Driving north from Cape Cod, I arrived at the Plymouth Mayflower landing site in about 30 minutes, and I didn't expect that there would be a Greek temple-style memorial pavilion on the seashore, which looked very sacred.
Not far from here, dock the legendary "Mayflower" brig. On November 21, 1620, a small group of Englishmen carried by this ship boarded another small boat ashore at the temple by the sea, beginning the birth of the United States.
I will then talk about why a national development strategy, which was designed, led, deployed and directed at the top level by the king himself, ended up with completely unexpected results.
The origin of Britain's North American colonies: the king decreed that the north and south should set up two official and private immigration development companies
On 24 March 1603, Queen Elizabeth I of England died. On 25 July, the Queen's nephew, King James I of Scotland, succeeded him as King of the United Kingdom of England and Scotland. Three years later, James I granted explorer Bartholomew Gosnold the franchisory company of London and the Plymouth company a concession to develop trade on the east coast of the Americas with private capital and establish permanent settlements. The two companies, roughly with New York as the dividing point, to the south to the Virginia Company and to the north to the Plymouth Company, stipulate that the two companies may not establish settlements within 100 miles of each other.
After its establishment, Virginia took the lead in raising capital from the society by issuing shares in London, with 12 pounds and 10 shillings per share, attracting more than 1,700 investors through the distribution of small advertisements, street performances, billboard displays and other means on the street. On April 26, 1607, the Virginia Company, transporting 105 men recruited by three sailing ships, landed in Jamestown, southern Virginia, to establish a settlement, first ashore in search of gold and then to cash crops, and the company began to make a profit by introducing a high-quality tobacco leaf from Bermuda in Central America.
As the settlements of Virginia began to turn profitable, King James I of England began to have other ideas, and the nationalization of colonies run by private enterprises was on the agenda. In 1621, the British Privy Council passed a law prohibiting the Virginia company from directly selling tobacco to Europe for profit, and all goods had to be shipped to English ports to pay tariffs before they could be sold to the outside world, which suddenly put the company's operations in trouble, and even failed to pay dividends and dividends to shareholders and investors in a timely manner, and then a large-scale conflict between the Virginia settlement and the Indian tribes led to the death of a quarter of the British residents. In 1624, James I announced the termination of the Company Charter of Virginia, which was nationalized and transformed into a Colony of Virginia, to be administered by a governor directly appointed by the king.
A group of rebellious "Puritans" exiled to the Netherlands boarded the ship of the Northern Development Company
However, the Plymouth Company's development project did not go well, and in late 1607, the Plymouth Company also sent some people to establish a settlement in Popham, North Maine, but the plan to build a plantation failed due to bad weather and other reasons, and the company was dissolved two years later. In 1620, King James I of England approved the formation of a new company, the Coal for New England New England Company, to take over the territory of the original Plymouth Company, and appointed a group of Plymouth nobles, generals, and government officials as governors to re-recruit gold prospectors to the North American continent.
The New England Company's recruitment of immigrants did not go well until a group of Britons in Leiden, the Netherlands, approached. This was a group of Puritans from Nottinghamshire, England, who went into exile in the Netherlands for opposing the Anglican Church. In 1621, the Dutch Republic, which had become independent from Spanish rule, went to war with Spain again, and James I of England agreed to ally with the Netherlands against Spain, but on one condition: the Netherlands had to abolish the independent Church of England. After deliberation, the Protestants of Leiden decided not to renounce their independent faith and to flee the New World to escape the control of the Anglican Church once and for all.
They planned to buy two ships but did not have enough funds to borrow money from the New England Company, and the two sides negotiated the principal, interest and repayment terms, chartered the two sailing ships, the Mayflower and Speedwell, and paid for the settlement permit, hired the captain and sailors and purchased the necessary food and other necessities. After setting sail, it was extremely unsmooth, and the Speedwell returned to the ship several times to delay the sailing time and consumed a lot of food and finally had to give up.
