Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Before we start today's episode, we wanted to
Speaker 1: let you know that Stuff you Missed in History Class
Speaker 1: has been nominated for a Webby Award this year. We've
Speaker 1: been nominated for Best Writing in the Podcast category. You
Speaker 1: can vote by going to Webby Awards dot com. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.
Speaker 1: On the surface, Bacon's Rebellion sounds a little similar to
Speaker 1: the Regulator War that we talked about on the show
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago. Both of them took place
Speaker 1: in England's North American colonies before the Revolutionary War. Although
Speaker 1: Bacon's rebellion was about a century earlier than the other one,
Speaker 1: they both involved some divisions between the less affluent, more
Speaker 1: inland people in the colony and the elite ruling class
Speaker 1: out on the coast, and as was the case with
Speaker 1: the Regulators, for a long time, Bacon's rebellion was primarily
Speaker 1: interpreted as a precursor to the Revolutionary War, with patriotic
Speaker 1: colonists rising up against the tyranny of the British colonial government.
Speaker 1: If you studied this in school up through about the
Speaker 1: mid to late twentieth century or maybe even later, that
Speaker 1: might be the version of it that you heard. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, historians writing over the last seventy
Speaker 1: five years or so have been focusing on all kinds
Speaker 1: of factors, including labor and race, and colonists relationships to
Speaker 1: the native tribes and the nations who were already then
Speaker 1: that part of North America, and the native tribes and
Speaker 1: nations own relationships to each other. Although some scholars have
Speaker 1: tried to find like one central explanation for this whole incident,
Speaker 1: it really seems like the deeper you look into it,
Speaker 1: the more complicated it gets, and there was really just
Speaker 1: a lot going on. So we're going to be getting
Speaker 1: into Bacon's rebellion in two episodes. This was an uprising
Speaker 1: that involved free farmers and enslaved and indentured people of
Speaker 1: multiple races and nationalities. So today we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about how colonial Virginia evolved to look like that in
Speaker 1: the first place, and then the next episode we will
Speaker 1: get to the actual fighting. Um Tracy decided later in
Speaker 1: the game than you might have expected that this was
Speaker 1: going to be a two parter, but I suspected early
Speaker 1: when she texted me last week and said, I think
Speaker 1: this is the most complicated thing I've tried to untangle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like the more I tried to untangle, the
Speaker 1: more tangle I found. That's often how it plays out.
Speaker 1: So to put it plainly, the Colony of Virginia was
Speaker 1: established to make money. There was also some focus on
Speaker 1: converting the Native American population to Christianity, but really turning
Speaker 1: a profit was a much bigger priority. To that end,
Speaker 1: the Virginia Company of London was granted a series of
Speaker 1: royal charters to establish and govern the colony, so the
Speaker 1: Virginia Company, not the Crown, assumed the fine financial risk. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The sole story is just a lot of people trying
Speaker 1: to get something with the minimal expense to themselves as possible.
Speaker 1: The Virginia Company's first charter was granted in sixteen o six,
Speaker 1: and at first the colony that it established in sixteen
Speaker 1: o seven really struggled. The colony had a shortage of
Speaker 1: everything from supplies to just basic skills. The starving time
Speaker 1: of sixteen o nine to sixteen ten was particularly bad,
Speaker 1: and we talked about that on the show back in.
