Massachusetts Land Lease: Fill & Download for Free

Can you see a few tiny pink dots?The heart of the British empire in 1707 was its Caribbean islands: Bermuda, Antigua, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, the larger island of Jamaica that had been captured from the Spanish by Oliver Cromwell, and a handful of smaller islands. These dozen or so small pieces of land had a population of 150,000 and accounted for 14% of England's imports in 1700 — over twice as much as the whole of North America put together.While crops such as tobacco, coffee, ginger and indigo had been significant during the early days of settlement, by 1707 sugar had become by far the most important and lucrative Caribbean export. A side-effect of this, unfortunately, was the growth of slavery.The early settlers had relied on indentured labourers for their workforce: people who signed away seven years of their life to their employer in return for free passage out to the colonies, living expenses and a financial pay-out at the end of their term of service. However, life on a sugar plantation was harsh and dangerous, and few people were willing to endure it voluntarily, As such, the plantation owners turned their attention to the slave markets of West Africa to obtain labourers who could be forced to work (and without wages). In 1707 African slavery in the Americas was still relatively small-scale compared to later years, but in the process of rapidly expanding.English Harbour on the island of Antigua, 'Gateway to the Caribbean'To the north, a string of autonomous colonies huddled along the east coast of North America, not yet stretching far inland. They had some profitable exports, such as tobacco from Virginia, but nothing as lucrative as Caribbean sugar. The one resource they did have in abundance was land; so the region was seen in England as a safety-valve where the poor or the disaffected and rebellious could be sent away, out of sight and out of mind. The total population of British North America was about 265,000 at this time, but clustered in several distinct regions rather than spread uniformly throughout the region.The Chesapeake Bay region was the most important, with almost 100,000 people living in the colonies of Virginia and Maryland. The first permanent English settlement in North America had been established at Jamestown in 1607, and tobacco exports made the region profitable.The other main centre of settlement was New England, with 92,000 people. In 1691 several small colonies were united into the Province of Massachusetts Bay, with an appointed governor but an elected Assembly meeting in Boston. The Province was significantly larger than the modern state of Massachusetts, spreading up the coast as far as Maine. Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire were smaller adjoining colonies.Between the two main centres of population lay the Middle Colonies — New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, with a total population of 54,000. Much of this land had been conquered from the Dutch (who in turn had conquered parts of it from Sweden); French Huguenot immigration was also a major factor; and so the European population was ethnically diverse.The Deep South was as yet thinly populated by Europeans with only 16,000 inhabitants, centred on the settlement of Charles Town (Charleston) established in 1670. In 1707 the Province of Carolina had not been formally divided into North and South yet, though there were already disputes between the two areas and an informal split. Georgia, the last of the Thirteen Colonies, had not yet been settled: it would be established in 1732.In the north, Newfoundland, now part of Canada, had been an English colony since 1610, but its permanent population was tiny (under a thousand). However, it was important as a base for fishing ships, who carried on a lucrative trade with Europe. A handful of English fur-traders working for the Hudson's Bay Company had also established a total of five small settlements along Canada's far northern coasts. However the region was dominated by France and in the 1690s-1700s all but one of the settlements were occupied by French troops. (They would be returned in 1713.)Artist's impression of JamestownIn West Africa, the Royal African Company maintained a total of 13 small forts scattered along the coast from the Gambia to the Gulf of Guinea. These were built on land leased from various African kingdoms and existed with their permission and by their sufferance. The fortifications were primarily intended to defend against other European powers; in fact, most of England's forts had originally been established by the Dutch, and had been seized during the various wars of the 17th century. The English forts existed alongside about two dozen forts owned by various other nationalities; half of them were Dutch, the rest French, German, Danish and Portuguese.These forts were primarily engaged in the slave trade, though other goods such as gold, pepper and ivory were also purchased in exchange for European cloth, iron and muskets. The forts