Recently, Jason Linkins featured an article by Thomas Morton that ridiculed the standard Decadent Detroit journalist’s tour that always includes a photograph of the closed Packard plant on East Grand Boulevard. The deluxe, VIP version of the standard tourist itinerary is the one followed by Ralph Nader and Ross Perot, the one that includes a few private conversations with "real natives" that leave them experts on the state of the automotive industry.
Stale as it gets, the Packard plant does, in fact, symbolize everything that was once good about the automotive industry and much that’s bad about the city.
The building, designed in 1905 by Alfred Kahn, was the first to use reinforced concrete. His early factories were several floors high, and strong enough to support the weight of vehicle production and assembly. After the perfection of distributed electric systems, Kahn built the first modern glass and concrete, one-story plant for Dodge in Warren in 1937.
He innovated in materials, construction techniques, and design. More important, Kahn didn’t retire after making one contribution or simply cash in on his contacts with commissions for private estates, but continued to experiment with industrial architecture. However desolate, his Packard plant still stands after more than a hundred years, and until recently, it could have been renovated.
Although Packard Motor Car Company, then part of Studebaker, closed in 1956, the final destruction of the building is recent. In 1960, the compound was converted into an industrial park that degenerated into a half-vacant warren of small businesses, while the neighborhood, near an interstate, became increasingly more dangerous. Young people used it for raves and paint ball fights.
In the late 1990's, the state held title to much of the adjoining property from unpaid taxes. In 1997, Detroit’s mayor, Dennis Archer, or his cronies, thought they saw an opportunity to convert the land into an Empowerment Zone with tax breaks, and began foreclosure proceedings for the million plus dollars owed the city in back taxes.
The next year, the state’s Department of Community Health was asked to evaluate the hazards at the 35-acre brown field. It determined the worst problems were asbestos, lead paint, bird droppings, tires and bales of plastic waste, costly to remediate, but not serious.
While the unnamed owners were fighting for title in court, the city evicted the tenants of Motor City Industrial Park, erected a protective fence, and posted guards.
Two years ago, the state supreme court ruled the owners had paid just enough of their taxes to retain ownership. The sitting mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, removed the city’s guards, and vandals moved in with welding torches to strip out steel beams. The fire department is called several times a month, but now limits its efforts to protecting the area, because the buildings have become too dangerous.
The names of the new owners aren’t published, but are known to include Romel Casab, a bottom feeding land speculator, and are suspected to include Dominic Cristini, a convicted drug dealer. When the netherworld moves in, a site is doomed. In the years when Archer was mayor, my hometown was discovering one of its abandoned industrial sites had been systematically used for illegal chemical dumping and qualified as a superfund site.
The stand-off between rivals with different visions for creating personal wealth that negate each other and result in nothing is one enduring city trait the Packard Plant symbolizes. After 50 years, no one has even been able to tear it down as a public health nuisance, not even when Detroit was using urban development funds after the riots to reduce most of the city’s landscape to barren rubble.
However, the magazine story that prompted Morton’s outrage hasn’t been without its benefits. Earlier this month, Senate majority leader Harry Reid used it to justify giving four states special consideration in the evolving health care bill. He said "The cover of Time magazine shows a dilapidated city, dilapidated streets, the debris covering the road and windows knocked out of abandoned buildings. It looks like a ghost town" and then made sure his home state of Nevada was the one that got the Medicaid break.
Notes:
Cruz, John. "Welcome to Mt. Palmer: A look Inside Detroit’s Most Dangerous Neighborhood," posted on his cruzweb.net site.
Guthrie, Doug. "City Loses Site Fight: State Court Denies Detroit's Packard Title Bid," The Detroit News, 2 February 2007.
Linkins, Jason. "Getting The Detroit Story Right," Huffington Post, 29 September 2009.
McGraw, Bill. "Historic Auto Plant Shows Signs of Life," Detroit Free Press, 27 April 2008.
Michigan Department of Community Health. "Health Consultation, Packard Plant, Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan," 23 March 1998, posted on United States Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry website.
Shepardson, David. "Senate's Top Democrat Pushes Bill to Aid Michigan," The Detroit News, 1 October 2009.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
South Carolina - Capitalism
If Barbados borrowed its technology from Brazil, why didn’t it also borrow the organization of production?
One answer is the logic of capitalism. It was in the interest of the shippers financing the introduction of sugar production into Barbados to sell as many things as possible to the growers. It was better to sell every farmer some rollers and a set of coppers than it was to sell to only the wealthiest. It was better to tell every farmer he should own slaves than it was for them to enter into shared labor partnerships or recruit cheaper indentured servants that arrived on competing English ships.
The more business transactions, the higher the profits for the Dutch West Indies Company and the merchant bankers in Amsterdam and London. Of course, the fact money had to be leant to finance the purchases, meant merchant bankers were only willing to support the most credit worthy. However, their agents in Bridgetown could always hold the promise of future loans to the poor to discourage them from considering other options.
If this sounds as cynical as the recent efforts by banks to sell and resell mortgages that would never be paid because the profits were in the trades, not the interest, it’s because both are the consequence of a system that values wealth from trade over that from production. And like our current financial crisis, the reasons for the Dutch behavior lay in its recent past.
When Isabella I of Castile married Ferdinand II of Aragon, they consolidated control over most of the Iberian peninsula. In the early years, the Dutch were more interested in competing in the East Indies with Portugal for the spice trade than they were in the New World ruled by Spain.
Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter, Juana, married into the powerful Hapsburgs of Austria. Her son, Charles V, was Holy Roman Emperor when Martin Luther refused to rescind his 95 theses at the Diet of Worms in 1521. In 1549, Charles changed the status of the lowland provinces along the North Sea from dependencies of individual German princes into his personal domain. Since many supported the Reformation, they were drawn into conflict with Charles, who introduced the Inquisition to strengthen his position in the Seventeen Provinces.
The Protestant provinces rebelled against Charles’ son, Philip II, in 1581. In 1585 Alessandro Farnese seized their central city, Antwerp, and expelled the Protestants. His city of Genoa took over the banking system. The men with knowledge of sugar refining moved to Amsterdam, which became the new trade center.
Charles V had married his first cousin, the sister of the then king of Portugal. In 1581, the same year the Dutch rebelled, Philip inherited the Portuguese throne and banned the Dutch from their traditional trade with Brazil.
The Dutch were traders who had no choice but to exploit changes in market conditions. In 1621 the United Provinces didn’t renew their truce with Spain and instead chartered the Dutch West Indies Company. It immediately began attacking the Spanish controlled sugar lands of Brazil, finally taking power in Recife in 1629. Maurice of Nassau arrived as local governor in 1637. The next year, the company took Sno Paulo de Loanda, the Portugese slave trade center off the coast of Angola.
While the Dutch company put together the pieces to dominate the sugar and slave trades, it only had a few years to exploit its monopoly. The Portuguese regained their independence from Spain in 1640. The Brazilians evicted the Dutch in 1654. Oliver Cromwell passed the first Navigation Act in 1651 that forbade British colonies from using foreign, especially Dutch, carriers. Charles II issued his act in 1660, setting off trade wars between the major powers that destroyed Amsterdam’s monopoly on sugar refining.
