Control of Consumption: Corporate Cultural Colonialism Racket 1600-1900 The British "enclosure" period redefined land as property, a transferable commodity, evicted commoners from the ancient commons, turning them into landless laborers who were also a commodity, creating a dispossessed proletariat and bands of beggars, and transferred political power from the people to a wealthy elite. In the 1649-1660 revolution the landowners came to power and passed 4,000 Private Acts of Enclosure on seven million acres. In 1845 a General Enclosure Act was paszsed which privatized another seven million acres. 1600s American colonial settlements were often corporations with patents from the British Crown. In 1606, James I gave a patent to the London (South Virginia) stock company to settle the area between Washington D.C. and New York; the Plymouth (North Virginia) company was to settle New England. The company brought laborers over; they turned over their harvest to the company, and typically received 100 acres after seven years. Ten thousand poor people are estimated to have been sold into slavery each year in Great Britain. Between 1609 and the early 1800s, as many as two-thirds of the white colonists are estimated to have been forced to come over as slaves (sometimes called "indentured servants"). Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were commercial enterprises run by chartered trading companies. In the Caribbean and South, sugar, tobacco, rice, indigo, produced by indentured servants, until in the late 1600s more laborers were needed and slavery was instituted. In New England, fishing and fur trading were the basis, with Hudson's Bay Company sending home 75 percent dividends. The middle and southern colonies of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia used the "headright" system, where land (typically 50 acres per head) was granted to those who paid their own and/or others' transport from the old world. This also provided labor, a key to New World profits, so ship captains got would-be travelers from taverns and fairs, and bribed judges and debtors prison jailers to secure prisoners who could be indentured. Two-thirds of white American immigrants were indentured servants. The labor was temporary, and because headright system granted land to servants when their indenture period was over, slavery became the system of choice. Another form of privatization in early America was the proprietary colony, in which the Crown granted lands to individuals. This created private estates which could be sold, leased, or mortgaged, so the grantees became land investors and speculators. Private wealth created systems of private government, with the landowners in effect taxing and legislating. Proprietary colonies included Virginia and New Jersey. Grants of up 30,000 acres were given by Virginia to those who would defend the forts on the frontier. There were
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