When the "Mayflower" started the ship, it was already the autumn of early September, and after entering the Atlantic Ocean, it was hit by a terrible storm, and the main beam found that if the cracks continued to develop, the ship would break and sink, fortunately, one person carried a jack purchased in the Netherlands to prepare to use it in the new world, and everyone used it to successfully strengthen the main beam to avoid a crisis. On November 19, 1620, the group finally saw cape Cape Cod overland, and only one of the 102 passengers died of illness and was buried in the sea.
The Puritans were unable to reach the prescribed places of residence and the Plymouth Autonomous Land was established out of order
According to the government's settlement permit, they were supposed to settle in the Hudson estuary, but winter storms along Rhode Island and Connecticut caused the Mayflower to retreat back to Cape Cod to hide. On November 21, seeing that winter had arrived, and most of the materials brought by the ship had been consumed, it was decided to ignore the regulations of the imperial court and land directly on Cape Cod to establish a settlement after consultation.
Before leaving the ship, they drafted a covenant of civil self-government establishing a common observance of the law and order, signed by the 41 adult males on board, and this historical document called the Mayflower Compact became the basis for the future independence of the United States and the establishment of a civil self-governing society. Collectively, they knelt before the heavens, thanking God for leading them through the vast and violent oceans, freeing them from all the dangers and sufferings in them, and putting their feet back on the solid and stable earth, and posterity called these staunch believers "Pilgrims."
On December 7, a very cold day, a small group of people drove a small boat to the shores of Plymouth to survey where settlements could be established, and they came ashore from the current memorial pavilion, which has a stone said to be a mark of the year.
They decided to build a settlement on the rocky slopes of Cole's Hill on the shore, but the snow was so cold that they could not spend the night in the open air, so they had to return to the ship for the night during the day and night, and the work progress was very slow. Another problem we faced was the threat of starvation, and some people ran into the fields to pick corn and beans left behind by the Indians, both as food and as seeds for the future.
The conditions on board this winter were harsh, with infectious diseases such as scurvy, pneumonia and tuberculosis circulating, and by the spring only 53 passengers survived and about half of the crew died.
There is now a cemetery at the top of the cliff slope where 45 people died that winter are buried, and the names of these people are engraved on the sarcophagus.
On March 16, 1621, the pilgrims first came into contact with an Indian native named Samoset, who had learned some simple English from the English fishermen along the Maine coast, and he walked into the settlement and said to everyone: "Welcome, Englishman!" ”
Pilgrims learned from Somerset that New England had just experienced a smallpox epidemic that had killed most of the Native Americans, and that the head of the local Indian tribe was Massasoit. Soon Satosset brought in Masasoit's representatives and signed a peace agreement with Carver, the head of the pilgrim settlement.
Today, cole's Hill is topped by a statue of Masasoit, the head of the local Wampanoag tribe, whose territory encompasses the coastal areas of southeastern Massachusetts from Boston, Plymouth, Cape Cod to eastern Rhode Island.
The delegation was accompanied by another important figure named Squanto, who had been captured by British expedition ships in his early years and returned to New England after five years of living in Europe, where he could speak fluent English and remained in Plymouth as a bridge between pilgrims and local tribes.
Scunto taught pilgrims how to fertilize the soil with dead fish to grow corn and other food crops, and around October or November 1621, 53 surviving pilgrims, together with the tribal leader Masasot and 90 of his men, held a three-day celebration to celebrate the first harvest season after the settlers came ashore, which was the origin of the traditional festival of Thanksgiving in the United States and Canada.
After the initial hardships, the pilgrims gradually established a foothold in the New World, they established stable trade relations with the local Indian tribes, exchanging goods for furs sold to Europe in the hands of the indigenous people, and as more new immigrants arrived, the Plymouth colony gradually prospered, and began to grow crops such as corn, pumpkins, beans, raise cows, sheep and pigs and other livestock and fishing. In 1625, the settlers paid off their loans and debts to the New England Company with a profit, and the New England Company transferred ownership of the colony to the settlers' self-governing institutions.