It was in the twenty years between the time Portugal became independent and the accession of Charles II that the Dutch were able to develop Barbados as a new market for slaves and a new source for raw materials to feed their sugar refineries. After that, their ships only carried about five to six percent of the slaves.
Notes:
Emmer, Pieter C. The Dutch Slave Trade 1500-1850, 2006, reviewed for Institute of Historical Research website by J. L. Price.
One answer is the logic of capitalism. It was in the interest of the shippers financing the introduction of sugar production into Barbados to sell as many things as possible to the growers. It was better to sell every farmer some rollers and a set of coppers than it was to sell to only the wealthiest. It was better to tell every farmer he should own slaves than it was for them to enter into shared labor partnerships or recruit cheaper indentured servants that arrived on competing English ships.
The more business transactions, the higher the profits for the Dutch West Indies Company and the merchant bankers in Amsterdam and London. Of course, the fact money had to be leant to finance the purchases, meant merchant bankers were only willing to support the most credit worthy. However, their agents in Bridgetown could always hold the promise of future loans to the poor to discourage them from considering other options.
If this sounds as cynical as the recent efforts by banks to sell and resell mortgages that would never be paid because the profits were in the trades, not the interest, it’s because both are the consequence of a system that values wealth from trade over that from production. And like our current financial crisis, the reasons for the Dutch behavior lay in its recent past.
When Isabella I of Castile married Ferdinand II of Aragon, they consolidated control over most of the Iberian peninsula. In the early years, the Dutch were more interested in competing in the East Indies with Portugal for the spice trade than they were in the New World ruled by Spain.
Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter, Juana, married into the powerful Hapsburgs of Austria. Her son, Charles V, was Holy Roman Emperor when Martin Luther refused to rescind his 95 theses at the Diet of Worms in 1521. In 1549, Charles changed the status of the lowland provinces along the North Sea from dependencies of individual German princes into his personal domain. Since many supported the Reformation, they were drawn into conflict with Charles, who introduced the Inquisition to strengthen his position in the Seventeen Provinces.
The Protestant provinces rebelled against Charles’ son, Philip II, in 1581. In 1585 Alessandro Farnese seized their central city, Antwerp, and expelled the Protestants. His city of Genoa took over the banking system. The men with knowledge of sugar refining moved to Amsterdam, which became the new trade center.
Charles V had married his first cousin, the sister of the then king of Portugal. In 1581, the same year the Dutch rebelled, Philip inherited the Portuguese throne and banned the Dutch from their traditional trade with Brazil.
The Dutch were traders who had no choice but to exploit changes in market conditions. In 1621 the United Provinces didn’t renew their truce with Spain and instead chartered the Dutch West Indies Company. It immediately began attacking the Spanish controlled sugar lands of Brazil, finally taking power in Recife in 1629. Maurice of Nassau arrived as local governor in 1637. The next year, the company took Sno Paulo de Loanda, the Portugese slave trade center off the coast of Angola.
While the Dutch company put together the pieces to dominate the sugar and slave trades, it only had a few years to exploit its monopoly. The Portuguese regained their independence from Spain in 1640. The Brazilians evicted the Dutch in 1654. Oliver Cromwell passed the first Navigation Act in 1651 that forbade British colonies from using foreign, especially Dutch, carriers. Charles II issued his act in 1660, setting off trade wars between the major powers that destroyed Amsterdam’s monopoly on sugar refining.
It was in the twenty years between the time Portugal became independent and the accession of Charles II that the Dutch were able to develop Barbados as a new market for slaves and a new source for raw materials to feed their sugar refineries. After that, their ships only carried about five to six percent of the slaves.
Notes:
Emmer, Pieter C. The Dutch Slave Trade 1500-1850, 2006, reviewed for Institute of Historical Research website by J. L. Price.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Detroit Flight
People like to blame the decline of Detroit on the movement of Blacks from the south during and after World War II. However, Ford and Dodge had left for Highland Park and Hamtramack before World War I when the state’s Black population was 17,115 and less than a third, 5,741, lived in Detroit. In 1910, Blacks constituted only 1.2% of the city’s population and probably a number worked as servants and menials.
Ford’s move from Mack Avenue to Piquette and Beaubien in 1904 can be explained as the need for a larger tract of land to build the Model T, but it’s hard to believe he couldn’t find something available inside the city when he needed to expand in 1910. It’s also hard to understand why Highland Park and Hamtramack resisted annexation so strongly once Ford and Dodge had relocated unless large tax payers did not want to be part of the city.
There may be two sides to the flight from the city: the things Ford desired and the desires of men who controlled city politics
We know Dearborn and the area around River Rouge were not known for their open democracy in the 1930's when Harry Bennett ran Ford’s security or after the war when Orville Hubbard was mayor. For that matter, we also know Flint’s mayor, Harold Bradshaw, and his police chief, James Wills, were more responsive to Buick’s demands for union busting in 1936 than was appropriate for civic officials.
However, an unwillingness to provide or tolerate paramilitary corporate security were probably not important in 1910. Longer standing conflicts between Detroit area investors and local entrepreneurs may have been more important.
In the 1860's, Eber Ward was experimenting with the Bessemer process at a steel plant in Wyandotte. When he wanted to expand operations, his Detroit investors refused. He moved to Chicago, and his plant there eventually became a founding part of United States Steel.
In the same years, a local butcher, George Hammond, bought the patents for refrigerated rail cars. He too relocated his operations to the outskirts of Chicago in northern Indiana. Later, when cattle from the Great Plains were available, that move would have been logical, but in the 1860's animals still came from places like Ohio.
Detroit lost the steel, meat and some of railcar businesses because of a dysfunctional investor culture in the city. The same kinds of problems plagued Henry Ford. Similar problems may explain why General Motors and Chrysler avoided the area, or why the small companies that remained in the city failed to grow even when they had good product ideas.
I don’t know what was going on when rival automotive speculators were betting against Ford and Durant, but I suspect it drew on long standing cultural traditions that were more important to creating the distaste people held for the city than the later demographic changes.
Notes:
Metzger, Kurt and Jason Booza. "African Americans in the United States, Michigan and Metropolitan Detroit," Wayne State University Center for Urban Studies, 2002.
Ford’s move from Mack Avenue to Piquette and Beaubien in 1904 can be explained as the need for a larger tract of land to build the Model T, but it’s hard to believe he couldn’t find something available inside the city when he needed to expand in 1910. It’s also hard to understand why Highland Park and Hamtramack resisted annexation so strongly once Ford and Dodge had relocated unless large tax payers did not want to be part of the city.
There may be two sides to the flight from the city: the things Ford desired and the desires of men who controlled city politics
We know Dearborn and the area around River Rouge were not known for their open democracy in the 1930's when Harry Bennett ran Ford’s security or after the war when Orville Hubbard was mayor. For that matter, we also know Flint’s mayor, Harold Bradshaw, and his police chief, James Wills, were more responsive to Buick’s demands for union busting in 1936 than was appropriate for civic officials.
However, an unwillingness to provide or tolerate paramilitary corporate security were probably not important in 1910. Longer standing conflicts between Detroit area investors and local entrepreneurs may have been more important.
In the 1860's, Eber Ward was experimenting with the Bessemer process at a steel plant in Wyandotte. When he wanted to expand operations, his Detroit investors refused. He moved to Chicago, and his plant there eventually became a founding part of United States Steel.