Speaker 1: One of the problems was that at first the colony
Speaker 1: didn't have a profitable export crop. That started to change
Speaker 1: in the sixteen teens after John Rolfe introduced strains of
Speaker 1: tobacco from the Caribbean. Virginia already had its own native tobacco,
Speaker 1: but British consumers preferred the milder, sweeter Caribbean varieties. Soon
Speaker 1: after John Ralph started experimenting with these seeds, tobacco became
Speaker 1: the foundation of the entire colonial economy and virtually it's
Speaker 1: only export. But this led to a couple of new problems. One,
Speaker 1: since the colony had all of its eggs in one basket,
Speaker 1: things like bad weather and fluctuations and tobacco prices and
Speaker 1: wars could be really catastrophic to the whole economy and
Speaker 1: to the colony needed a much larger workforce than it
Speaker 1: had to keep this new industry running. To assemble this workforce,
Speaker 1: investors and planters in seventeenth century Virginia largely turned to
Speaker 1: a system of indenture. People signed contracts to work for
Speaker 1: a specific period of time, essentially losing their freedom for
Speaker 1: the term of their indenture. In an exchange they were
Speaker 1: given passage from Europe to North America. In North America,
Speaker 1: they were supposed to be provided food, shelter, clothing, and
Speaker 1: usually the tools that they needed to work. Yes, sometimes
Speaker 1: people contracting with indentured workers were like, you got to
Speaker 1: provide your own tools. It's buried a little bit. But
Speaker 1: at the end of this contract, the workers typically received
Speaker 1: what was called freedom does and this was usually some
Speaker 1: corn and some clothing. Sometimes the people had contracted them
Speaker 1: would give them some tools or some other goods as well,
Speaker 1: but this was really more of a custom than a
Speaker 1: legal requirement until way after the events that we're talking
Speaker 1: about today, so some people didn't do it. This system
Speaker 1: was based on a model that had existed in parts
Speaker 1: of Europe for centuries, but in general it was implemented
Speaker 1: far more harshly in North America. In England, an apprenticeship
Speaker 1: might last for years, since apprentices were meant to be
Speaker 1: learning a specific trade like blacksmithing or bookbinding. But outside
Speaker 1: the apprenticeship system and indenture in England could last for
Speaker 1: as little as a year. In Virginia, though indenture's lasted
Speaker 1: as long as seven years, and it depended on how
Speaker 1: old the person was when they started working. Laws adjusted
Speaker 1: the exact length from time to time over the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: but in general, the younger the worker was when they
Speaker 1: signed the indenture, the longer their indenture was for. Also,
Speaker 1: in North America, contract terms were much stricter. Indentured people
Speaker 1: had fewer rights and protections, and there were more laws
Speaker 1: specifically governing their activities and behavior. Punishment for breaking these
Speaker 1: laws tended to be harsh, and because contract holders had
Speaker 1: a financial incentive to keep their laborers working for free
Speaker 1: for as long as possible, punishments also included adding more
Speaker 1: time to a person's indenture. People signed these indentures for
Speaker 1: a lot of different reasons and as examples, a person
Speaker 1: might genuinely want to immigrate to North America and just
Speaker 1: have no other way to afford it, or they might
Speaker 1: be in debt in Europe and signing this indenture would
Speaker 1: have absolved them of their debt. Or they might have
Speaker 1: been convicted of a crime and the indenture was part
Speaker 1: of their punishment. So while there were some people who
Speaker 1: signed an indenture freely, for a lot of people it
Speaker 1: was somewhere between being forced and being coerced. Conditions for
Speaker 1: these workers could be truly appalling. Even though an indenture
Speaker 1: was supposed to have an end date, a lot of
Speaker 1: people died of disease, malnourishment, or mistreatment before get anywhere
Speaker 1: close to the end of their contract. And of course
Speaker 1: there were people who just refused to let their indentured
Speaker 1: workers go or who provided them with no sort of
Speaker 1: freedom dues at all. In spite of that, a lot
Speaker 1: of people came to North America and Virginia specifically as
Speaker 1: indentured workers. This was especially true after sixteen eighteen, when
Speaker 1: the Virginia Company established what was known as the head
Speaker 1: Rights System. This was part of a series of incentives
Speaker 1: to try to attract new colonists. The head Right system
Speaker 1: granted fifty acres of land to each person who had
Speaker 1: either paid their own way to immigrate to North America
Speaker 1: or paid someone else's way. So investors and other wealthy
Speaker 1: people started paying for big groups of people to immigrate
Speaker 1: as indentured workers, and these investors collected fifty acres of
Speaker 1: land for each person they brought. This gave the Virginia
Speaker 1: Company access to a large labor force without having to
Speaker 1: really pay a lot of money for it, because it
Speaker 1: was essentially reimbursing the investors who were doing the paying
Speaker 1: with land instead of money. Between sixteen thirty and sixteen eighty,
Speaker 1: three quarters of all new arrivals in Virginia and neighboring
Speaker 1: Maryland were indentured, with as much as half of Virginia's
Speaker 1: population being indentured at one time. Most of Virginia's indentured
Speaker 1: workers were from Britain and Ireland, but they were indentured
Speaker 1: workers from other parts of Europe as well. Especially before
Speaker 1: the sixteen eighties, there were also Native American and African
Speaker 1: indentured workers. It would be going way too far to
Speaker 1: suggest that all of these workers were treated equally, regardless
Speaker 1: of their race or their nationality. Most European workers probably
Speaker 1: thought they were superior to the Native and African workers,
Speaker 1: and there was also something of a hierarchy within the
Speaker 1: workers from different parts of Europe. But overall, until the
Speaker 1: mid to late seventeenth century, Virginia's indentured workers tended to
Speaker 1: have similar working conditions, granted a lot of times they
Speaker 1: were similarly terrible, and they also had similar oppert communities.
