Declaration For Greater Independence

The bourgeoisie is a (polysemous: multi-meaning) French term that can mean:

• Originally and generally, "those who live in the borough", that is to say, the people of the city (including merchants and craftsmen), as opposed to those of rural areas; in this sense, the bourgeoisie began to grow in Europe from the 11th century and particularly during the Renaissance of the 12th century, with the first developments of rural exodus and urbanization.
• A legally defined class of the Middle Ages to the end of the Ancien Régime (Old Regime) in France, that of inhabitants having the rights of citizenship and political rights in a city (comparable to the German term Bürgertum and Bürger; see also "Burgher"). This bourgeoisie destroyed aristocratic privilege and established civic equality after the French monarchy collapsed. The aristocracy crumbled because it refused to reform institutions and financial systems. (Price, Roger. A Concise History of France (Third ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 99. ISBN 978-1-107-01782-5.)
• A sociologically defined class, especially in contemporary times, referring to people with a certain cultural and financial capital belonging to the middle or upper stratum of the middle class: the upper (haute), middle (moyenne), and petty (petite) bourgeoisie (which are collectively designated "the Bourgeoisie"); an affluent and often opulent stratum of the middle class (capitalist class) who stand opposite the proletariat class.( Encyclopedia.com: Bourgeoisie [Retrieved 2016-09-28])

Syndicalism [also called Anarcho-syndicalism, or Revolutionary Syndicalism] was a movement that advocates direct action by the working class to abolish the capitalist order, including the state, and to establish in its place a social order based on workers organized in production units. The syndicalist movement flourished in France chiefly between 1900 and 1914 and had a considerable impact in Spain, Italy, England, the Latin-American countries, and elsewhere. It had ceased to be a strong, dynamic force by the end of World War I, but it remained a residual force in Europe until World War II.

Syndicalism developed out of strong anarchist and anti-parliamentary traditions among the French working class. Greatly influenced by the teachings of the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the socialist Auguste Blanqui, it was developed as a doctrine by certain leaders of the French trade-union movement toward the end of the 19th century. In France, syndicalism is known as syndicalisme révolutionnaire (the word syndicalisme means only "trade unionism"). Syndicalist tendencies manifested themselves with increasing strength during the 1890s in the two main French labour organizations of the period—the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) and the Fédération des Bourses du Travail. The secretary of the latter, Fernand Pelloutier, did much to work out the characteristic tenets of syndicalism and to spread them among his workers. When these two organizations joined forces in 1902, trade unionism, and syndicalism in particular, gained an immense accession of strength.

The syndicalist, like the Marxist, was opposed to capitalism and looked forward to an ultimate class war from which the working class would emerge victorious. To the syndicalist, the state was by nature a tool of capitalist oppression and, in any event, was inevitably rendered inefficient and despotic by its bureaucratic structure. As an appendage of the capitalist order, then, the state could not be used for reform with peaceful means and must be abolished.

The American Revolution [also called United States War of Independence or American Revolutionary War] (1775–83), was an insurrection by which 13 of Great Britain's North American colonies won political independence and went on to form the United States of America. The war followed more than a decade of growing estrangement between the British crown and a large and influential segment of its North American colonies that was caused by British attempts to assert greater control over colonial affairs. Until early in 1778 the conflict was a civil war within the British Empire; afterward it became an international war as France (in 1778), Spain (in 1779), and the Netherlands (in 1780) joined the colonies against Britain. From the beginning sea power was vital in determining the course of the war, lending to British strategy a flexibility that helped compensate for the comparatively small numbers of troops sent to America and ultimately enabling the French to help bring about the final British surrender at Yorktown.

The Chartered Company was a type of corporation that evolved in the early modern era in Europe. It enjoyed certain rights and privileges and was bound by certain obligations, under a special charter granted to it by the sovereign authority of the state, such charter defining and limiting those rights, privileges, and obligations and the localities in which they were to be exercised. The charter usually conferred a trading monopoly upon the company in a specific geographic area or for a specific type of trade item.

The earliest English chartered companies were the Merchant Adventurers and the Merchant Staplers. Such early companies were regulated companies, deriving the principles of their organization from the medieval merchant guilds. The regulated company was a corporation of merchants, each of whom traded on his own account but was subjected to a rigid set of common rules that regulated his operations within narrow limits.

