The First American Business Enterprise--The Virginia Company

1. Commerce and English National Expansion--The Elizabethan Era
   1. Privateering--Piracy as Warfare and as Business
   2. North America as Key to English Expansion
      1. As Privateering Base
      2. An English Route to Asia--The "Northwest Passage"
      3. The Quest for National Self-Sufficiency
         1. A Source of Raw Materials Unavailable at Home
         2. "Living Room" for Settlement--The Problem of the "Excess" Poor
2. Prologue to Settlement
   1. Early Attempts--Sir Walter Raleigh's "Lost Colony"
   2. A New Environment--The Death of Elizabeth, James I, and Peace With Spain (1604)
3. The Virginia Company
   1. Origins (1606)
      1. The Plymouth Comapny
      2. The London Company
   2. The Jamestown Colony (1607)
      1. Failure, 1606-1616
         1. The Business Model--The Sea Voyage
            1. Military Discipline
            2. Common Provisioning
            3. Pay at the End of the "Voyage"
         2. Problems
            1. No Ready Source of Profit
            2. No Clear Incentive to Work
      2. The First American "Shareholder Revolt"--Sir Edwin Sandys (1618)
         1. Dispersed Settlement--"Hundreds"
         2. Settler Participation in Company Decision-Making--A Representative Assembly
         3. Land Distribution--The Headright System--Tying Land to Labor Importation (50 Acres per "Head")
      3. A Profitable Crop--Tobacco--The First Plantations
      4. The Collapse of the Company
         1. Increasing Irrelevance
         2. Failure to Provide Protection
         3. The Charter Revoked (1624)
4. Lessons
   1. The American Environment Hostile to Chartered Monopolies, BUT
   2. Hospitable to the Small Entrepreneur