In the same years, a local butcher, George Hammond, bought the patents for refrigerated rail cars. He too relocated his operations to the outskirts of Chicago in northern Indiana. Later, when cattle from the Great Plains were available, that move would have been logical, but in the 1860's animals still came from places like Ohio.
Detroit lost the steel, meat and some of railcar businesses because of a dysfunctional investor culture in the city. The same kinds of problems plagued Henry Ford. Similar problems may explain why General Motors and Chrysler avoided the area, or why the small companies that remained in the city failed to grow even when they had good product ideas.
I don’t know what was going on when rival automotive speculators were betting against Ford and Durant, but I suspect it drew on long standing cultural traditions that were more important to creating the distaste people held for the city than the later demographic changes.
Notes:
Metzger, Kurt and Jason Booza. "African Americans in the United States, Michigan and Metropolitan Detroit," Wayne State University Center for Urban Studies, 2002.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
South Carolina - Sugar Plantations
The biggest contribution Barbados made to South Carolina is the slave-based plantation economy, and all the social and legal controls that flowed from it.
What I’ve never quite understood is why plantations needed to be so large that they required enforced labor, be it indentured servants, captured Indians, or African slaves. It may simply be that size became a status symbol, especially after a few men were able to acquire such large tracts in Tudor Ireland. But, until the introduction of agricultural machinery in the nineteenth century, each additional acre of land brought under cultivation meant a proportional increase in labor hours, which in turn meant management problems that increased exponentially.
I’ve talked to several construction contractors who are puzzled that when their customers double their income doesn’t follow. Instead, they buy more materials, hire more employees, and personally work more hours. It was after that sort of momentum led to an unstable labor force in 1913 that Henry Ford began improving the assembly process itself.
It may be the scarcity of labor that limited the growth of farms in the area where I was raised in Michigan that influences my understanding. The early settlers weren’t that different from those who arrived in Barbados or South Carolina: land speculators and men with limited means, sometimes very junior members of important eastern families, looking for opportunity.
In Cameron, Patricia Averill found those who stayed on their claims for more than a few years became wheat farmers and those that did best usually had sons or other dependent family members to help. The speculators, who didn’t resell immediately, continually mortgaged their lands to newcomers, most of whom moved on, leaving speculators with their land and the accrued wealth from rents.
The first thing farmers needed was access to markets. In the earliest years, they drove wagons a hundred miles to Detroit to sell their harvest to traders shipping it east on Lake Erie and the Erie Canal. They welcomed the state’s efforts to build railroads, and didn’t prosper until those railroads were fully functional.
The second thing they needed was a local mill to grind their wheat for food. At the time, mills were turned by running water, and speculators had claimed all the potential sites before others even saw the land. The mill owners didn’t wish to own all the farm land that produced their raw material, and most farmers didn’t have the technical skills to build and operate their own mills.
From the very beginning, settlers from all economic classes assumed financial transactions would bind them together, that none were sufficient unto themselves.
In contrast, we’re told, when sugar production was introduced to Barbados from Brazil, it brought with it the assumption that each grower would have his own mill, and would need enough acres to justify the mill’s operation. The social structure of the island changed quickly when men with access to capital took over most of the land, and pushed out the men who’d been making a living on small holdings and weren’t willing to work for others for low wages.
Yet, large, self-sufficient plantations with captive labor weren’t inherent with sugar cane. The culture and technology for processing the crop was introduced to the Mediterranean by the Arabs when they expanded west after the death of Mohammed. The Portuguese took cuttings to the island of Madeira and then to Brazil where they improved the milling techniques; Antwerp became the primary refiner.
The large Portugese-Brazilian landowners, the senhores de engenbo, owned the mills which were maintained by skilled tradesmen recruited from Europe. They didn’t expect to raise all the cane needed to make their mills profitable. Instead, they made arrangements with small landowners, the lavradores de cana, to process their cane in exchange for a percentage. They also leased their spare land to poorer men as share croppers.
People at each level of production owned slaves, so slaves lived in smaller units. The wealth was distributed, but so was the risk of poor harvests, and the problems of labor management. To be sure there were contractual problems between mill owners and dependent farmers, but there are always problems when individuals need to co-operate.
The Brazilian model of the 1640's with its community of interest was more like Cameron in the 1830's than it was an antecedent for the self-sufficient, isolated units of South Carolina.
Notes:
Bethell, Leslie. Colonial Brazil, 1987.
What I’ve never quite understood is why plantations needed to be so large that they required enforced labor, be it indentured servants, captured Indians, or African slaves. It may simply be that size became a status symbol, especially after a few men were able to acquire such large tracts in Tudor Ireland. But, until the introduction of agricultural machinery in the nineteenth century, each additional acre of land brought under cultivation meant a proportional increase in labor hours, which in turn meant management problems that increased exponentially.
I’ve talked to several construction contractors who are puzzled that when their customers double their income doesn’t follow. Instead, they buy more materials, hire more employees, and personally work more hours. It was after that sort of momentum led to an unstable labor force in 1913 that Henry Ford began improving the assembly process itself.
It may be the scarcity of labor that limited the growth of farms in the area where I was raised in Michigan that influences my understanding. The early settlers weren’t that different from those who arrived in Barbados or South Carolina: land speculators and men with limited means, sometimes very junior members of important eastern families, looking for opportunity.
In Cameron, Patricia Averill found those who stayed on their claims for more than a few years became wheat farmers and those that did best usually had sons or other dependent family members to help. The speculators, who didn’t resell immediately, continually mortgaged their lands to newcomers, most of whom moved on, leaving speculators with their land and the accrued wealth from rents.
The first thing farmers needed was access to markets. In the earliest years, they drove wagons a hundred miles to Detroit to sell their harvest to traders shipping it east on Lake Erie and the Erie Canal. They welcomed the state’s efforts to build railroads, and didn’t prosper until those railroads were fully functional.
The second thing they needed was a local mill to grind their wheat for food. At the time, mills were turned by running water, and speculators had claimed all the potential sites before others even saw the land. The mill owners didn’t wish to own all the farm land that produced their raw material, and most farmers didn’t have the technical skills to build and operate their own mills.
From the very beginning, settlers from all economic classes assumed financial transactions would bind them together, that none were sufficient unto themselves.
In contrast, we’re told, when sugar production was introduced to Barbados from Brazil, it brought with it the assumption that each grower would have his own mill, and would need enough acres to justify the mill’s operation. The social structure of the island changed quickly when men with access to capital took over most of the land, and pushed out the men who’d been making a living on small holdings and weren’t willing to work for others for low wages.
Yet, large, self-sufficient plantations with captive labor weren’t inherent with sugar cane. The culture and technology for processing the crop was introduced to the Mediterranean by the Arabs when they expanded west after the death of Mohammed. The Portuguese took cuttings to the island of Madeira and then to Brazil where they improved the milling techniques; Antwerp became the primary refiner.
The large Portugese-Brazilian landowners, the senhores de engenbo, owned the mills which were maintained by skilled tradesmen recruited from Europe. They didn’t expect to raise all the cane needed to make their mills profitable. Instead, they made arrangements with small landowners, the lavradores de cana, to process their cane in exchange for a percentage. They also leased their spare land to poorer men as share croppers.
