When the pilgrims left Europe in 1620, several powerful reasons drove them to cross the Atlantic Ocean to rebuild their lives in America – but religious freedom was not their most pressing concern.
While the pilgrims are widely believed to have fled England in search of religious freedom, the separatists’ quest had ended more than a decade before they boarded the Mayflower. After leaving England in 1608, the pilgrims found refuge in the Dutch city of Leiden, where they were free to worship and enjoyed “much peace and freedom,” according to Pilgrim Edward Winslow.
“The pilgrims actually had no reason to leave the Dutch Republic to go to America to seek religious tolerance – because they already had it,” says Simon Targett, co-author of New World, Inc .: The Making of America by English Merchant Adventurers. “Therefore, you have to look for other reasons why they might have risked the dangers of crossing the New World – and one of the main reasons was commercial.”
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The pilgrims’ stay in Holland left them poor and disillusioned
Prayer of the Pilgrim Fathers leaving Delfshaven in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
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Like tens of millions of newcomers who would follow in their wake in America, the Pilgrims were economic migrants. After working for more than a decade in Leiden’s textile industry, the Pilgrims possessed little beyond their religious freedom. The old farmers lived in poverty, working long hours for low wages weaving, spinning and making fabrics. The economic hardships of the pilgrims made it extremely difficult to convince their fellow separatists to join them in Leiden, regardless of their religious rights. “Some preferred and chose the prisons in England rather than this freedom in Holland with these afflictions”, told the chief of the pilgrims William Bradford.
While the economic outlook for the pilgrims has darkened further with the collapse of the wool market, the start of the Thirty Years War in Europe and the imminent end of a 12-year truce between Spain and the Dutch Republic threatened the tranquility of their refuge. As the pilgrim population dwindled, their fears grew that secular Dutch society that tolerated their religious beliefs had also corrupted their children’s morals, forcing them to turn away from their church and their English identity. Bradford complained that “many of their children” succumbed to the “multiple temptations” of Leiden and were “drawn by perverse examples into extravagant and dangerous paths”.
“The Pilgrims wanted their children to be English citizens and not Dutch citizens,” Targett says. “But if they left, they couldn’t go back to England for religious reasons.” So pilgrims’ eyes looked across the Atlantic Ocean to America, where English merchants had funded colonial colonies for decades. There they could worship freely, but also have greater economic stability and preserve their English identity. Pilgrims also believed that the New World gave them the opportunity to evangelize to Native Americans and to undertake, as Bradford wrote, “the propagation and advancement of the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of the world. world”.
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Pilgrims have joined a lucrative business
For-profit companies started England’s first trading outposts in America, such as the one established by the Virginia Company in Jamestown. Even for investors more interested in profits than in prophets, the Pilgrims were ideal candidates to start a New World colony, as they were very united, industrious, and used to hardships.
After the Pilgrims received a patent from the Virginia Company to establish a settlement in its jurisdiction, a group of 70 London businessmen called the Merchant Adventurers provided the capital to fund the business by purchasing shares in a company by actions. These backers paid the Mayflower, his crew and a year of supplies.
The adventurous merchants expected a return on their investment and demanded that the Pilgrims work for the company during their first seven years in America. Each settler over 16 received a share to migrate and work the land, which would come back to him with future profits after the expiration of the seven-year contract.
In order to finance the trip, the pilgrims were forced to take aboard the Mayflower other economic migrants who shared their quest for commercial success, but not their separatist beliefs. These “foreigners”, as the pilgrims called them, represented half of the Mayflower passengers. When the “foreigners” argued that they were no longer bound by the Virginia Company charter after the Mayflower Landed far north of its goal in Massachusetts in November 1620, the pilgrim leaders drafted the Mayflower Compact to set the rules for self-government and quell any potential rebellion.
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Plymouth Colony struggled to make a profit
Public worship in Plymouth by the Pilgrams.
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As a commercial enterprise, the colonial start-up got off to a start as rough as the New England soil the Pilgrims were forced to sow. The colony of Plymouth barely survived, let alone prospered, after a brutal first winter in America, and the Mayflower returned to England empty of goods. It was the sign of things to come.
“The early investors weren’t happy with what the Pilgrims sent home,” Targett says. “They were supposed to return fur, timber and fish, and on a few occasions the returned ships sank or were captured by pirates, so investors never saw the benefits.”
The colony of Plymouth eventually earned its financial base from beaver pelts, which were in great demand in England for making felt hats and other luxury fashion accessories. “The Bible and the beaver were the two pillars of the young colony,” wrote historian James Truslow Adams. “The first saved his morale, and the second paid his bills, and the rodent share was important.
The arrival of the Puritans and the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s, however, increased competition for beaver pelts and reduced pilgrims’ results. It was not until 1648 that the pilgrims paid their debt. The Plymouth Colony eventually faced a similar fate to many ailing businesses. It was consumed by a larger and more prosperous society when it was merged with other colonies to form the province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691.