Speaker 1: At the end of their indenture. The contract terms tended
Speaker 1: to be less specific and less defined for Native and
Speaker 1: African workers. So it really wasn't unheard of for a
Speaker 1: person's indenture never to formally end, even though it was
Speaker 1: supposed to be temporary. But there were definitely Africans and
Speaker 1: people of African descent who got to the end of
Speaker 1: their indenture and regained their freedom and became landowners themselves
Speaker 1: with indentured workers of their own. That was starting to
Speaker 1: change during the period that we're discussing, and the events
Speaker 1: of Bacon's rebellion prompted even more changes, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about that more after we have a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: In the seventeenth century, indentured workers were not the only
Speaker 1: unfree labor in Virginia. There were also enslaved Native Americans
Speaker 1: and enslaved Africans. For the first couple of years after
Speaker 1: the founding of Jamestown, most of the unfree native labor
Speaker 1: in the colony was indentured. That started changing after the
Speaker 1: First Anglo Powhatan War started in sixteen o nine. This
Speaker 1: was the first of a series of wars between the
Speaker 1: English Colony and an alliance of about thirty Algonquin speaking
Speaker 1: native peoples. It's known as the Powhatan Confederacy because its leader,
Speaker 1: Wahoon Sinacoa, was first introduced to the colonists as Powatin.
Speaker 1: Also heard that pronounced a couple of different ways, including
Speaker 1: exactly how the emphasis goes in pot or. I heard
Speaker 1: someone say at polatan and I was like, I never
Speaker 1: heard anyone say it that way when I was a child.
Speaker 1: There was not really a legal framework to do this
Speaker 1: at first, but the English colonists started treating native prisoners
Speaker 1: of war from this conflict as slaves. A lot of
Speaker 1: North America's native tribes were already practicing some form of
Speaker 1: slavery before Europeans got there. Often this involved enslaving prisoners
Speaker 1: of war. So the colonists established alliances and trading relationship
Speaker 1: ships with the tribes in the area, and as they
Speaker 1: did this, they started trading weapons and supplies with their
Speaker 1: native allies in exchange for their native allies prisoners of war.
Speaker 1: The enslavement of native people became a bigger part of
Speaker 1: the Virginia Colony and more legally formalized in the middle
Speaker 1: of the seventeenth century. In October of sixteen forty six,
Speaker 1: a treaty and did the Third Anglo Powhetan War and
Speaker 1: This treaty made the remaining tribes of the Powhetan Confederacy
Speaker 1: tributaries and subject to English rule. One of the provisions
Speaker 1: of the treaty was that Native children under the age
Speaker 1: of twelve could voluntarily come to live in English households.
Speaker 1: So the colonists claimed that what they would be doing
Speaker 1: was providing these children was shelter and an education and
Speaker 1: converting them to Christianity, but in reality they were more
Speaker 1: like hostages. This provision had been built into the treaty
Speaker 1: to try to force the Native people to comply with it. Basically,
Speaker 1: we're taking your children into our homes, so you better
Speaker 1: do what we say because we have your kids. In
Speaker 1: addition to being treated as hostages, many of these Native
Speaker 1: children were also forced to work as servants. The colony's
Speaker 1: General Assembly passed a series of laws prohibiting the capture
Speaker 1: and sale of Native children as slaves starting in sixteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, but these laws were largely ignored by the colonists,
Speaker 1: and in some cases colonial administrators encouraged breaking the law. Then,
Speaker 1: in sixteen sixty the General Assembly passed a law that
Speaker 1: permitted the enslavement of Native prisoners of war, and there
Speaker 1: were also mass enslavements and retribution for attacks on colonial settlements.
