Business Ethics in Precapitalist America
Precapitalist America
The American Revolution was kindled by a growing dissatisfaction with the way colonial merchants were being treated by the English ruling class (Collins, 2011). In response to the Ottoman Empire's capture of Constantinople and the levying of onerous tariffs on trade goods coming from Western Europe, the Spanish Monarchy funded an exploratory venture that took Christopher Columbus west to map out a new trade route to Asia. The goal was gold at any cost, even at the expense of human life. One of the new markets that Columbus helped to establish was the Atlantic slave trade, with 'goods' moving east instead of west.
Over the next several centuries many of the Europeans arriving on the eastern shores of North America were indentured servants (Collins, 2011). When the number of European servants became insufficient to meet the demands of colonial merchants and farmers, more slaves were culled from...
By 1619 the need for cheap labor to manage the expanding tobacco crop grew to the point that the Atlantic slave trade from Africa began. The wealth generated by the colonies in precapitalist America was therefore possible only through the widespread use of slave labor.
The English ruling class was not averse to establishing monopolies to fill their coffers with the riches of transoceanic trade (Collins, 2011). For example, the East India Company board room was peopled by members of the British Parliament. When economic conditions threatened the health of the East India Company, Parliament passed the Tea Act of 1773 that permitted the Company to choose who their retailers would be. Colonial tea merchants without connections to the Company therefore faced bankruptcy. This series of events led to the famous Boston Tea Party in 1773, when the tea cargo in three British ships were dumped in the harbor because the Massachusetts governor failed to heed a…
