Passengers of the "Mayflower" in the early seventeenth century, inventor of the cotton gin in the 18th century, financial railway giant who started from the shipping industry in the 19th century, steel tycoon who resigned from the railway company, 20th century car manufacturing king, movie tycoon, fried chicken grandfather of the second venture, wall Street investors, young people who started garage businesses in the Internet era... This is an alternative popular reading of American economic history, depicting the "tide makers" of the era at various stages of American history, showing the choices, successes and failures of these entrepreneurs.
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Four Hundred Years of America
Author: Bu Srinivasan
Translator: Hu Xilin
Edition: Republic of | Hainan Publishing House, February 2022
About the Author:
Bhu Srinivasan is an entrepreneur whose career spans digital media, pop culture, technology, publishing and financial informatics. Born in India, he moved to the United States with his family at the age of eight, and spent his childhood in the Southern United States, the Rust Belt, southern California, and the Pacific Coast region of the Northwest United States, and now lives in Connecticut.
Translator's Bio:
Hu Xilin, a freelance translator, graduated from the University of International Business and Economics, mainly engaged in brand management, history and social sciences, psychology and other fields of translation, translation and publication of "Asian Brand Strategy", "The Ghost of King Leopold", "Israel's History", "Open Innovation" and more than 30 works.
What kind of book is this?
Cotton, tobacco, canals, railways, lighting, unions, food, liquor, retail, banking, television, sneakers, mobile phones... How did these things, technologies, and industries, which people are now accustomed to, develop and change the face of American economic life in the past 400 years, so that the United States can grow into the number one capitalist power? Author Bu Srinivassan uses an easy-to-understand and simple approach to the 400-year history of U.S. economic development, revealing the little-known intrinsic connections.
In this book, vivid details are palpable: the protagonist of a 19th-century inspirational literary work that embodies the spirit of Wall Street, poor but self-motivated; the home of the J.P. Morgans, who invested in support of Edison, was the first in New York to have electric lights, and the wealthy neighbors complained that it was too noisy; the first department store in the United States, where anyone could hang out for hours in a maze full of goods, the salesman would not take the initiative to talk to customers; patent drug advertising lacked regulation and was overwhelming, and the 19th-century Coca-Cola was" Ideal brain tonic", with medical effects...
Why is it appealing?
- The United States is a nation founded on entrepreneurship; the history of the United States, to a large extent, is the history of generations of entrepreneurs who have started, innovated, and ventured; without entrepreneurship, there would be no America. That's the story That Four Hundred Years of America tells you. ——Zhang Weiying
- The book is a fascinating journey about the businesses and industries that turned the United States into the world's largest economy. The author's writing is easy to understand, informative, and cleverly conceived. Each chapter has a theme, such as tobacco, cotton, steam, oil, bootleg liquor, mobile phones, etc., which are organized in chronological order to present the reader with a chronicle of the American economy. - The Economist
- This book gives a detailed, vivid, and accurate account of the development of different forms of capitalism in the United States. Its entry points are the new technologies that push it forward, the ideas that shape it, the traditions that pave the way for it, the products it produces, the people who create and resist it. This book will not only impress individual readers, but also present a magnificent picture of history for all readers. — Richard White (former president of the American Historians Association)
Four Hundred Years of America (Trial Reading)
Chapter 1: Venture Capital (Excerpts)
In the American legend of the Mayflower, one of the most important questions is overlooked: Where did the disenfranchise separatists get the money they needed to charter the big ship, hire an experienced crew, and prepare their one-year supply on their way to the New World? Even for a sovereign state in the early 17th century, organizing a voyage across the Atlantic was not a small feat of funding. To be sure, today's economically strapped political refugees are unlikely to charter transports across oceans and have little livelihood skills when they reach their destinations. Thus, the sources of funding behind the Mayflower point to a parallel narrative in which the noble ideals of religious freedom have to succumb to economic considerations and impetus.
In 1616, this group of English Puritans who moved to the Americas in history was originally an exiled separatist group living in the Netherlands. The earliest members of these believers fled England in 1608 and initially settled in Amsterdam. A few years later, they moved to the Dutch inland city of Leiden. William Bradford, in his first-hand account of life in Leiden, acknowledged that Leiden was a "kind, beautiful city," but that separatists were primarily engaged in jobs that required "hard and sustained labor," many of whom worked in cloth processing. Although the British forbade them to practice openly in the religious activities of their denomination, the Dutch persecution of them was relatively rare. In fact, one account says that although their economic status was relatively low, local Dutch merchants saw their devout faith as a sign of trustworthiness. After living in the Netherlands for twelve years, some saw the potential risks to religious freedom, and the separatists began looking for another place to live, primarily to improve their economic situation.
