ore but they did “discover” gold in a new cash crop, tobacco. The first English tobacco farmer was John Rolfe, husband of Pocahontas. In New England the town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire (1623) had good fishing and furs but it also had huge tracts of old growth forests which were perfect for shipbuilding. One of my colonial ancestors owned a lumber mill near Dover, New Hampshire.

The exception amongst early American cities is St Augustine, Florida; it was built for military purposes. Explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles was commanded to destroy the French settlement of Fort Caroline, Florida, which he did, and establish a base of operations and control the region for Spain. After the destruction and massacre of Fort Caroline in 1565, the French never again tried to settle the US Atlantic coast. Instead they avoided the superior sea power of Spain and England by settling Canada, following the fur trade into the American interior, and taking possession of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans.

Bottom Line

In modern times, the media and community organizers like to disparage capitalism and wealth and the earning of money. In ancient China, merchants were considered the lowest of the low, parasites that lived off of honest artists and craftsmen. Napoleon famously insulted England by calling it a “Nation of Shopkeepers”. We tend to forget the importance of commerce in history and in the founding of North America.

It was taxation on commerce that led to the creation of the United States. The state of Massachusetts, which I put down yesterday for its early puritanical religious intolerance, had by the 1700s cast off its Pilgrim shackles and became “the” colony of merchants. Boston led the way to independence as discussed in my posts on Samuel Adams and Taxation without Representation.