Chapters 7-10

Chapter 7

-When the boom collapsed, they relaxed in pursuit of riches and aimed at making Virginia as English as possible with freedoms.

-This is an interesting argument, and it seems to fit the facts he presents.  However, I wonder if someone looking at the original documents could come up with an alternative explanation.  It’s pretty sweeping and on cursory inspection strikes me as post hoc ergo proctor hoc.

-Important point of transition: pasture farming finally became successful—the cattle and swine finally took off.

-Between corn, livestock, and tobacco, the average Virginian now had a higher standard of living than the average Englishman, so they stop looking at Virginai as temporary and start to see it as home.

-But, doesn’t this (the importance of the takeoff of pasture farming) seem to contradict his earlier argument that the problem was leadership malfeasance?

-Important point: Liberty, for Va., meant independence from England, and that was assured by the assembly (one that had a broader franchise than in England).

Chapter 8

-Morgan shows a deft use of sources—taking mental notes for using sources for my thesis (and teaching AP students the DBQ): Since Va. lacked Europe’s parish registers, he used depositions from county court records as a “crude index” of longevity.  They gave their age when being interviewed. 

-I also appreciate his awareness of his sources limitations:  “The ages are doubtless rough, for people frequently did not know their exact age and added "or thereabouts" to the number given.”

-He also used the frequency of doctor visits to determine morbidity rates—this guy is a master.

-He’s also an insightful neologizer: “widowarchy”

-Lest I get carried away, widowarchy and the fact that children were the major cattle owners are interesting.  However, are they that pertinent?  Might he be making use of an earlier article?  it will be interesting to see how he incorporates this into his thesis. 

-Important summary—the hope is still alive:

Virginians built a local system of credit and exchange that recognized their peculiar conditions of life and created a kind of stability out of instability. Virginia could not quite be England. As long as the heavy mortality lasted it must be vastly different. Yet the differences were not all in England's favor. The very abundance of land and scarcity of people that made land a poor investment gave Virginia an irresistible attraction for ordinary men…In England the landowners were few, while in Virginia anyone who survived his seasoning and service could take up a plot, grow his crop, make his voice heard in voting for representatives, and perhaps even aspire to represent his neighbors in the House of Burgesses…And when mortality finally began to decline, it looked for a time as though Virginia might become the center of a New World empire where Englishmen and English liberty would thrive together.

Chapter 9

-More adept use of sources: Evidence for increased longevity found in fewer laws suits against doctors.

-Refreshingly nuanced—he’s not just jumping on the “let’s bash tobacco” bandwagon: Everyone attacked tobacco, but no one mentioned that it made them better off than before.

-Is he saying that if Baltimore hadn’t vetoed Berkeley’s plan for forced diversification, it would have worked?

-Is he here admitting that his earlier explanation for the starving times (private enterprise run amok) doesn’t fit?

-“New possibilities for exploitation appeared; and Virginia became a land of opportunity, not for the men who survived their seasoning and continued to work in the fields, but for kings and lords and other men who knew how to put the power of government to work for them.”

-This seems to fit my earlier assertion that it sounded like a kleptocracy (or crony capitalism).

Chapter 10

-Good summary in the trajectory of the overall story: “The king, the governor, the councillors, the burgesses, the sheriffs—the fortunes of all seemed to be linked to the colony^'s prosperity. Yet the prosperity that Virginia had enjoyed in the 1620s from high tobacco prices was no boon to the rights and liberties of those who worked for other men. In the prosaic decades that followed, Virginians had developed institutions that gave a greater security and freedom and even a kind of prosperity to ordinary men, especially to those who managed to survive the term of years when a master could claim their services. But after midcentury the prosperity of Virginia's big men, in the face of low tobacco prices and rising crops and population, could not be widely shared, nor could the governmental authority that made it possible. As death loosened its grip on the colony, kings and captains and governors tightened theirs and began once more to reduce the rights of those on whose labors they depended.”