A great increase in the number and activities of the chartered companies took place during the second half of the 16th century, when the English, French, and Dutch governments were ready to assist trade and encourage overseas exploration. Changes also occurred in the organization of chartered companies. The regulated company, which had been very convenient for trading with countries where conditions were stable, was not so suitable for ventures to remoter lands, where the risks, commercial and political, were greater. To meet the requirements of the new trading conditions, the joint-stock organization, in which the capital was provided by shareholders who then participated in the profits from the joint enterprise, was evolved. In some cases, the companies alternated between one form and the other. In all charters, provisions were inserted to secure the "good government" of the company.

In England two of the earliest and most important of overseas trading companies were the Muscovy Company (1555) and the Turkey Company (1583). They had important effects on international relations, for they maintained English influence and paid the expenses of ambassadors sent to those countries. Other English companies were established in this period for similar trading ventures: the Spanish Company (1577, regulated); the Eastland Company, for trade with the Baltic (1579, regulated); and the French Company (1611, regulated). The first company for African trade was founded in 1585, and others were granted charters in 1588, 1618, and 1631. But it was the chartered companies that were formed during this period for trade with the Indies and the New World which had the most wide-reaching influence. The East India Company was established in 1600 as a joint-stock company with a monopoly of the trade to and from the East Indies. Its political achievements form a large part of the history of the British Empire, and its economic power was enormous, contributing substantially to the national wealth and causing the company to be the centre of most of the economic controversies of the 17th century.

In North America the English chartered companies had a colonizing as well as a trading purpose. Although the Hudson's Bay Company was almost wholly devoted to trade, most companies—such as the London Company, the Plymouth Company, and the Massachusetts Bay Company—were directly involved in the settlement of colonists. Elsewhere, chartered English companies continued to be formed for the development of new trade—for instance, the short-lived Canary Company in 1665, the Royal African Company in 1672, and the South Sea Company in 1711. There was frantic speculation in the shares of the South Sea Company, resulting in a severe setback to joint-stock enterprise. The Bubble Act of 1720 was designed to make it much more difficult to obtain a charter.

In France and the Netherlands, chartered companies had also been used for similar purposes by the governments. In France, from 1599 to 1789, more than 70 such companies came into existence. Under J.B. Colbert the French East India Company was founded (1664), and the colonial and Indian trade was placed in the hands of chartered companies in which the king himself had large financial interests. The French companies, however, were largely destroyed by the "Mississippi scheme" of John Law, in which trading companies like the Senegal and French East India companies were incorporated in a plan to take over the public debt. The financial crash in 1720 destroyed public confidence, and although a new Company of the Indies existed until 1769, the chartered company was virtually dead. In the Netherlands the Dutch East India and West India companies were the basis of the commercial and maritime supremacy of the Dutch in the 17th century. The success of the East India companies caused the foundation of the Ostend Company, whereby the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI sought unsuccessfully to acquire the trade of England and the Netherlands.

The development of the modern limited-liability company or corporation under successive companies acts led to a decline in the importance of chartered companies. Some of the older ones still exist, however, including the Hudson's Bay Company.

The Mississippi Bubble (aka the Mississippi Scheme) was a financial scheme in 18th-century France that triggered a speculative frenzy and ended in financial collapse. The scheme was engineered by John Law, a Scottish adventurer, economic theorist, and financial wizard who was a friend of the regent, the Duke d'Orléans. In 1716 Law established the Banque Générale, a bank with the authority to issue notes. A year later he established the Compagnie d'Occident ("Company of the West") and obtained for it exclusive privileges to develop the vast French territories in the Mississippi River valley of North America. Law's company also soon monopolized the French tobacco and African slave trades, and by 1719 the Compagnie des Indes ("Company of the Indies"), as it had been renamed, held a complete monopoly of France's colonial trade. Law also took over the collection of French taxes and the minting of money; in effect, he controlled both the country's foreign trade and its finances.

