Why Nations Fail

By the late 1990s, in just about half a century, South Korean growth and North Korean stagnation led to a tenfold gap between the two halves of this once-united country—imagine what a difference a couple of centuries could make. The economic disaster of North Korea, which led to the starvation of millions, when placed against the South Korean economic success, is striking: neither culture nor geography nor ignorance can explain the divergent paths of North and South Korea.

It took the Virginia Company some time to recognized that its initial model of colonization did not work in Virginia, and it took a while, too, for the failure of the «Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall» to sink in. Starting in 1618, a dramatically new strategy was adopted. Since it was possible to coerce neither the local nor the settlers, the only alternative was to give the settlers incentives. In 1618 the company began the «headright system,» which gave each member of his family and for all servants that a family could bring to Virginia. Settlers were given their houses and freed from their contracts, and in 1619 f General Assembly was introduced that effectively gave all adult men a say in the laws and institutions governing the colony. It was the start of democracy in the United States.

When they first landed in Jamestown, the English colonists did not know that they were within the territory claimed by the Powhatan Confederacy, a coalition of some thirty polities owing allegiance to a king called Wahunsunacock. Wahunsunacock’s capital was at the town of Werowocomoco, a mere twenty miles from Jamestown. The plan of the colonist was to learn more about the lay of the land. If the local could not be induced to provide food an labor, the colonist might at least be able to trade with them. The notion that the settlers themselves would work and grow their own food seems not to have crossed their minds. That is not what conquerors of the New World did.