People at each level of production owned slaves, so slaves lived in smaller units. The wealth was distributed, but so was the risk of poor harvests, and the problems of labor management. To be sure there were contractual problems between mill owners and dependent farmers, but there are always problems when individuals need to co-operate.
The Brazilian model of the 1640's with its community of interest was more like Cameron in the 1830's than it was an antecedent for the self-sufficient, isolated units of South Carolina.
Notes:
Bethell, Leslie. Colonial Brazil, 1987.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Noble Peace
The uproar over the Nobel committee awarding the Peace Prize to Barak Obama reminds me how much the envy and jealousy of the less successful fuels rage against those who do better and how deeply ingrained is the idea of entitlement that underlies their unfulfilled expectations.
In this case, entitlement doesn’t mean a person deserves something by some characteristic of his or her birth, but that if someone puts in time he or she deserves the reward. You pay for four years of college, you deserve a diploma even if you’ve learned nothing. Your daughter takes dance classes every Saturday, she deserves a solo turn in the Nutcracker even if she has no sense of movement.
Men like Jeremiah Wright, Roland Burris and Michael Steele, who’ve worked for years for modest rewards, are angry when they see someone younger do better. They don’t understand that his mere refusal to use their rhetoric and other tools of aggrandizement is one reason he’s more accepted.
People who still think they or Bill Clinton deserves it first forget that the mere televised image of Obama meeting as an equal with heads of European states not comfortable with their African and Arab immigrants gives hope to young people in those countries that perhaps they too can succeed within established institutions despite their inherited outsider status.
Hope for peaceful change is the most important prerequisite for peace, not all the procedural actions that follow.
Despite the grumbling of the less successful, it is not luck or charisma that made Obama a symbol of possibility to the downtrodden. He worked to graduate from school, he worked to become a politician, and he worked to be elected president, and people know that he worked, that little was given to him except some opportunities to work.
If only it had been luck, some wouldn’t be so angry. But when men have worked as hard and not seen the same rewards, it’s difficult for them to see the differences lay elsewhere, not in following the rules they learned in childhood, but in the ability to adapt to changing situations.
And so, ever since Obama began winning delegates to the Democratic convention, we’ve watched the unedifying sight of men who haven’t done all they desire by the current rules, uncomfortable that the rules may have changed. Ideology has nothing to do with the sense of loss dramatized by John McCain, Liz Cheney, Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Glenn Beck and others who make their living as conservative or progressive commentators.
The mere volume of criticism should remind us the change arrived on Inauguration Day and we will either succeed because we deal with it or fail. Our society does not have to endure simply
because we live in it; it is no more an entitlement than anything else, and depends on us all recognizing the good and bad in our current situation and adapting.
Regrets not accepted.
In this case, entitlement doesn’t mean a person deserves something by some characteristic of his or her birth, but that if someone puts in time he or she deserves the reward. You pay for four years of college, you deserve a diploma even if you’ve learned nothing. Your daughter takes dance classes every Saturday, she deserves a solo turn in the Nutcracker even if she has no sense of movement.
Men like Jeremiah Wright, Roland Burris and Michael Steele, who’ve worked for years for modest rewards, are angry when they see someone younger do better. They don’t understand that his mere refusal to use their rhetoric and other tools of aggrandizement is one reason he’s more accepted.
People who still think they or Bill Clinton deserves it first forget that the mere televised image of Obama meeting as an equal with heads of European states not comfortable with their African and Arab immigrants gives hope to young people in those countries that perhaps they too can succeed within established institutions despite their inherited outsider status.
Hope for peaceful change is the most important prerequisite for peace, not all the procedural actions that follow.
Despite the grumbling of the less successful, it is not luck or charisma that made Obama a symbol of possibility to the downtrodden. He worked to graduate from school, he worked to become a politician, and he worked to be elected president, and people know that he worked, that little was given to him except some opportunities to work.
If only it had been luck, some wouldn’t be so angry. But when men have worked as hard and not seen the same rewards, it’s difficult for them to see the differences lay elsewhere, not in following the rules they learned in childhood, but in the ability to adapt to changing situations.
And so, ever since Obama began winning delegates to the Democratic convention, we’ve watched the unedifying sight of men who haven’t done all they desire by the current rules, uncomfortable that the rules may have changed. Ideology has nothing to do with the sense of loss dramatized by John McCain, Liz Cheney, Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Glenn Beck and others who make their living as conservative or progressive commentators.
The mere volume of criticism should remind us the change arrived on Inauguration Day and we will either succeed because we deal with it or fail. Our society does not have to endure simply
because we live in it; it is no more an entitlement than anything else, and depends on us all recognizing the good and bad in our current situation and adapting.
Regrets not accepted.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
South Carolina - John Colleton
Some of South Carolina’s roots lie in the English Civil War.
Our school books simplify that war by saying it was fought between the Puritan Roundheads and the Anglican and Catholic Cavaliers, the men of Massachusetts versus the planters of Virginia and Maryland. As with most wars, the conflicts were more complex. The west of England, centered on the port and merchants of Bristol, was competing with the upcoming merchants of London on the eastern shore. Parliament was jockeying to maintain its privileges against a monarch who believed he had absolute power. The House of Lords, representing inherited landed money, was under siege by the House of Commons which represented the merchants and new wealth. The Scots, Irish and Welch were still protesting union.
Many credit John Colleton with suggesting the settlement of Carolina to Anthony Ashley-Cooper, a Londoner with investments in Barbados. However, his background did not automatically qualify him for such reward from the Stuarts. His family had risen to the status of gentlemen in Exeter, the center of the Devon woolen industry in southwestern England. His father, Peter, was high sheriff in 1618; his sister Elizabeth married Hugh Crocker who became mayor.
When war came in 1642, mercantile and industrial Exeter supported Parliament against the king. Royalist forces laid siege to the town in August, and forced men like Colleton and Croker to retire. Colleton apparently lost his rights to income from his estates in Cornwall in the ensuing months.
When John Berkeley asked him to raise and arm a private army to support the dominant royalist force in the region, he agreed. They apparently fought at the Battle of Stratton in May of 1643 which Berkeley won for Charles I. Parliament won the war in 1645, although Exeter remained royalist country until Thomas Fairfax defeated Berkeley in 1646.
Colleton next appears in the public record in 1648 asking to have the income from his estates reinstated. Meanwhile, Charles was still fomenting rebellion and new fighting broke out soon after Colleton received his dispensation in March. In August he must not have been considered a rebel because he was granted permission to go to Calais.
After Charles was executed in 1649, supporters of his son regrouped in exile and had the younger Charles issue demands for recognition of his succession from the colonies. Massachusetts refused, but Virginia, where Berkeley’s brother William was governor, agreed. Barbados chose to stay as neutral as possible to protect its trade with both London and Amsterdam.
Disgruntled and impoverished soldiers from the royalist army fled to the colonies, including Barbados where Humphrey Walrond refused to accept neutrality and forced the governor to pledge to Charles in 1850. It was in this year John Berkeley says he ran into Colleton in Holland.
Oliver Cromwell sent a fleet to blockade Barbados in 1651. In 1652, a compromise was signed with now Colonel Colleton supporting Cromwell’s admiral, George Ayscue, who then appointed Daniel Searle governor. Soon after, Charles sent Francis Willougby as his governor of the island.