Given the potential for profits involved, public demand for shares in the Compagnie des Indes increased sharply, sending the price for a share from 500 to 18,000 livres, which was out of all proportion to earnings. By 1719 Law had issued approximately 625,000 stock shares, and he soon afterward merged the Banque Générale with the Compagnie des Indes. Law hoped to retire the vast public debt accumulated during the later years of Louis XIV's reign by selling his company's shares to the public in exchange for state-issued public securities, or billets d'état, which consequently also rose sharply in value. A frenzy of wild speculation ensued that led to a general stock-market boom across Europe. The French government took advantage of this situation by printing increased amounts of paper money, which was readily accepted by the state's creditors because it could be used to buy more shares of the Compagnie. This went on until the excessive issue of paper money stimulated galloping inflation, and both the paper money and the billets d'état began to lose their value. Meanwhile the expected profits from the company's colonial ventures were slow to materialize, and the intricate linking of the company's stock with the state's finances ended in complete disaster in 1720, when the value of the shares plummeted, causing a general stock market crash in France and other countries. Though the crash was not directly attributable to Law, he was the obvious scapegoat and was forced to flee France in December 1720. The enormous debts of his company and bank were soon afterward consolidated and taken over by the state, which raised taxes in order to retire it.

The Virginia Company [in full: Virginia Company of London, also called London Company] was a commercial trading company, chartered by King James I of England in April 1606 with the object of colonizing the eastern coast of North America between latitudes 34° and 41° N. Its shareholders were Londoners, and it was distinguished from the Plymouth Company, which was chartered at the same time and composed largely of men from Plymouth.

In December 1606 the Virginia Company sent out three ships carrying approximately 105 colonists led by Christopher Newport. In May 1607 the colonists reached Virginia and founded the Jamestown Colony at the mouth of the James River. After some initial hardships, the colony took root, and the Virginia Company itself was reconstituted on a broader legal basis. A new charter in 1609 reorganized its governing structure.

In 1619 the company established continental America's first true legislature, the General Assembly, which was organized bicamerally. It consisted of the governor and his council, named by the company in England, and the House of Burgesses, made up of two burgesses from each of the four boroughs and seven plantations.

Despite increasing prosperity in Virginia over the following years, the company's role came under attack as internecine disputes among the shareholders grew and as the king himself became offended both by the trend toward popular government in Virginia and by the colony's efforts to raise tobacco, a "noisome" product of which he disapproved. A petition submitted to the king, calling for an investigation of conditions in the colony, led to a trial before the King's Bench in May 1624. The court ruled against the Virginia Company, which was then dissolved, with the result that Virginia was transformed into a royal colony.

Plymouth Company [also called Virginia Colony of Plymouth] was a commercial trading company chartered by the English crown in 1606 to colonize the eastern coast of North America in present-day New England. Its shareholders were merchants of Plymouth, Bristol, and Exeter. Its twin company was the more successful Virginia Company. The Plymouth Company established a colony on the coast of Maine in 1607 but soon abandoned it. Inactive after 1609, it was reorganized under a new charter in 1620 as the Council for New England.

The Council for New England was... in British American colonial history, a joint stock company organized in 1620 by a charter from the British crown with authority to colonize and govern the area now known as New England. Drawing from landed gentry rather than merchants, the company was dominated by its president, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who intended to distribute the land as manors and fiefs among the council's 40 members with the idea of establishing a monolithic, aristocratic, Anglican province. This plan was unsuccessful, however, and New England colonization was dominated by two vigorous, Nonconformist, middle-class enterprises—the Pilgrims (1620) and the Massachusetts Bay Company (1629). To untangle confused land titles under the council and to resolve conflicting lines of political authority, the Massachusetts Bay Company took possession of its charter directly from the king, thus eliminating the Council for New England as an intermediary.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony one of the original English settlements in present-day Massachusetts, settled in 1630 by a group of about 1,000 Puritan refugees from England under Governor John Winthrop. In 1629 the Massachusetts Bay Company had obtained from King Charles I a charter empowering the company to trade and colonize in New England between the Charles and Merrimack rivers. Omitted from the charter was the usual clause requiring the company to hold its business meetings in England, a circumstance that the Puritan stockholders used to transfer control of the colony to America. The Puritans established a theocratic government with the franchise limited to church members. Growing estrangement between the colony and England resulted in the annulment of the company's charter in 1684 and the substitution of royal government under a new charter granted in 1691. The charter of 1691 merged the Plymouth colony and Maine into the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The Mayflower Compact was a document signed on the English ship Mayflower on November 21 [November 11, Old Style], 1620, prior to its landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts. It was the first framework of government written and enacted in the territory that is now the United States of America.