The pilgrims' choice to establish a settlement in Plymouth violated the government's residency permit and was therefore not authorized by the Royal Charter to become an extralegal place, and the means of social governance were only based on the Mayflower Convention signed by 41 parties.
As the sedentary population increased, in 1636 the settlers, based on english common law and some provisions of the Christian Bible, made themselves a more detailed set of laws and established an elected self-government, and the Plymouth colony effectively became a republic without royal power.
The first is the determination of the status of "citizen" or "free man", every free person who has reached the age of 21 must be guaranteed by an existing free person and approved by the General Court to be certified, and only free people are eligible to participate in elections and to hold public office and serve as members of the grand jury. Second, the General Court is the legislative and judicial organ of the colony, composed of the Governor-General and seven assistants of the Colony's supreme administrator, and the General Court and the subordinate township courts are responsible for hearing civil and criminal cases, but the final decision is decided by a grand jury.
Britain's chaotic political situation kept New England out of British rule
James I died in 1625 and his son Charles I ascended the throne. In 1628 the New England Commission changed its name to the Massachusetts Bay Company and received a royal franchise. In 1629, Charles I announced the dissolution of Congress and the introduction of a personal dictatorship, and the situation in England became extremely unstable, and the major shareholders of the Massachusetts Bay Company decided to move the company directly to the American colonies after deliberation, and any shareholder who did not want to go could sell their shares to the shareholders who moved with the company.
In 1630, john Winthrop, the head of the company, personally led a fleet to sail ashore in Salem, Massachusetts, established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and served as colonial governor until his death, laying the foundation for the Massachusetts Bay Colony to emerge as the hegemon of New England.
In 1642, a civil war broke out in England against the king, and in 1649 King Charles I was captured and beheaded, and the British formed a republican government led by Cromwell. During this period, a number of autonomous regions in New England were divided into self-governing areas, such as Providence, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and so on.
Seeing that the colony had grown and grown, the king offered to break the covenant to pick peaches
After Cromwell's death in 1660, Charles II came to power as King of England under the support of conservative forces, the economy of New England flourished during the English Civil War, due to geographical constraints, it could not focus on agricultural production, but vigorously developed industry and commerce, textiles, leather and iron became competitors of British local merchants, and The New England region minted and issued silver coins to the bone. Charles II began to enact a series of maritime navigation decrees restricting colonies from trading with Britain and directly with other countries, which were resisted by the colonies. Charles II's request for an Episcopal Church in New England was also rejected.
Charles II died in 1685 and was succeeded by his younger brother James II, who announced the early termination of the long-term concessions granted, merged the colonies of the region into a single Dominion of New England, brought all power under his jurisdiction, and appointed Edmund Andros as governor. After Andros came to power, he dismissed all democratically elected deputies and instead selected and appointed themselves, which was boycotted by the whole people.
In November 1688, the "Glorious Revolution" broke out in England, James II was ousted from power, and in April 1689, the news reached Boston and triggered an uprising, the Massachusetts colonial authorities captured Andros and sent him to London for trial, and the New England Dominion ended. The Plymouth Colony failed to regain its independence and merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony to form a single Massachusetts Colony, which became Massachusetts after the United States became independent.
More than 400 years have passed since the Mayflower docked, and Plymouth is still a small city in the south of Boston, with no high-rise buildings and large shopping malls, only traditional small shops on the street, and everything is still the same as it was a hundred years ago.
As I passed the square in front of the city hall, an old man sitting on the side of the street signaled that I should go to see the cemetery on the hillside behind the city hall, where a group of Mayflower pilgrims and their descendants were buried.
I climbed up the cemetery on the hillside, from where I could see the sea in the distance, and the handwriting on the tombstone was indistinct and difficult to read, but almost all the tombstones were facing east, looking back in the direction of my hometown, and I couldn't help but be moved to see such a scene.
I'm going to stay in Boston for a few days, take a closer look at the city, and then continue...