Colleton, in fact, was an ally of Thomas Modyford, who had arrived in Barbados in 1647. Modyford had been a mayor of Exeter and George Monck refers to both Modyford and Colleton as cousins in a 1663 letter to Willoughby. Both joined the subsequent plots to overthrow Searle.
The royalist cause was not a simple one, when men like Walrond squabbled with men like Modyford. After the restoration of the Stuarts many had to rearrange their biographies to emphasize when they had supported the ultimate winners. John Berkeley did the rehabilitation for Colleton in 1660 when he wrote a letter that became the model for all the heroic biographies that followed our civil war some 200 years later.
Berkeley said Colleton had sacrificed his fortune to support the royalist cause in the English civil war, left the country for the Caribbean after Charles I was executed in 1649 to avoid taking an oath, and continued to scheme for his son’s return from exile. He even introduces the now contemporary euphemism used to denigrate civil war in Ireland as mere "troubles."
However, while Berkely would like to have used Colleton to remind Charles of his own service, he hedged his language with "to the best of my knowledge" in case reports surfaced that suggest Colleton was not quite as steadfast as proclaimed.
Berkeley knew the myth of loyalty was more important than the reality, and that personal self-interest was best wrapped in that myth. When he lobbied for the Carolina grant, he gave us both
a colony and a narrative legitimizing disobedience.
Notes:
Berkeley’s letter to Charles II as reproduced by William Betham in The Baronetage of England, 1802.
Our school books simplify that war by saying it was fought between the Puritan Roundheads and the Anglican and Catholic Cavaliers, the men of Massachusetts versus the planters of Virginia and Maryland. As with most wars, the conflicts were more complex. The west of England, centered on the port and merchants of Bristol, was competing with the upcoming merchants of London on the eastern shore. Parliament was jockeying to maintain its privileges against a monarch who believed he had absolute power. The House of Lords, representing inherited landed money, was under siege by the House of Commons which represented the merchants and new wealth. The Scots, Irish and Welch were still protesting union.
Many credit John Colleton with suggesting the settlement of Carolina to Anthony Ashley-Cooper, a Londoner with investments in Barbados. However, his background did not automatically qualify him for such reward from the Stuarts. His family had risen to the status of gentlemen in Exeter, the center of the Devon woolen industry in southwestern England. His father, Peter, was high sheriff in 1618; his sister Elizabeth married Hugh Crocker who became mayor.
When war came in 1642, mercantile and industrial Exeter supported Parliament against the king. Royalist forces laid siege to the town in August, and forced men like Colleton and Croker to retire. Colleton apparently lost his rights to income from his estates in Cornwall in the ensuing months.
When John Berkeley asked him to raise and arm a private army to support the dominant royalist force in the region, he agreed. They apparently fought at the Battle of Stratton in May of 1643 which Berkeley won for Charles I. Parliament won the war in 1645, although Exeter remained royalist country until Thomas Fairfax defeated Berkeley in 1646.
Colleton next appears in the public record in 1648 asking to have the income from his estates reinstated. Meanwhile, Charles was still fomenting rebellion and new fighting broke out soon after Colleton received his dispensation in March. In August he must not have been considered a rebel because he was granted permission to go to Calais.
After Charles was executed in 1649, supporters of his son regrouped in exile and had the younger Charles issue demands for recognition of his succession from the colonies. Massachusetts refused, but Virginia, where Berkeley’s brother William was governor, agreed. Barbados chose to stay as neutral as possible to protect its trade with both London and Amsterdam.
Disgruntled and impoverished soldiers from the royalist army fled to the colonies, including Barbados where Humphrey Walrond refused to accept neutrality and forced the governor to pledge to Charles in 1850. It was in this year John Berkeley says he ran into Colleton in Holland.
Oliver Cromwell sent a fleet to blockade Barbados in 1651. In 1652, a compromise was signed with now Colonel Colleton supporting Cromwell’s admiral, George Ayscue, who then appointed Daniel Searle governor. Soon after, Charles sent Francis Willougby as his governor of the island.
Colleton, in fact, was an ally of Thomas Modyford, who had arrived in Barbados in 1647. Modyford had been a mayor of Exeter and George Monck refers to both Modyford and Colleton as cousins in a 1663 letter to Willoughby. Both joined the subsequent plots to overthrow Searle.
The royalist cause was not a simple one, when men like Walrond squabbled with men like Modyford. After the restoration of the Stuarts many had to rearrange their biographies to emphasize when they had supported the ultimate winners. John Berkeley did the rehabilitation for Colleton in 1660 when he wrote a letter that became the model for all the heroic biographies that followed our civil war some 200 years later.
Berkeley said Colleton had sacrificed his fortune to support the royalist cause in the English civil war, left the country for the Caribbean after Charles I was executed in 1649 to avoid taking an oath, and continued to scheme for his son’s return from exile. He even introduces the now contemporary euphemism used to denigrate civil war in Ireland as mere "troubles."
However, while Berkely would like to have used Colleton to remind Charles of his own service, he hedged his language with "to the best of my knowledge" in case reports surfaced that suggest Colleton was not quite as steadfast as proclaimed.
Berkeley knew the myth of loyalty was more important than the reality, and that personal self-interest was best wrapped in that myth. When he lobbied for the Carolina grant, he gave us both
a colony and a narrative legitimizing disobedience.
Notes:
Berkeley’s letter to Charles II as reproduced by William Betham in The Baronetage of England, 1802.
These are humbly to certify to your sacred Majesty, THAT John Colleton, some time of Exeter, Esq. engaged for your majesty’s royal father, in the beginning of his troubles, raised and commanded a regiment under me, consisting of 1100 men, well armed, without any charge to his then majesty, or compulsion of his people, which was very costly to him, he never receiving any pay or free quarter, to my knowledge, and the soldiers very little either; that he furnished moneys and arms, to a good value, when he was driven from his habitations and estate, in Cornewal, before the Battle of Stratton, for which I am confident he hath not had satisfaction; that he being chosen a commissioner by the county of Exon, for the carrying on of the service of your Majesty’s royal father, in the associated counties of the west, did therin good service.
That he did, at several other times, procure and lend moneys, and procure and furnish good store of armes and ammunition, when his majesty’s affairs were in great straits, and gave credit, and staid long for considerable sums yet unpaid, of many of them, whereby a good sum must de due to him. That he suffered much by your majesty’s enemies, by being of your part, I believe to the value of above sixty thousand pounds, and he was well contented to stay for his disbursements, and bore his sufferings cheerfully, proposing to himself no other satisfaction, that I could perceive, than your majesty’s restoration. That after your majesty’s exile, he was ever active and helpful to your majesty’s agents, in England, in his person, and with his purse, which I my self know to be true, and have been informed thereof by divers others.
That he forsook England, for many years, to avoid the oaths, subscriptions, &tc, imposed upon your subjects, by your enemies, destructive of your majesty’s interest, as I found him, in Holland, in the year 1650, and returned not until your majesty’s restoration.Letter from George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, to Francis Lord Willoughby," 31 August 1663, reproduced on University of North Carolina docsouth website
That he hath kept his loyalty unspotted, to the last, as far as I can be informed, or understand.
