Charter Colonies

1 Key excerpts on "Charter Colonies"

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  eBook - ePub

  Taxation in Colonial America

  • Alvin Rabushka(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  To summarize, the first wave of colonial settlements was founded on tax incentives. The Virginia companies, the several Massachusetts companies, and the Dutch West India Company enjoyed tax exemptions granted by the English Crown and the States-General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The exemptions and other privileges varied among the companies and colonial settlements, but the pattern was clear. Freedom from taxation, in part or in whole, and subsequent limited taxation were embedded in the constitutional foundations of the early colonies.

  1 In 1494 Portugal and Spain negotiated the Treaty of Tordesillas, named after the village of Tordesillas on the high plateau of Castille. It ratified an earlier treaty that Granada and the Canary Islands belonged to Spain and that Portugal’s King João ruled the Algarve (southern Portugal) and his possessions in Africa. It further established a line of demarcation between Spanish and Portuguese spheres of influence drawn 370 leagues (a league is a unit of distance equal to three statute miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands. All islands and continents on the east side of the line went to Portugal, the west side to Spain. Portuguese sailors Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real explored Newfoundland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia during 1499–1502, but established no settlements.

  2 The subject of this book is the original thirteen colonies that formed the United States of America upon the conclusion of the American Revolution. The colonial activities of the European powers in Asia and Africa are omitted from this study, except as they bear upon the development and taxation of the American colonies (e.g., patterns of trade, especially the slave trade).

  3 The Avalon Project at Yale Law School has compiled a collection of colonial charters, grants, and related documents. All Avalon documents cited in this book were downloaded and printed on February 27, 2003. The original source from which these documents was posted is Thorpe, Colonial Charters. The list of general charters and charters and grants specific to the thirteen American colonies can be found at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/states/statech.htm (February 27, 2003). Other pre-eighteenth-century documents can be found at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/pre18.htm (February 27, 2003). The text of the letters patent granted to John Cabot and his sons is found in Thorpe, Colonial Charters, 1:45–47, and http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/cabot01.htm

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