424 Years and Counting: the Global System of Corporate Extractivism (1 of 3)
Over four centuries ago, Europeans developed a new system of amassing wealth for small groups of shareholders, taking the form of government-sanctioned exploitation of humans and ecowebs through the use of ‘legal’ tools, like charters and the doctrine of discovery.
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Few documents describe the motives and justifications of government-enabled corporate extractivism — i.e., the process of exploiting human and ecological resources in a way that atrophies and destroys — more succinctly and clearly than the First Charter of Virginia,[1] a letters patent issued by King James I of England on 10 April, 1606.
James, by the Grace of God… vouchsafe unto [a small group of European Christian men, including shareholders of a trade corporation] our licence, to make habitation, plantation, and to deduce a colony of sundry of our people into that part of America… which are not now actually possessed by any Christian prince or people…. We greatly commending… their desires for the furtherance of so noble a work… in propagating of Christian religion to such people, as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages, living in those parts, to human civility…. And do therefore… grant and agree that [the small group of European Christian men and associated settlers] shall have all the lands, woods, soil, grounds, havens, ports, rivers, mines, minerals marshes, waters, fishings, commodities, and hereditaments…. And moreover, we do grant and agree… for the said several colonies, shall and lawfully may… dig, mine, and search for all manner of mines of gold, silver, and copper… and to have and enjoy the gold, silver, and copper, to be gotten thereof… yielding therefore to us, our heirs and successors, the fifth part only of all the same gold and silver, and the fifteenth part of all the same copper...
The First Charter of Virginia was one of the ‘legal’ tools used by the Europeans to colonize the Indigenous peoples of North America and their ancestral lands, a project that was undertaken not by an imperial oligarchy — as had mostly been the case until then — but by a government-backed joint-stockholder company (an early form of a corporation), namely the Virginia Company of London.
Five key concepts underlying the system of government-enabled corporate extractivism promulgated by the First Charter of Virginia are relevant today — over four centuries later.
Euro supremacy (racism). The European extractivists consider(ed) themselves superior to non-Christian peoples, deeming them to “live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of [the Christian] God” and to be “infidels and savages” needing to be brought “to human civility.” While today’s corporations — even those controlled predominantly by Euro (of those who are European or of European descent) Christians — may not be guided by an explicit desire to proselytize people into Christianity, the racism underlying corporate behavior, exemplified in the manner corporations treat non-Euro communities (see, e.g., From Bhopal to the Bay: Fighting Corporations Creating Industrial Wastelands), is still prevalent today.
Rights-based ideology. European governments — acting through their monarchs — operated from within an ideology espousing the belief that a Christian had the right by “the Grace of [the Christian] God” to ‘possess’ an ecological web (ecoweb) “not now actually possessed by any Christian prince or people.” It was on this ideological belief that European governments based their ‘right’ to grant “licence, to make habitation, plantation, and to deduce a colony of sundry of [their] people” on the lands and waters stewarded by Indigenous peoples for tens of thousands of years. Today, the rights of having ‘possession’ and granting ‘possession’ may not be explicitly tied to having a Euro Christian identity, but these rights are often vested in those who exert dominance over others — through amassed wealth, political power, or both.
Exclusionary private property rights. The rights-based ideology of the Europeans had — and still has — at its core the belief that certain humans have the right to ‘possess’ and ‘own’ “all the lands, woods, soil, grounds, havens, ports, rivers, mines, minerals marshes, waters, fishings, commodities, and hereditaments.” This right of ‘possession’ is a private property right that excludes others (is exclusionary) and that in contemporary times has been extended to even intangibles, like ideas and knowledge (‘intellectual property’).
Autocratic decision-making. The letters patent, a ‘legal’ tool invented by European governments, was a key instrument used to establish a legal-economic-governance system that enabled a small group of humans, at the time — and, for the most part, even now — Euro Christian men, to ‘possess,’ dominate, and extract human and ecological resources across the world. This system is based on centralized, autocratic decision-making for the benefit of a few, as opposed to community-based decision-making for optimizing the wellbeing of all. One of the characteristics of such a system is that a government controlling a large collection of diverse peoples retains the power to make decisions, such as granting exclusionary private property rights to corporations, even if such decisions are contrary to the wishes and wellbeing of communities.
Profit-making extractivism. The First Charter of Virginia established a ‘legalized’ system of government-corporation collusion in making profits off of extracting human and ecological resources. A European government granted a license to a small corporation so that they “lawfully may… dig, mine, and search for all manner of mines of gold, silver, and copper… and to have and enjoy [these].” As consideration for this license, the corporation was to follow the condition of “yielding therefore to [the government], [their] heirs and successors, the fifth part only of all the same gold and silver, and the fifteenth part of all the same copper.” Today most Euro governments — and a few non-Euro governments — continue to financially benefit from the profit-making of corporate extractivism.
While the Virginia Company of London reaped the benefits of the nascent government-enabled corporate extractivist system, it was not the first corporation to extract — and profit from the extraction of — ecological resources and human labor, knowledge, and bodies. In fact, almost six years earlier, Queen Elizabeth I of Britain granted to a different joint-stockholder company a trade monopoly in the East Indies, defined by the Europeans as a swath of the earth extending from Africa’s Cape of Good Hope eastward to Cape Horn in South America.
This corporation was the East India Company, the most rapacious corporation in human history. One that looted, impoverished, maimed, divided, and devastated the humans and ecowebs of an entire subcontinent for the benefit of its shareholders and the British imperial government.
[1] The English Crown, First Charter of Virginia (1606), Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities (07 Dec. 2020), available at https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/first-charter-of-virginia-1606/.
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