I am sure he hath done your majesty, faithful and good service many ways, and all this, in order to his duty and allegiance, without any respect to reward or gain, that I can perceive by him.
19th of Xth, 1660
Jo. Berkeley
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Detroit City vs City of Detroit
This past summer Martha Reeves, then on the Detroit city council, showed her ignorance of her constituency when she complained that Jay Leno shouldn’t be putting on a benefit performance for Detroit auto workers in Auburn Hills. Everyone knows the city and the automotive industry aren’t the same. They just happen to share the same name.
In the early days, manufacturing was crowded along the Detroit River and the rail tracks that paralleled it near the narrows where traffic could cross into Canada. But, Henry Ford, a farm boy from Greenfield Township, never worked in the city’s industrial core. His first plant was on Mack Avenue, his second on Piquette, and his third in Highland Park, just beyond the city.
Ford soon began buying farm land to the west of Detroit, where he built his estate and his biggest factory complex on the River Rouge. For a while his son, Edsel, lived in Indian Village, but by 1921 he’d moved northeast of the city to Lake Saint Claire in Macomb County.
The Dodge brothers, Horace and John, came from western Michigan. They began building engines for Ford at a plant in Hamtramack, before they left to form their own company. When they died in 1920, the company was taken over by New York investors, who later reorganized it as Chrysler. Until 1992, the company headquarters was in Highland Park.
To this day, neither Highland Park nor Hamtramack is politically part of Detroit, even though both have long been surrounded by the city.
General Motors was never even close to Detroit. William Durant was a successful carriage builder in Flint, who took over management of David Buick’s company. When he had trouble with General Motors’ bankers, he organized Chevrolet in the same city. Michael Moore is absolutely correct to use Flint, not Detroit, as the symbol for the decline of GM.
Despite the centrifugal movement of the major automotive companies away from Detroit, the city was long the center for small companies and suppliers. Starting near the river, Richard Wright says the Commercial Company built cars on Franklin, while Hudson Motor, Hupmobile and Ransome Olds all began on Jefferson.
Reliance Automobile Company was on East Fort Street and Packard on East Grand Boulevard at Mount Eliot. Lozier was near Ford on Mack Avenue. The Everitt-Metzger-Flanders Company and Wayne Automobile Company were both on Piquette.
In the other direction, along Michigan Avenue and the New York Central tracks that go west to Chicago, the Rickenbacker Motor Company was on Michigan while both C. H. Blomstrom Motor Car Company and Cadillac Assembly were at Michigan and Clark Street.
As the automotive industry spread away from the city, it became a social network of designers and engineers, customers and suppliers who loved the mechanics of cars and the manufacturing process. After World War II, Ford middle managers may have moved to Dearborn Heights while GM executives may have gravitated toward Bloomfield Hills and engineers followed the Tech Center to Warren, north of Detroit in Macomb County, but they all were aware of one another.
That’s why today, when dealers can’t sell cars, it’s not just the city of Detroit that’s suffering, but every node in the network. The last large employer in my hometown, a hundred miles away, made parts for Visteon until the troubled Ford supplier canceled the contract and moved production to Mexico in 2002. The last small employer in Cameron made automotive fasteners. The process was fully automated, but it still was forced to move its operations to China a few years back to keep its contracts.
For lack of something better, it’s the cultural web of individuals, institutions and communities that people mean when they use Detroit as the label for the automotive industry, not the 138.8 square miles of urban real estate then represented by Reeves.
Notes: Reeves was not re-elected in August, partly because of this remark.
Wright, Richard A. "Once Teeming with Auto Plants, Detroit Now Home to Only a Few Nameplates," The Detroit News, 16 January 2000.
In the early days, manufacturing was crowded along the Detroit River and the rail tracks that paralleled it near the narrows where traffic could cross into Canada. But, Henry Ford, a farm boy from Greenfield Township, never worked in the city’s industrial core. His first plant was on Mack Avenue, his second on Piquette, and his third in Highland Park, just beyond the city.
Ford soon began buying farm land to the west of Detroit, where he built his estate and his biggest factory complex on the River Rouge. For a while his son, Edsel, lived in Indian Village, but by 1921 he’d moved northeast of the city to Lake Saint Claire in Macomb County.
The Dodge brothers, Horace and John, came from western Michigan. They began building engines for Ford at a plant in Hamtramack, before they left to form their own company. When they died in 1920, the company was taken over by New York investors, who later reorganized it as Chrysler. Until 1992, the company headquarters was in Highland Park.
To this day, neither Highland Park nor Hamtramack is politically part of Detroit, even though both have long been surrounded by the city.
General Motors was never even close to Detroit. William Durant was a successful carriage builder in Flint, who took over management of David Buick’s company. When he had trouble with General Motors’ bankers, he organized Chevrolet in the same city. Michael Moore is absolutely correct to use Flint, not Detroit, as the symbol for the decline of GM.
Despite the centrifugal movement of the major automotive companies away from Detroit, the city was long the center for small companies and suppliers. Starting near the river, Richard Wright says the Commercial Company built cars on Franklin, while Hudson Motor, Hupmobile and Ransome Olds all began on Jefferson.
Reliance Automobile Company was on East Fort Street and Packard on East Grand Boulevard at Mount Eliot. Lozier was near Ford on Mack Avenue. The Everitt-Metzger-Flanders Company and Wayne Automobile Company were both on Piquette.
In the other direction, along Michigan Avenue and the New York Central tracks that go west to Chicago, the Rickenbacker Motor Company was on Michigan while both C. H. Blomstrom Motor Car Company and Cadillac Assembly were at Michigan and Clark Street.
As the automotive industry spread away from the city, it became a social network of designers and engineers, customers and suppliers who loved the mechanics of cars and the manufacturing process. After World War II, Ford middle managers may have moved to Dearborn Heights while GM executives may have gravitated toward Bloomfield Hills and engineers followed the Tech Center to Warren, north of Detroit in Macomb County, but they all were aware of one another.
That’s why today, when dealers can’t sell cars, it’s not just the city of Detroit that’s suffering, but every node in the network. The last large employer in my hometown, a hundred miles away, made parts for Visteon until the troubled Ford supplier canceled the contract and moved production to Mexico in 2002. The last small employer in Cameron made automotive fasteners. The process was fully automated, but it still was forced to move its operations to China a few years back to keep its contracts.
For lack of something better, it’s the cultural web of individuals, institutions and communities that people mean when they use Detroit as the label for the automotive industry, not the 138.8 square miles of urban real estate then represented by Reeves.
Notes: Reeves was not re-elected in August, partly because of this remark.
Wright, Richard A. "Once Teeming with Auto Plants, Detroit Now Home to Only a Few Nameplates," The Detroit News, 16 January 2000.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
South Carolina - Primogeniture
Aristocratic South Carolina wasn’t promoted by England’s aristocrats, but by their sons who were disinherited by primogeniture, the law that dictates the eldest son inherits everything.
The legal tradition, dating back to the Normans, produced a large number of ambitious young men with no inherent stake in the status quo, not only ready to support whoever seemed most likely to further their personal needs to amass fortunes, but willing to reconsider alliances whenever it suited them. The changing course of civil war in England in the 1640's increased the fluidity in society.