Speaker 1: So if a tribe attacked a settlement and retaliation, the
Speaker 1: colonists would enslave huge numbers of people from that tribe. And,
Speaker 1: as was the case in Africa with the trans Atlantic
Speaker 1: slave trade, England's willingness to trade guns for people led
Speaker 1: to increase warfare among the native tribes, as some of
Speaker 1: them saw more prisoners of war to sell, and others
Speaker 1: just tried to keep from becoming enslaved themselves. In sixteen seventy,
Speaker 1: the General Assembly passed a new law that mandated that
Speaker 1: native prisoners of war be indentured rather than enslaved, but
Speaker 1: as had happened with the laws that prohibited enslaving native children,
Speaker 1: a lot of people just ignored this. The treatment of
Speaker 1: Africans in Virginia followed a somewhat similar trajectory from indenture
Speaker 1: to enslavement. The first Africans in Virginia are generally noted
Speaker 1: as having arrived on a ship called the White Lion
Speaker 1: in August of sixteen nineteen, although there may have been
Speaker 1: a small number of other Africans before that point. The
Speaker 1: White Lion was an English privateer and its crew had
Speaker 1: taken a group of Africans prisoner after capturing a Portuguese
Speaker 1: vessel bound for Mexico. So the crew of the White
Speaker 1: Lion traded these people for food and supplies. But it's
Speaker 1: not really clear from the historical record whether the colonists
Speaker 1: treated them as indentured or enslaved. It may have varied
Speaker 1: among all of them. They were described as twenty and odd,
Speaker 1: so a couple of dozen people chattel. Slavery was really
Speaker 1: well established in Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch colonies by this point,
Speaker 1: but British colonies were a little slower to adopt the practice.
Speaker 1: So in sixteen nineteen, when the ship arrived in dentures
Speaker 1: were really encoded in Virginia law, but slavery was not
Speaker 1: mentioned at all. Regardless of the question of the people
Speaker 1: sold from the White Lion, there were definitely indentured Africans
Speaker 1: in Virginia in the early to mid seventeenth century, although
Speaker 1: over time more Africans started to be held in lifelong
Speaker 1: bondage and the legal status of slavery in Virginia also
Speaker 1: started shifting around sixteen forty. That year, three indentured workers
Speaker 1: who were contracted to a man named Hugh Gwin fled
Speaker 1: from where they were living into Maryland. They were captured
Speaker 1: and returned to Virginia, where all three of them were whipped.
Speaker 1: The two European men of these three were sentenced to
Speaker 1: in a sational four years of servitude, but the third man,
Speaker 1: who was an African man known as John Punch, was
Speaker 1: sentenced to servitude for the rest of his life, and
Speaker 1: that was the first incidence of the lifelong servitude of
Speaker 1: an African in Virginia's legal system. Lifetime enslavement of Africans
Speaker 1: formally became part of Virginia law in sixteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: and then in sixteen sixty two. The law also specified
Speaker 1: that quote Negro women's children to serve according to the
Speaker 1: condition of the mother, so slavery was basically passed down
Speaker 1: from mothers to their children. So Bacon's rebellion started in
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy six, at which point chattel slavery was relatively
Speaker 1: new in Virginia, especially in terms of it's having some
Speaker 1: kind of legal framework, and it was unlawful to enslave
Speaker 1: Native prisoners of war for life, but that law was
Speaker 1: often being ignored, so looking at it a little bit
Speaker 1: more broadly, in sixteen seventy six, the Colony of Virginia
Speaker 1: had a population of free people, some of whom had
Speaker 1: previously been indentured, and these free people were of multiple
Speaker 1: races and nationalities. Virginia also had a very large number
Speaker 1: of indentured workers who were also of multiple races and nationalities,
Speaker 1: and the colony had a much smaller number of enslaved people,
Speaker 1: which included enslaved Africans and enslaved Native Americans. So regardless,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of Virginia's labor was not free, and
Speaker 1: the majority of Virginia's unfree labor at this time was indentured.