For these separatists, the initial motivation that prompted them to leave England for the Netherlands was to live a good life and attract more Christians to follow them. Later, however, the coolies and "high-intensity labor" of these pioneers in Leiden completely frightened those potential followers. According to Bradford, it was clear at the time that "some would rather choose the prisons of England than freedom under these harsh conditions in the Netherlands". In addition, the elderly among them begin to die, because the heavy labor often makes this fate come early. At the same time, the sons and daughters of these faithful, "to share part of the burden of their parents," had to work under conditions similar to those endured by their predecessors. If all this is not bad enough, the Dutch "multiple temptations" will also attract those who have just entered adulthood to leave the church and embark on the path of "indulgence" and to do depravity that may be "blasphemous". The elders of these congregations were well aware that without the growth of the congregation, they would be assimilated by secular Dutch society within a generation; the experiment would eventually fail quietly. All in all, it seems that the greatest threat to their religious fundamentalism is not political persecution, but the dire economic situation.
The solution is to migrate again. The original idea was to change direction and travel to "the vast, sparsely populated region of the Americas." The proposal caused heated internal debate, largely because of what some imagined as bad weather, savages, disease, famine and "naked" natives. In addition, there is a risk to be carefully dealt with: the idea of settling near Spanish territory in the Americas is ruled out, because Catholic "Spanish can be as cruel as the Savages of america". In other American lands, most of them were claimed by the British, and the remaining areas, which were relatively smaller, were claimed by the Netherlands, so there were only two options left. Regardless of which country's territory is chosen, negotiate with the other party and obtain permission.
The possibility of choosing British territory, of course, is a dramatic irony: believers who fled Britain now have to consider friendly negotiations with the country that persecuted them before. However, the process has not been smooth.
As early as 1606, England issued a charter to a private risk project called the London Virginia Company. While the inner workings of this venture project in New World are handled by people within the company who are familiar with business operations, the power of regulation and governance remains in the hands of the King. The King exercised these powers through the Virginia Commission he established. As with most newly launched venture projects — whether overseas or domestic — Virginia got off to a bad start. In its first decade of existence, it lost money several times and had to raise money again. To make matters worse, the vast majority of workers sent overseas have died tragically.
During its first ten years of operation, the Virginia Company suffered from setbacks and difficulties. When the Secessionists in Leiden sent the two to London to discuss their foothold in their territory, the company was overjoyed, as if the shopkeeper in dismal business had seen the only customer of the day. As a business entity, virginia companies were profitable depended on the operation of the colony. There is an urgent need for a large number of desperate people who put life and death aside. The eagerness of the two Believers from holland coincided with the urgency of the Virginia Company. Still, there was a barrier to separatists moving to Virginia: They needed explicit permission to practice their religion there. The Economics-conscious Virginia Company was optimistic about the opportunity ahead, assuring them that the problem was a trivial matter, with the approval of the King's routine. However, this is not the case. The process is constantly procrastinating. The Virginia Commission held that if they authorized separatists to engage in religious activities abroad, they would somehow undermine the authority of His Majesty's prohibition on religious activities in Britain. Later, through the mediation of the Virginia Company, a compromise was reached between the two sides. The King's Virginia Council neither approved nor forbade them to engage in religious practice abroad, provided that these believers from Leiden were subject to the King's jurisdiction.
This conscious ambiguity became a middle ground between British government agents and those believers. The Virginia Company granted layton believers a "permit" to settle in the New World. In fact, contrary to conventional wisdom, the Puritans who had originally emigrated to the Americas did not have to escape persecution by the British king, they voluntarily expanded their sovereignty overseas.
With permission, sect elders in the Netherlands now face equally complex funding problems. While the Virginia Company was able to provide permission, it did not have the ability to provide the funds needed for ocean voyages, and the faithful needed to raise their own funds. For the cautious and conservative wealthy, the expenses required for ships, sailors and supplies are not cheap, and it is too risky as an investment, especially as an overseas risk project, and it is likely to lose all. Later, the solution seemed to be to find rich people who were willing to give it a go — to get huge profits, regardless of the failure of one or two projects.
It was at this time that a Dutch business organization threw an olive branch at the believers, competing with the Virginia Company's scheme. After hearing of their negotiations with the Virginia Company, the Dutch institution persuaded the separatists in Leiden to travel to the Dutch colonies in the Americas. However, with a residence permit issued by the Virginia Company, the provision of funds fell to British investors. Specifically, a project sponsor named Thomas Weston, representing the London Business Ventures Association, traveled to Leiden to lobby secession pastor John Robinson. Weston persuaded the pastor that he "could get friends to invest," and the two sides drafted formal terms. In today's parlance, those terms amount to a letter of intent or statement of investment terms, a framework that needs to be fleshed out in accordance with the final negotiations. Modern entrepreneurs know that from the time the parties to the agreement state their goals to the final agreement, there is more and more anxiety and a test of will, often until the last moment of the agreement. The fundraising of the "Mayflower" in 1620 was also full of disputes and twists and turns.
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