Bacon's Rebellion Was Immensely Significant. This Sedition Essay

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Bacon's Rebellion was immensely significant. This sedition was one of the first truly national events that took place during the Colonial Period that would prove to have a lasting effect on the fledgling country well into the middle of the 19th century, when the Civil War was fought. Essentially, Bacon's Rebellion involved indigent farmer's from Virginia, who gathered together and actually rioted and burned a substantial portion of Jamestown -- the first American colony that actually lasted -- down to the ground.

The critical aspect about this particular rebellion is that it made a lot of large landowners in the southern areas of the country understand the inherent problem of utilizing Caucasians as sources of labor. It did not really matter whether those Caucasians were actually indentured servants or freedmen; they all believed that they had certain rights and privileges that, if they perceived them as being unmet, they would take violent, destructive means to attempt to procure.

The alternative to utilizing this source of labor, of course, was to use slave labor. Most colonialists did not view African or African-American slaves as human, let alone as being worthy to having rights or privileges. Thus, Bacon's Rebellion helped to set a precedent of sorts in which the preferred form of labor in the southern agricultural colonies transformed from Caucasians to slaves (Faragher et al., 2009, p. 41). Other potential sources of labor at this time involved Native Americans, which involved a degree of difficulty since Native Americans were naturally rebellious.

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However, slaves were decidedly less so, a fact which is readily proven by the immense period of time in which chattel slave labor transformed and actually built the modern country of America.

Essentially, mercantilism is the principle that a country's power and strength was based on its economic prowess and wealth (Cranny, 1998, p. 237). Thus, the mercantilist system was each country's attempt to procure its hegemony by maintaining a favorable balance of trade. Doing so requires one to export more than one imports.

There were definite effects of mercantilism on the original 13 colonies prior to 1760. For most of the colonists, mercantilism was a definite British principle. What it meant for the colonialists was that the colonies essentially functioned to produce wealth for Britain via commerce. The colonists were expected to trade primarily (and, for the British, exclusively) with England. In fact, many British economists and governmental figures saw the colonies' trade with Britain as their sole purpose, other than expanding Britain's territorial claims throughout the world.

Thus, in keeping with this aim, there were several different pieces of legislation that were passed all in the aims of helping the colonists to better trade with Britain, so that they could essentially support Britain's wealth. Once such piece of legislation was knows as the Navigation Acts which were passed in the….....

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