Speaker 1: But all of this was changing. Another thing that was
Speaker 1: shifting was how the Europeans in this society thought of
Speaker 1: themselves in relation to everyone else. The idea that European
Speaker 1: Christians were collectively one group, that group being white people,
Speaker 1: was fairly new. It was more common for people of
Speaker 1: European descent to think of their neighbors in terms of
Speaker 1: their specific nationality or in terms of their religion. So
Speaker 1: the people living in Virginia at this time, really we're
Speaker 1: thinking of things in terms of Christians and on Christians,
Speaker 1: Native Americans and Africans were considered non Christians unless they
Speaker 1: could prove that they had been baptized. And this was
Speaker 1: also connected to how people understood slavery, because before the
Speaker 1: mid sixteen hundreds, it was only considered acceptable to hold
Speaker 1: non Christians in bondage. This was part of the core
Speaker 1: definition of slavery, and this meant that in some parts
Speaker 1: of the colony people were freed after being baptized. In
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty seven, the Virginia General Assembly passed an act
Speaker 1: specifying that baptizing an enslaved person did not free them
Speaker 1: from bondage. We should also note that non Christians didn't
Speaker 1: really include Jews at this point because there were very
Speaker 1: few Jewish people in North America aside from a very
Speaker 1: few individual people. The first known group of Jewish colonists
Speaker 1: arrived in New York as refugees from Brazil in sixteen
Speaker 1: fifty four. Yeah, later on there were definitely more specific
Speaker 1: references to Jewish people, but at this time there were
Speaker 1: so few that it was just not a big part
Speaker 1: of the law or people's social understanding to some. All
Speaker 1: of this up Bacon's rebellion united a lot of parts
Speaker 1: of the society, including free farmers and indentured workers and
Speaker 1: enslaved Africans all against a perceived Native American threat. And
Speaker 1: then they turned their attention against the colonial government. And
Speaker 1: we will get to why people were so frustrated with
Speaker 1: the government after a sponsored break. Before the break, we
Speaker 1: talked about the enslavement of Native Americans and Africans in
Speaker 1: Virginia from the earliest years of the colony up through
Speaker 1: the sixteen seventies, and now we need to rewind just
Speaker 1: a little bit to talk about how the colonial government developed,
Speaker 1: because that was a big source of frustration leading into
Speaker 1: Bacon's rebellion. At the top of the show, we talked
Speaker 1: about how the Virginia Company established the colony at Jamestown
Speaker 1: in sixteen o seven. In sixteen eighteen, the company drafted
Speaker 1: a set of instructions for newly appointed governor, Sir George Yeardley.
Speaker 1: These instructions were called the Great Charter, and they included
Speaker 1: the head right system that we talked about earlier. The
Speaker 1: Great Charter also included instructions about the colony's governance. The
Speaker 1: company decided to establish an elected body of representatives so
Speaker 1: that the colonists could have some say in the government.
Speaker 1: While the colony stayed in the company's control. These representatives
Speaker 1: were known as burgesses, and they were elected to represent
Speaker 1: each settlement. Together, the Burgesses, the Governor's Council, and the
Speaker 1: Governor formed a unicameral body that was the General Assembly
Speaker 1: that has come up a couple of times in this episode.