acted as local entrepots and warehouses, holding commodities (and prisoners) safely until ships from Europe arrived to trade. The African slave-exporting nations such as the Kingdom of Whydah (in modern-day Benin) and Kingdom of Eguafo (in modern-day Ghana) leased land to the Europeans in order to have a ready market available, and also to keep the Europeans in one place where they could be controlled more easily.The Europeans also got involved in local politics; for example in 1698 the English Royal African Company paid for local mercenaries to help support Takyi Kuma in his rebellion against the King of Eguafo in return for trade privileges — but when Takyi became king himself in 1700 he quickly fell out with his English backers and withdrew his favour. As can be seen, the English position was a precarious one.Fort James in The Gambia, captured from the Dutch in 1661In Asia, the Honourable East India Company had been created in 1600 with a monopoly over all English trade 'east of the Cape of Good Hope'. Its monopoly had been formally broken in 1694 by Act of Parliament, but in practice the HEIC forced its competition out of business or took them over. It faced more serious rivalry from its French and Dutch counterparts; in 1707 it was still by no means clear that the English would ever come to dominate trade with India, while the Dutch had blocked them out of the Spice Islands (Indonesia) altogether.As in Africa, the English in Asia leased a series of small trading posts and forts from local rulers. Two of these were the most important in 1707: Fort St George at Madras founded in 1644; and Bombay, which had been founded by the Portuguese in 1534 and given by them to England in 1661 in return for a marriage alliance. In addition, in 1690 an agent of the HEIC bought some land (including three small villages) on the east bank of the River Hooghly and began construction of Fort William, which would be the foundation of the city of Calcutta. However, at this stage the English had no real political or military power in the region, and were dependent on the goodwill of local rulers.Fort William, which over the next century would grow to be the largest city in British IndiaThere were as yet no English outposts in Australasia.In Europe, English troops had captured Gibraltar in 1704, and Spain ceded the town to them permanently in 1713.Ireland should also be mentioned in this context. Its constitutional position was complex: though it is often classed as a colony, it was technically an independent state in personal union with England. As far as most people in England and Scotland were concerned during this period, Ireland was characterised by a small number of prosperous English-speaking towns along the coasts, and a poverty-stricken barbaric hinterland inhabited by roving warlike tribes of primitives. (The Irish themselves, of course, saw it differently.) The government saw its task as pacifying the clans and introducing civilisation: at first by attempting to negotiate with the clan leaders, but increasingly from the mid-16th century onwards by bypassing them and selling land in Ireland to people from England and Scotland, in the hope that they would establish 'civilised' towns and villages, pay their taxes regularly and not engage in constant civil wars. This created ethnic tension, but religious division was more serious. Irish Protestants, the smaller but more wealthy section of the population, were given privileges; Irish Catholics, which included the bulk of the population, were persecuted.The Isle of Man was a feudal kingdom ruled by the Lord of Mann, who had been a vassal of the King of England since 1406 (the island had previously been under the rule of Scotland, Norway and various independent rulers). Although under English protection, the island was formally considered a (very small) independent realm.A similar status was held by the Channel Islands, the bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey. In mediaeval times they had been part of the Duchy of Normandy; but when the King of France re-established royal control over Normandy in the early 13th century, the islands remained outside his grasp. The islands were considered independent, not part of England: but their ruler was always the same person as the King of England. (Still informally referred to by the islanders as the 'Duke of Normandy', though the monarch officially renounced that title by treaty with France in 1259.)The Bay of Caledonia in Panama: it looks beautiful today, but in 1698 it was a hellhole of disease and famineIn 1707 Scotland had no colonies, unless you want to count Northern Ireland, settled by tens of thousands of Scots on the orders of King James VI in the early 17th century. If Ireland is classed as a colony you could perhaps also argue that the Orkneys, Shetlands and parts of the Hebrides were also Scottish colonies, taken over from the Scandinavians in the late Middle Ages. In 1707 there were still entire parishes in the Shetlands where the population spoke 'Norn' (a dialect of Norwegian) rather than Scots; the last