After the execution of Charles I in 1649, his sons, Charles and James, took refuge in Holland, where their supporters could see the profits made by the Dutch West Indies Company from sugar and slavery. When Charles II returned to England in 1660 and began consolidating a loyal peerage by granting new titles, the largest number, indicating the greatest concentration of wealth, went to 13 men in Barbados in 1661.
When the Stuart brothers were restored, their supporters maneuvered for patents to establish new colonial enterprises. The charter for lands stretching south from Virginia was issued in 1663 to Anthony Ashley-Cooper, John and William Berkeley, George Carteret, John Colleton, William Craven, Edward Hyde, and George Monck.
Some were direct supporters of Charles like Monck and Ashley-Copper who engineered his return, but most were friends or supporters of his ambitious, younger brother, James, who had no resources to reward them himself. Hyde’s daughter, Anne, was James’ wife while Craven was financially supporting his aunt Elizabeth. John Berkeley and Carteret drew closer to James during their shared exile in Holland.
More important, of the original Lords Proprietors, three were oldest sons, but only one enjoyed the privileges of fortune and rank. Craven’s father was a self-made man who had risen to mayor of London without title. Ashley-Cooper’s father died in Dorset when he was a minor and the estate dwindled through trustee mismanagement. Carteret was the son of an unpropertied man on Jersey.
Of the others, Colleton was the second son of the high sheriff of Exeter, Monck was the second son of an Exeter gentlemen in straitened circumstances, Hyde was the third son of a Cheshire county family, and the Berkely brothers were the fourth and fifth sons of a courtier to the king from Somerset who died in debt.
Monck and John Berkeley are the only ones who were active in battle for some period of time. John’s brother William spent the war in Virginia, Carteret retired to Jersey, and Craven stayed in Bohemia. However, each contributed funds to the royalist cause when necessary. Of the others, Ashley-Cooper changed from a royalist to a supporter of Parliament and Hyde moved the other way. Colleton raised troops for John Berkeley in the early 1840's, but then steered a moderate course in Barbados in the 1850's.
The quest for title and fortune meant most of the Carolina proprietors were involved as investors or proprietors in at least one other colonial grant. Many of these began as schemes promoted by the Stuart cousin Rupert, the younger son of Elizabeth. The first, to explore for gold in Africa in 1660, included Ashley-Cooper, John Berkeley, Craven, and Monck. Three years later, the company was reorganized to handle the African slave trade and included John Berkeley, Carteret, Colleton, and Craven.
When England took possession of the Dutch territories north of Virginia in 1664, Charles II gave them to his brother, who then gave the part of the land now New Jersey to John Berkeley and Carteret. The first investors in 1665 in what became the Hudson Bay Company of Canada included Carteret and Peter Colleton, John’s oldest son. In 1668, Ashley-Cooper, Craven, and Monck became involved.
The swirling coterie of younger sons and ruined oldest ones circling the younger Stuart seeking reward for temporary loyalties in overlapping charters is reminiscent of the crony capitalism of George Bush’s presidency when the energy, mortgage and private equity industries flourished in a time of negligent surveillance. There even came a time when the need for more money to finance the colonial stock companies brought in the talented men in the next orbit like Robert Boyle and John Locke.
As we pick through the debris of the current economic crisis, we recognize how many were simply out to amass wealth with as little effort as possible, and how few were willing to do the hard work necessary to build new enterprises. Likewise, among the Carolina proprietors, the ones with some experience in the colonies, regardless of their royalist ties, were the only ones willing to work to convert the charters and investments into profitable enterprises. William Berkeley sent William Drummond to colonize the Albermarle area in 1664 while Ashley-Cooper sent settlers from England to what’s now Port Royal in 1670, after Colleton died in 1666. In the next generation, the only Carolina settler was the third son of Colleton, James.
Note: Many of the proprietors are now better known by their titles. In order of rank, Monck became the Duke of Albemarle while Hyde was made Earl of Clarendon, Ashley-Cooper the Earl of Shaftesbury, and Craven the Earl of Craven. John Berkeley rose to the Baron of Stratton. The others were made baronets without rights to sit in the House of Lords.
The legal tradition, dating back to the Normans, produced a large number of ambitious young men with no inherent stake in the status quo, not only ready to support whoever seemed most likely to further their personal needs to amass fortunes, but willing to reconsider alliances whenever it suited them. The changing course of civil war in England in the 1640's increased the fluidity in society.
After the execution of Charles I in 1649, his sons, Charles and James, took refuge in Holland, where their supporters could see the profits made by the Dutch West Indies Company from sugar and slavery. When Charles II returned to England in 1660 and began consolidating a loyal peerage by granting new titles, the largest number, indicating the greatest concentration of wealth, went to 13 men in Barbados in 1661.
When the Stuart brothers were restored, their supporters maneuvered for patents to establish new colonial enterprises. The charter for lands stretching south from Virginia was issued in 1663 to Anthony Ashley-Cooper, John and William Berkeley, George Carteret, John Colleton, William Craven, Edward Hyde, and George Monck.
Some were direct supporters of Charles like Monck and Ashley-Copper who engineered his return, but most were friends or supporters of his ambitious, younger brother, James, who had no resources to reward them himself. Hyde’s daughter, Anne, was James’ wife while Craven was financially supporting his aunt Elizabeth. John Berkeley and Carteret drew closer to James during their shared exile in Holland.
More important, of the original Lords Proprietors, three were oldest sons, but only one enjoyed the privileges of fortune and rank. Craven’s father was a self-made man who had risen to mayor of London without title. Ashley-Cooper’s father died in Dorset when he was a minor and the estate dwindled through trustee mismanagement. Carteret was the son of an unpropertied man on Jersey.
Of the others, Colleton was the second son of the high sheriff of Exeter, Monck was the second son of an Exeter gentlemen in straitened circumstances, Hyde was the third son of a Cheshire county family, and the Berkely brothers were the fourth and fifth sons of a courtier to the king from Somerset who died in debt.
Monck and John Berkeley are the only ones who were active in battle for some period of time. John’s brother William spent the war in Virginia, Carteret retired to Jersey, and Craven stayed in Bohemia. However, each contributed funds to the royalist cause when necessary. Of the others, Ashley-Cooper changed from a royalist to a supporter of Parliament and Hyde moved the other way. Colleton raised troops for John Berkeley in the early 1840's, but then steered a moderate course in Barbados in the 1850's.
The quest for title and fortune meant most of the Carolina proprietors were involved as investors or proprietors in at least one other colonial grant. Many of these began as schemes promoted by the Stuart cousin Rupert, the younger son of Elizabeth. The first, to explore for gold in Africa in 1660, included Ashley-Cooper, John Berkeley, Craven, and Monck. Three years later, the company was reorganized to handle the African slave trade and included John Berkeley, Carteret, Colleton, and Craven.
When England took possession of the Dutch territories north of Virginia in 1664, Charles II gave them to his brother, who then gave the part of the land now New Jersey to John Berkeley and Carteret. The first investors in 1665 in what became the Hudson Bay Company of Canada included Carteret and Peter Colleton, John’s oldest son. In 1668, Ashley-Cooper, Craven, and Monck became involved.
