Debt and Religious Capitalism Theme Analysis

A surprising amount of the “action” in Of Plymouth Plantation revolves around the Pilgrims’ finances. In the late 1610s the Pilgrims form a plan to migrate to the New World, and to fund the trip they make inroads with the Virginia Company of Plymouth (which Bradford often refers to simply as ‘the Virginia Company,” though nowadays it’s usually called the Plymouth Company). The Pilgrims then travel to Plymouth, significantly in debt to the English investors who’d fronted the money for Plymouth’s joint stock operation. Initially, the plan is to pay off the investors over the course of the next seven years. (Historians have argued that, without the invention of the joint stock company, Europe would never have been able to send people to the New World profitably.) In 1624, the Virginia Company fails, but many investors continue to demand their money. Furthermore, the Pilgrims find themselves at the mercy of their English business contacts, some of whom use their position to sell the Pilgrims overpriced goods and make a huge profit, plunging the Plymouth Plantation further into debt.

Of Plymouth Plantation’s enormous amount of detail about debt, interest rates, shipping costs, and other financial concerns might seem to contrast with the religious idealism of the Pilgrims’ aims. The Pilgrims believe that they’re honoring God by founding a new society in which they can worship him freely, and yet they’re shackled by their obligations to creditors. The Plymouth Plantation’s debt also seems to clash, at least initially, with the Pilgrims’ strong emphasis on self-sufficiency and independence (inspired by Saint Paul’s command to “owe no man anything”). But in fact, debt becomes a fundamental part of the Pilgrim’s religion, reinforcing their emphasis on the virtues of labor and responsibility. One could even argue that for the Pilgrims, the “Protestant work ethic” that comes to define theirs and similar colonies is a result of financial necessity as much as religious idealism.

The Pilgrim’s ongoing debts to investors influence early Plymouth society in other important ways as well. First, the English debt provides a constant reminder that the Pilgrims aren’t entirely cut off from their old lives. The Pilgrims have journeyed to the New World to start a new life of religious freedom. But they are still obligated to the English merchants who financed their voyage and provide them with regular shipments of food. By the same token, debt arguably trains Plymouth’s leaders to become savvy negotiators and expert politicians. Over the course of the book, William Bradford is forced to send frequent communications back to his creditors in England. He learns to write forcefully but carefully, so as not to anger the merchants and business contacts who hold so much power over his colony. Bradford exercises these same skills when dealing with neighboring settlements in America—so it could be said that Bradford (who had no political experience before Plymouth) grew into a skillful secular leader in the process of managing the colony’s debt. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, debt provided the impetus for a strong stable state in Plymouth Plantation. At Plymouth, each Pilgrim is required to pay an annual tax to their governor, gradually paying off their share of the debt. There are several times in the book when some Pilgrims are tempted to run off and make a better life for themselves with the Native Americans. However, Bradford makes it clear that anyone who wants to leave Plymouth must first pay off their debt (or risk being prosecuted as a criminal). As Bradford’s dictate suggests, the Pilgrims’ leaders had a strong incentive to persuade their followers to stick together. Had the Pilgrims not been in debt for so long, it’s entirely possible that many of them would have wandered off in search of a better life, and the Plymouth colony would have collapsed.

Debt provided the Plymouth Pilgrims with a constant reminder of their imperfect natures, a reason to work hard and live frugally (with an emphasis on individual property ownership within a united colony), and a cause to stay together in a strange new place—and in fact, in all of these senses, it was strikingly similar to their interpretation of Christianity. In the long run, the Pilgrims’ ongoing debt to England exerted a major influence on the rise of a distinctly American brand of capitalism and Christianity, in which the emphasis on ongoing hard work, property ownership, and individual responsibility reinforced both ideologies.