"Part business history, part swashbuckling adventurer's tale, New World Inc. shows us that America was founded, not as an idealistic city upon a hill, but as the result of intense competition between well-funded companies looking to capitalize on the Next Big Thing...A fascinating read."―Larrie D. Ferreiro, author of Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It
"...an intelligent, thorough, and detailed examination of the financial stories powering the earliest voyages to America. Skillfully told, this compelling book elevates the overlooked economic motivations behind the first American settlements to their proper place in history."―Bhu Srinivasan, author of Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism
New World Inc—In A Nutshell
Three generations of English merchant adventurers—not the Pilgrims, as we have so long believed—were the earliest founders of America. Profit—not piety—was their primary motive.
Some seventy years before the Mayflower sailed, a small group of English merchants formed “The Mysterie, Company, and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown”, the world’s first joint stock company. Back then, in the mid-sixteenth century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe and it had begun to face a daunting array of social, commercial, and political problems. Struggling with a single export—woollen cloth—the merchants were forced to seek new markets and trading partners, especially as political discord followed the straitened circumstances in which so many English people found themselves.
At first, they headed East and dreamed of Cathay—China, with its silks and other luxuries. Eventually, they turned West, and so began a whole new chapter in world history. The work of reaching the New World required the very latest in navigational science as well as an extraordinary appetite for risk. As this absorbing history shows, innovation and risk-taking were at the heart of the settlement of America, as was the profit motive. Trade and business drove the founding of America, and determined what happened once English ships reached the New World.