The swirling coterie of younger sons and ruined oldest ones circling the younger Stuart seeking reward for temporary loyalties in overlapping charters is reminiscent of the crony capitalism of George Bush’s presidency when the energy, mortgage and private equity industries flourished in a time of negligent surveillance. There even came a time when the need for more money to finance the colonial stock companies brought in the talented men in the next orbit like Robert Boyle and John Locke.
As we pick through the debris of the current economic crisis, we recognize how many were simply out to amass wealth with as little effort as possible, and how few were willing to do the hard work necessary to build new enterprises. Likewise, among the Carolina proprietors, the ones with some experience in the colonies, regardless of their royalist ties, were the only ones willing to work to convert the charters and investments into profitable enterprises. William Berkeley sent William Drummond to colonize the Albermarle area in 1664 while Ashley-Cooper sent settlers from England to what’s now Port Royal in 1670, after Colleton died in 1666. In the next generation, the only Carolina settler was the third son of Colleton, James.
Note: Many of the proprietors are now better known by their titles. In order of rank, Monck became the Duke of Albemarle while Hyde was made Earl of Clarendon, Ashley-Cooper the Earl of Shaftesbury, and Craven the Earl of Craven. John Berkeley rose to the Baron of Stratton. The others were made baronets without rights to sit in the House of Lords.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Elephants Can Remember
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote "there are no second acts in American lives."
When I was rereading Agatha Christie’s Elephants Can Remember, some unexceptional sentence crystallized the pattern in her mysteries that for people who labored for the British Empire, there were three, clear and distinct acts: one’s youth in England, one’s time in India and one’s retirement back to England. If one had children abroad, they were sent home to relatives to ensure the first act.
The pattern fits the basic quest motif of a young man setting out to prove himself, then returning home. Home, in Christie’s mysteries, was rarely the actual birthplace, because, with World War II, there were no unchanged homes. Even her St. Mary Mead had been developed. Still there were places in England where returned colonials could cluster.
Her books also include the unfinished stories of people who leave for South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada that is the theme people attribute to Fitzgerald’s comments in his notes for this unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon. Once people achieve or fail at whatever it is they first intend, there is nothing left to do, no place to return.
Michigan is like the England of primogeniture where there was so little opportunity, younger sons had to leave to live, then to the military or church. Most people in my high school graduating class have moved elsewhere as the economy shifted south and west. Some have returned to care for their parents, or have moved to be near their children to be looked after. But for most, the temporary move has become a permanent alienation from their childhoods.
Perhaps it’s why we cling to the idea of our class reunions. Nearly half the people I graduated with keep in touch with the local reunion committee, although far fewer actually make the trip cross country to the events. We maintain a collective fiction that we were once a community, and that some part of us still cares about those people we really don’t want to spend any time with again.
If I say these are people with whom I spent 13 years of my life, it makes the relation sound stronger than many marriages. If I try to think of one person I actually saw most days of those years, I cannot. People came and went, we moved from five elementary schools and several country ones to a single junior high, peer groups changed.
And yet, in a community where people were able to spend their entire public school life, there were ties. For many, churches like the Methodists, Catholics and Baptists brought children together from the scattered neighborhoods. For boys, there was organized softball in summer, for girls Camp Fire Girls or dance lessons in winter. There was the swimming hole, the skating pond and area lakes where children with similar interests became aware of one another.
I grew up when television sets were just being purchased and our youngest years weren’t spent in isolated living rooms with siblings watching whatever was on. In those years, the two available stations were both the same network, and there was often little worth seeing anyway.
We also came of age before conglomerates began buying, then downsizing local industries and people had to move with their parents when they were in high school. Only children of the college faculty and oil field workers led the migratory existence that characterizes so many today.
In the first years after graduation there were those who attended or sent back notices of Fitzgeraldian bravado that hoped to prove they had finally gotten the best of those who snubbed them then. That wish for vengeance or triumph has inspired many class reunion novels, including Jane Haddam’s Somebody Else’s Music and Jo Dereske’s Miss Zukas and the Island Murders.
But with time, none of my classmates has achieved great success and few have even had the stable marriages they had expected. We have had to settle for whatever it is we have become. If we’ve been able to overcome the demons that drove us in adolescence and can care about who we once were, no matter how ruefully, then indeed we do care about these people who were part of that world.
Our class has become a collective illusion, a virtual community we inhabit as we age that gives us a sense of that third act when social and economic realities have made the actual return impossible.
When I was rereading Agatha Christie’s Elephants Can Remember, some unexceptional sentence crystallized the pattern in her mysteries that for people who labored for the British Empire, there were three, clear and distinct acts: one’s youth in England, one’s time in India and one’s retirement back to England. If one had children abroad, they were sent home to relatives to ensure the first act.
The pattern fits the basic quest motif of a young man setting out to prove himself, then returning home. Home, in Christie’s mysteries, was rarely the actual birthplace, because, with World War II, there were no unchanged homes. Even her St. Mary Mead had been developed. Still there were places in England where returned colonials could cluster.
Her books also include the unfinished stories of people who leave for South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada that is the theme people attribute to Fitzgerald’s comments in his notes for this unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon. Once people achieve or fail at whatever it is they first intend, there is nothing left to do, no place to return.
Michigan is like the England of primogeniture where there was so little opportunity, younger sons had to leave to live, then to the military or church. Most people in my high school graduating class have moved elsewhere as the economy shifted south and west. Some have returned to care for their parents, or have moved to be near their children to be looked after. But for most, the temporary move has become a permanent alienation from their childhoods.
Perhaps it’s why we cling to the idea of our class reunions. Nearly half the people I graduated with keep in touch with the local reunion committee, although far fewer actually make the trip cross country to the events. We maintain a collective fiction that we were once a community, and that some part of us still cares about those people we really don’t want to spend any time with again.
If I say these are people with whom I spent 13 years of my life, it makes the relation sound stronger than many marriages. If I try to think of one person I actually saw most days of those years, I cannot. People came and went, we moved from five elementary schools and several country ones to a single junior high, peer groups changed.
And yet, in a community where people were able to spend their entire public school life, there were ties. For many, churches like the Methodists, Catholics and Baptists brought children together from the scattered neighborhoods. For boys, there was organized softball in summer, for girls Camp Fire Girls or dance lessons in winter. There was the swimming hole, the skating pond and area lakes where children with similar interests became aware of one another.
I grew up when television sets were just being purchased and our youngest years weren’t spent in isolated living rooms with siblings watching whatever was on. In those years, the two available stations were both the same network, and there was often little worth seeing anyway.
We also came of age before conglomerates began buying, then downsizing local industries and people had to move with their parents when they were in high school. Only children of the college faculty and oil field workers led the migratory existence that characterizes so many today.
In the first years after graduation there were those who attended or sent back notices of Fitzgeraldian bravado that hoped to prove they had finally gotten the best of those who snubbed them then. That wish for vengeance or triumph has inspired many class reunion novels, including Jane Haddam’s Somebody Else’s Music and Jo Dereske’s Miss Zukas and the Island Murders.
But with time, none of my classmates has achieved great success and few have even had the stable marriages they had expected. We have had to settle for whatever it is we have become. If we’ve been able to overcome the demons that drove us in adolescence and can care about who we once were, no matter how ruefully, then indeed we do care about these people who were part of that world.
Our class has become a collective illusion, a virtual community we inhabit as we age that gives us a sense of that third act when social and economic realities have made the actual return impossible.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)