Rough seas and storms prevented the Mayflower from reaching its intended destination in the area of the Hudson River, and the ship was steered instead toward Cape Cod. Because of the change of course, the passengers were no longer within the jurisdiction of the charter granted to them in England by the Virginia Company. Within this legally uncertain situation, friction arose between the English Separatists (the Pilgrims) and the rest of the travelers, with some of the latter threatening to leave the group and settle on their own.

To quell the conflict and preserve unity, Pilgrim leaders (among them William Bradford and William Brewster) drafted the Mayflower Compact before going ashore. The brief document (about 200 words) bound its signers into a body politic for the purpose of forming a government and pledged them to abide by any laws and regulations that would later be established “for the general good of the colony.” The compact was signed by nearly all of the Mayflower's adult male passengers (41 of a total of 102 passengers) while the ship was anchored at Provincetown harbour. Its authority was immediately exercised when John Carver, who had helped organize the expedition, was chosen as governor of the new colony.

The Mayflower Compact was not a constitution but rather an adaptation of a Puritan church covenant to a civil situation. Furthermore, as a provisional instrument adopted solely by the colonists, the document did not solve the matter of their questionable legal rights to the land they settled. (A patent was eventually obtained from the Council for New England in June 1621.) Still, the Mayflower Compact became the foundation of Plymouth's government and remained in force until the colony was absorbed into the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. Although in practice much of the power in Plymouth was guarded by the Pilgrim founders, the compact, with its fundamental principles of self-government and common consent, has been interpreted as an important step in the evolution of democratic government in America.

As the original version of the Mayflower Compact was lost, the oldest known source in which the text of the document (provided below) can be found is Mourt's Relation (1622), an account of Plymouth's settlement written by Edward Winslow and William Bradford.

In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc. Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, covenant, and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, offices from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony: unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names; Cape Cod, the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord King James, of England, France and Ireland eighteenth and of Scotland fifty-fourth, Anno Domini 1620.

The New England Confederation in British American colonial history, was a federation of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth established in May 1643 by delegates from those four Puritan colonies. Several factors influenced the formation of this alliance, including the solution of trade, boundary, and religious disputes, but the principal impetus was a concern over defense against attacks by the French, the Dutch, or the Indians. Because of their divergence from accepted Puritan precepts, settlements in what later became Rhode Island and Maine were refused admission to the confederation.

According to its articles of agreement, the New England Confederation was to be "a firme and perpetual league of friendship and amytie," and its government was to be composed of a directorate of eight commissioners, two from each colony. The commissioners were expected to meet annually or more often, if necessary. The articles authorized the commissioners to fix quotas for men and expenses during wartime, to arbitrate disputes with foreign powers or other colonies, to ensure extradition of escaped servants, prisoners, and other fugitives, and to regulate Indian affairs. Six affirmative votes were required to approve the decisions of the confederation; failing that, the pending issue would be referred to the legislatures of the member colonies.

The New England Confederation did achieve some of its goals, but the alliance ultimately proved to be weak, since its decisions were only advisory and were often ignored by Massachusetts, its strongest member. The confederation's influence declined with the merger of Connecticut and New Haven (1662–65), though it continued to exist until the Massachusetts charter was forfeited in 1684. The New England Confederation had represented the first significant effort by English colonists to form an inter-colonial alliance for mutual benefit.

South East Indian Political Organization:

The picture of the Southeast that emerges at the time of first European contact is one of intensive cultural change. The final centuries before contact appear to have been a period of cultural leveling marked by considerable population movement, warfare, and the formation of chieftains. Early written reports describe the political organization of the Southeast as including independent villages, autonomous village clusters, and "tribelets," independent polities that recognized cultural connections with the other groups or polities within the same tribe. Perhaps most analogous to the many independent polities of the California Indians, tribelets generally ranged in size from about a hundred to a few thousand people, depending on the richness of locally available resources.

