The Promise Abroad Summary

The Promise Abroad
For many Europeans living in the 15th to 16th centuries, economic and population conditions were not to their advantage in their home countries. While their states economies were rising in wealth, inflation and lack of well-paying jobs meant that the majority of the population lived at the poverty level. Division of labor practices, along with high density populations meant that working conditions were poor, and instigated lack of prosperity as competition maintained these jobs at low compensation values. Land too was crowded, leaving traditional farming exercises difficult to maintain as land owners shifted from an environment of tenant farmers to wage laborers. These combinations meant extreme difficulty in maintaining self-sufficiency, let alone having
As their governments transitioned to mercantilism overseas, and industrialized mechanics in their homelands, European peoples were caught in the middle of a great change. While their governments benefited from the ventures on wayward shores, they seldom saw benefit, and often succumbed to a worsening disposition as the wealth was not properly dispatched amongst all layers of the society. This yielded the inevitability of individuals yearning for a better purpose in their lives, and William Penn’s writing of foreign lands was the advent of those desires. Europeans viewed the Americas as a mode of escape: a new world where land was copious and therefore abundant, where crops grew with such ferocity that excesses were best used for international commerce vice hoarding for a cold winter’s day, and where worldly desires such as estates and blood lines were free to develop unhindered by their current environments. For those who chose to leave their native lands, they were willing to risk everything all for the simple notion of a promise