Author Insight Video

Transcript

The courageous people who founded the first British colonies in America came for a variety of motives. Some of them were primarily pursuing religious freedom. Others were seeking economic opportunity, whether it was finding gold and silver, or the opportunity to own their own land for the first time.

Whatever the case, the English colonies in America differed significantly from their counterparts in New Spain and New France by virtue of the fact that all of them were created not by the government of England directly but rather by joint stock companies. That is, these were private enterprises wherein investors pull their money and resources in order to fund the development of colonies in America. Every American colony was founded by a joint stock company rather than directly by the English government. And that is very important because it helps us understand how those colonies began to form themselves in terms of their governmental structure, their economic structure, their social structure, and how those differed from the Spanish and French experiments in colonization in North America.

One result of the British colonies being founded by joint stock companies is that their governance system in the colonies was different from that of other nations. In the American colonies they developed a legislative branch. They developed Royal Governors who were also part of the government. The result was a balanced, mixed form of government that provided greater freedom and also lessened the risk of there being a domineering authoritarian government in any of the colonies.

That greater freedom also manifested itself in economic life. As a result of the American colonies being founded by joint stock companies and benefiting from representative government, the colony allowed for greater entrepreneurial freedom, individual initiative, and economic growth and prosperity in the American colonies over time. The American colonies lasted longer and had greater prosperity in large part because of the ways in which they were initially founded and structured.