Generally speaking, each community was fairly autonomous. A village might be linked to others in the same area by ties of kinship, language, and shared cultural traditions; nevertheless, each claimed sovereignty over its locale and was governed by its own religio-political chiefs (during peacetime) and a complementary group of war leaders (during periods of conflict). Superordinate control at the tribal level was generally avoided, although the consolidation of tribelets into larger coalescent groups and even the formation of inter-tribal confederacies occurred as European settlements spread in the region.

Over most of the Southeast, religio-political chieftainship was hereditary within certain lineages. The degree of chiefly power and authority varied, however, from the almost divine kingship of the Great Sun among the theocratic Natchez to the self-effacing status of the peacemaking, consensus-seeking micos and ukus among the more egalitarian Choctaws, Creeks, and Cherokees. In contrast, war leaders normally achieved their positions on the basis of personal accomplishment. They also tended to be active and assertive personalities and younger, by about a generation, than the hereditary or "peace" chiefs.

The complementarity of peace chiefs and war leaders and the occurrence of competitive activities between neighbouring groups—including ball games, hunting contests, and trading expeditions—imbued traditional social structures with a characteristic dualism. The peace chief held sway in the village, whereas the war leader was ascendant in areas external to the village; he had authority in the village itself only when it was under the threat of imminent attack. Young men adjusted their behaviour according to the context of war or peace; they also prepared for the psychological and physical rigours of battle through extensive rituals in which war and peace were symbolically represented by the colours red and white, respectively.

Dualism was also expressed in the organization of clans, subtribes, and villages into complementary pairs, which in turn were sometimes characterized as red or white. Member towns of the Creek Confederacy were sometimes ranked in terms of their tribal affiliations or on the basis of outcomes of lacrosse-like ball games between towns. The Caddos were said to have ranked their clans on the basis of the reputed strength of the totemic animal ancestor, creating a symbolic pecking order.

Social stratification was highly developed in some parts of the Southeast and insignificant in others. Although much has been written about the so-called caste systems among the tribes of the lower Mississippi, the Chitimachas appear to have been the only society to have possessed true castes in the sense of ranked groups that practiced strict endogamy, or marriage within the group. While not a caste system in the strict sense of the term, social stratification was nonetheless highly elaborated among the aboriginal inhabitants of Florida. Among the Timucuas, for instance, the "king" enjoyed an elevated status considerably above that of his followers and was sometimes carried about in a litter. The Natchez social hierarchy included strict rules for marriage and social status. In other tribes, such as the Cherokees, stratification was relatively unimportant, although certain clans might possess special ceremonial prerogatives and recruitment to certain offices might be determined on the basis of clan.

The Iroquois Confederacy [also called Iroquois League, Five Nations, or (from 1722) Six Nations] was a confederation of five (later six) Indian tribes across upper New York state that during the 17th and 18th centuries played a strategic role in the struggle between the French and British for mastery of North America. The five Iroquois nations, characterizing themselves as "the people of the longhouse," were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. After the Tuscarora joined in 1722, the confederacy became known to the English as the Six Nations and was recognized as such at Albany, New York (1722).

Tradition credits the formation of the confederacy, between 1570 and 1600, to Dekanawidah, born a Huron, who is said to have persuaded Hiawatha, an Onondaga living among Mohawks, to abandon cannibalism and advance “peace, civil authority, righteousness, and the great law” as sanctions for confederation. Cemented mainly by their desire to stand together against invasion, the tribes united in a common council composed of clan and village chiefs; each tribe had one vote, and unanimity was required for decisions. The joint jurisdiction of 50 peace chiefs, known as sachems, embraced all civil affairs at the intertribal level.

The Iroquois Confederacy differed from other American Indian confederacies in the northeastern woodlands primarily in being better organized, more consciously defined, and more effective. The Iroquois used elaborately ritualized systems for choosing leaders and making important decisions. They persuaded colonial governments to use these rituals in their joint negotiations, and they fostered a tradition of political sagacity based on ceremonial sanction rather than on the occasional outstanding individual leader. Because the league lacked administrative control, the nations did not always act in unison; but spectacular successes in warfare compensated for this and were possible because of security at home.