Pilgrim Edward Winslow recorded in Mourt's Relation that in the Fall of 1621:"God be praised we had a good increase ... Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week.
Though the secret hearings started with the intention of cutting through the red tape of bureaucracy, Britain's Court of Star Chamber proceeded to usurp power.It became a political weapon for auditing, intimidating and punishing opponents to the King's policies, similar to modern-day IRS audits or partisan secret special counsel investigations.
Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, 1776:"The Spaniards, by virtue of the first discovery, claimed all America as their own, and ... such was ... the terror of their name, that the greater part of the other nations of Europe were afraid to establish themselves in any other part of that great continent ... But ... the defeat ... of their Invincible Armada ... put it out of their power to obstruct any longer the settlements of the other European nations. In the course of the 17th century ... English, French, Dutch, Danes, and Swedes ... attempted to make some settlements in the new world."
After the Reformation, Protestant countries formed the first "joint–stock" companies.A joint–stock company was much like modern-day crowd–sourcing or crowd–funding. Any individual could invest in a ship sailing to the Far East in search of spices, and when the ship returned, investorsreceived a profit.