Speaker 1: But in spite of ongoing reforms through these decades and
Speaker 1: all these instructions that were detailed in the Great Charter,
Speaker 1: the colony still just was not thriving. The Virginia Company
Speaker 1: never managed to get out of debt, even though it
Speaker 1: was not paying the vast majority of its labor. By
Speaker 1: the sixteen twenties, critics were also raising serious questions about
Speaker 1: the company and how it was running things. So in
Speaker 1: sixteen twenty four, after a year long investigation, the Crown
Speaker 1: revoked the company's charter and took direct control of the colony,
Speaker 1: appointing a royal governor and other officials. This was a
Speaker 1: massive change for the colonists, especially because for the first
Speaker 1: several years the General Assembly had no formal recognition. The
Speaker 1: colonists were frustrated and angry over the situation, since they
Speaker 1: had gone from being at least somewhat self governing with
Speaker 1: an elected assembly to being under the control of a
Speaker 1: governor who was appointed by the monarch. The crown did
Speaker 1: eventually recognize the assembly, and then in sixteen forty three,
Speaker 1: Governor Sir William Berkeley split the Burgesses off into their
Speaker 1: own house of the government, and so this turned the
Speaker 1: colony's unicameral legislature into a bicameral one. His goal in
Speaker 1: doing this was part of a plan to try to
Speaker 1: create a stable central government for the colony. But a
Speaker 1: side effect of splitting the Burgesses into their own house
Speaker 1: was that the Burgesses, who had always been mostly it
Speaker 1: up of the colony's gentry, they became increasingly focused on
Speaker 1: their own needs and the needs of other rich colonists,
Speaker 1: so the colonies less affluent people really felt like they
Speaker 1: didn't have a voice in the government anymore. Throughout all
Speaker 1: this time, tobacco continued to be the foundation of Virginia's economy.
Speaker 1: Tobacco prices had started to drop around the sixteen twenties
Speaker 1: as exports from North America and the Caribbean flooded the
Speaker 1: British market. The Dutch also bought a lot of tobacco
Speaker 1: from Virginia, and that revenue was cut off completely during
Speaker 1: the First Anglo Dutch War, which started in sixteen fifty two.
Speaker 1: Then in sixteen sixty, Parliament passed the Navigation Acts, which
Speaker 1: required Virginia's exports to be sent through English ports on
Speaker 1: English ships. That once again up ended Virginia's tobacco trade
Speaker 1: with the Dutch Republic, since the colony could no longer
Speaker 1: sell directly to the Dutch yea. Once the war was
Speaker 1: over they had resumed that trade, and then the Navigation
Speaker 1: actiments that they could not do it anymore. And then,
Speaker 1: of course, because it was a war, we are also
Speaker 1: all the other wartime effects, including the colony being directly attacked.
Speaker 1: Also in sixteen sixty, Sir William Berkeley was appointed the
Speaker 1: Governor of Virginia for a second time. His separation of
Speaker 1: the Burgesses into their own house and the government had
Speaker 1: happened during his first term. That first term lasted from
Speaker 1: sixteen forty one to sixteen fifty two, and it largely
Speaker 1: took place during the English Civil War. Berkeley himself was
Speaker 1: a Royalist, so when that side lost the war, he
Speaker 1: naturally lost his position as governor. Not long afterward, Charles
Speaker 1: the Second was restored to the throne in sixteen sixty
Speaker 1: and Berkeley's first term as governor had gone well enough
Speaker 1: that the king restored him to the position, but the
Speaker 1: second term did not go nearly as well. In his
Speaker 1: first term, Berkeley had encouraged Virginia farmers and planters to
Speaker 1: diversify their crops so the colonial economy wouldn't be so
Speaker 1: susceptible to everything from whether to wars. Charles the second
Speaker 1: approved a formal plan to do this during Berkeley's second term,
Speaker 1: but Berkeley's attempt to carry it out just didn't go well.
Speaker 1: Taxes were increased to fund the diversification effort, which meant
Speaker 1: that planters felt like they were being taxed in order
Speaker 1: to make a change that they didn't even want to
Speaker 1: make in the first place. The diversification effort fizzled, and
Speaker 1: tobacco remained as the primary export crop, so when the
Speaker 1: Second Anglo Dutch War started in sixteen sixty five, planters
Speaker 1: incomes once again plummeted. Planters were also becoming frustrated because
Speaker 1: of some of the consequences of the head right system
Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier. The land that was granted
Speaker 1: to people under that system was not the most fertile
Speaker 1: farmable land out in the tide Water area of the colony.
Speaker 1: It was farther inland, where it was a lot rockier,
Speaker 1: the soil was not as rich. Some of it was
Speaker 1: on the other side of the fall line, which made
Speaker 1: it harder to transport goods out to the coast. And
Speaker 1: the more people moved into this territory, the more frustrated
Speaker 1: they were about this disparity between the people out on
Speaker 1: the tide Water and people in the inner coastal plane.