native speaker died in about 1850.Outside Europe, however, Scotland's experimentation with colonies ended with the disastrous Darien Scheme. In 1695 the Scottish government established a chartered company, the Company of Scotland, to compete with the English East India Company and establish trading bases and colonies overseas. Three years later they sent a fleet of ships and 1200 colonists to the Gulf of Darién in Central America (in modern-day Panama) to establish a colony they called 'Caledonia'. Within eight months three-quarters of the settlers had died of disease, and the surviving 300 abandoned the colony.The following year, 1699, another 1000 colonists were sent out from Scotland, not realising that the first settlement had already failed. They arrived to find ruined huts where they'd expected to find a town, and promptly got into conflict with local Spanish colonial forces. The Spanish attacked the Scottish and destroyed their settlement; the survivors were forced to evacuate again. This time, they abandoned the project entirely.A high proportion of Scotland's upper and middle classes had invested heavily in the Company of Scotland, and its collapse led to widespread bankruptcy and financial distress. It's often cited as one of the primary reasons why Scotland agreed to the Act of Union with England a few years later. As one of the terms of the union, the English taxpayers handed over almost £400,000 to Scotland (about £50 million in today's money), most of which went to bail out the shareholders of the failed Company of Scotland.More indirectly, the Scots blamed the failure of the Darien colony on the lack of cooperation and assistance from England and the English navy. This had partly been caused by political reasons; England was at war with France and so wanted to avoid angering Spain at the same time, which a colony in an area Spain regarded as its special sphere of interest would surely do. More generally, as long as England and Scotland were independent realms, it was entirely understandable that the English would treat the Scots as rivals and competitors.By becoming part of the same united kingdom (actually called 'Great Britain' from 1707 to 1800) the Scots received the opportunity to invest in the project that would become the British Empire; which they would do disproportionately to their population over the next two centuries, playing a major part in trade, commerce, industry, military expansion and settlement all around the world.

What will happen if I leave when my lease is expired. I've given 30 days notice to my land lady. Paid up to date. But my roomate with no lease (tenant at will) refuses to leave. What will happen to my roommate? Live in Massachusetts.If he refuses to leave, the landlady will probably have to evict him. Since he’s an at-will tenant and has been given notice to leave, he’s not protected by the CDC eviction moratorium.Then he’ll be tracking you down for another place to crash, because no one will rent to him with an eviction on his record.

I guess a thin case could be made for this in the colonial era when the Penn family owned Philadelphia and Pennsylvania personally, Lord Baltimore owned Baltimore and Maryland, the Massachusetts Bay Company investors owned Boston, Oglethorpe owned much of Georgia, etc. but that didn’t last very long.The closest might have been J.P. Morgan over a century ago when he controlled many major industries in NYC as well as the New York Times newspaper as principal investor and one of the largest banks? Even then you have to pretend New York was far simpler than it was and that there weren’t many other major industries independent of Morgan and many competing factions, newspapers, banks, and wealthier rivals.The query shows they don’t what a shell company actually is, a strategy to conceal ownership when buying land, leasing natural resources like oil drilling rights, avoiding legal or tax liabilities, or changing ownership of assets none of which fit running or owning a city.Are “the rich” the wildly diverse and generally quite competitive with each other people who’ve accumulated, inherited, or married into some arbitrary amount that’s rich by world standards but not in the most expensive cities or just people whose wealth is in the hundreds of millions or just the several thousand billionaires?Most of the moneyed have their dollars in businesses and real estate all over the world and that requires continual attention, taking control of a city would make anyone quite a bit poorer in the modern era while would be profitable in ancient times when taxing trade caravans and merchant ships’ cargos was easy money for any idiot with some guards and a walled city.Do you think Michael Bloomberg was running New York City as a shell company in his 12 years as Mayor despite his employees and income coming from handling international financial information dissemination?You have a set of conflicting sound bytes that someone deeply inexperienced with American cities has concocted for propaganda purposes, it’s not an economics or governance question at all.