Title: Feudalism in Colonial America
Description: How many Carolinians know their government used to be a system of noble titles and privilege, and land worked by serfs before slavery? English feudalism still impacts the order of things in America and, especially the Carolinas. Discover how English feudal traditions are still shaping the Carolinas in the twenty-first century. Most of America’s institutions trace their ancestry to England. Feudalism, not freedom, was the basis of the English colonization of North America; the charters granted by successive English kings to individual and corporate subjects, having ambitions to achieve wealth and power in the New World, confirmed this. The manorial system was brought to America by English and Dutch governments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a method to help colonize and govern the New World without having to lay out large sums of money. The introduction of manor-based government in North America was, largely, very successful.
Subjects: Charters, Exhibitions, History, Sources
Places: North Carolina, United States
Time periods: Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775