Speaker 1: Governor Keley was also really fond of granting some of
Speaker 1: the best land so people that he liked as rewards,
Speaker 1: and that meant that that extra good land was not
Speaker 1: available to sell to anyone else. Those earlier issues with
Speaker 1: colonists feeling like they weren't represented in the government resurfaced
Speaker 1: in sixteen seventy when the Assembly adopted legislation that restricted
Speaker 1: the right to vote only to people who owned taxable land.
Speaker 1: This disenfranchised a lot of previously eligible voters. On top
Speaker 1: of that, there hadn't been a new election for the
Speaker 1: Assembly in eight years, so only the wealthiest and most
Speaker 1: elite people in the colony felt represented in the government,
Speaker 1: since they were the ones connected to the burgesses who
Speaker 1: had been serving all that time. As if that was
Speaker 1: not enough. On top of all of this, in sixteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, Charles the Second granted all of Virginia's revenues
Speaker 1: to the Lords Arlington and Culpepper, and this led the
Speaker 1: Governor of Virginia to raise taxes again both try to
Speaker 1: offset that loss of revenue and pay for an appeal
Speaker 1: to try to get the grant reversed. All of these
Speaker 1: things that we've talked about today led to the British
Speaker 1: colonies first violent uprising among its colonists, and we were
Speaker 1: going to talk about that on our next show. I
Speaker 1: have a little bit of listener mails to close us out,
Speaker 1: and this is about our not that long ago episode
Speaker 1: on Raphael Limpkin and the Genocide Convention. It is from Nate.
Speaker 1: Nate says, Hello, Tracy and Holly. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: add a note to your episode on Raphael Limpkin and
Speaker 1: the Genocide Convention. You mentioned that Limpkins studied law at LVOV, Poland,
Speaker 1: which is now in Ukraine and called Liviv. While Limpkin
Speaker 1: was working to define genocide as a crime, the related
Speaker 1: but distinct legal concept of crimes against humanity was being
Speaker 1: developed by Hirsch louder Pact, who had studied law at
Speaker 1: the same university. The parallels between the two continued at
Speaker 1: the Nuremberg trial, where louder Part was an advisor to
Speaker 1: the British prosecutors while Limpkin was an advisor to the Americans.
Speaker 1: Both men lost relatives in the Hall a cost and
Speaker 1: at Nuremberg they came face to face with a defendant
Speaker 1: most directly responsible for these deaths, Hans Frank, the Nazi
Speaker 1: governor of Poland. I learned this and more in a
Speaker 1: fascinating book called East West Street by Philips Sands, which
Speaker 1: I highly recommend. Keep up the good work, Nate. Thank you, Nate.
Speaker 1: I wanted to read this email for two reasons. One
Speaker 1: to include that tidbit about Loder Pact and the idea
Speaker 1: of crimes against humanity, because that did come up in
Speaker 1: my research and was not something that we really got
Speaker 1: into in the episode as much. Um One of Lincoln's
Speaker 1: sources of frustration was that it seemed like sometimes there
Speaker 1: was more focused on this idea of crimes against humanity,
Speaker 1: and he really felt like there needed to be a
Speaker 1: legal focus on the idea of genocide and on preventing
Speaker 1: and prosecuting genocide. And then I also wanted to clarify
Speaker 1: because I don't think I said that he had studied
Speaker 1: law in love Poland. I'm not sure what gave that impression.
Speaker 1: What I did say that was definitely confus using, or
Speaker 1: what I did right that was definitely confusing. I don't
Speaker 1: remember which of us said it in the actual episode.
Speaker 1: Is that um I made it sound like the University
Speaker 1: of Heidelberg and Levov which is now Lviv, was one place.
Speaker 1: Those are in fact two different universities, and limpken Uh
Speaker 1: studied at both of those universities at different times. So
Speaker 1: if anybody got the impression that there used to be
Speaker 1: a university that was called the University of Heidelberg and Liviv,
Speaker 1: that it's two different places and Liviv yes is in
Speaker 1: Ukraine now. Uh So, thank you Nate for letting me
Speaker 1: share that. If you would like to write to us
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