Corporate Cannibalism at the Inception of America

The meteoric rise of Amazon.com over the last couple of decades has truly been something to behold. The path from seemingly innocuous bookseller to complete internet overlord of all goods and services is practically unparalleled in the last one hundred years of U.S. history, and has catapulted Jeff Bezos, its founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO, to levels of unimaginable wealth, currently holding the title of third richest man on Earth. This crooked road has led to the exponential expansion of nearly every sector under their massive corporate umbrella. These range from a nearly complete stranglehold on shipping and handling of goods of all imaginable variety, multi-billion-dollar contracts on cloud computing with our nation’s Defense Department, to an increasing influence in our popular culture in film/television, music etc. The engine driving this corporate gluttony is the same as it ever has been in the United States: human bodies, oftentimes Black/Brown, Native, Latinx, and poor Whites from our neglected internal American colonies, forced to work grueling shifts of “mandatory overtime” in inhumane working conditions, leading to an increase of on-site deaths at Amazon facilities nationwide. The devastating realities that many Amazon employees face are often overlooked in the name of consumer comfort and convenience, pardoned by those who are wooed by next day delivery services, and endless streaming media, all the while further consolidating corporate profits at the expense of our society’s most economically vulnerable, as well as the physical health of our Earth itself. While it may be temping to simply excuse such inequality as a symptom of our modern world, the sad truth is that these well-honed tactics of extractive capitalism have been the guiding principle of our landed gentry since they began their earliest colonial experiments in the “New World”.

Many Americans are probably aware of our heavily propagandized colonial origin story, the Puritan migration to New England during the years 1620-1640, an era defined by extreme piety, rugged individualism, and religious freedom from the oppressive Crown. History textbooks around the country still decorate themselves with depictions of utopian-like relations with a passive Native population, happy to share in their wealth of knowledge and foodstuffs. The actual history of how the British empire gained their firm footing within the “Terra nullius” (Nobody’s Land) of Atlantic North America is especially grim, even by comparison to the bleakness of the early 21 century we all live. Our first forays into colonial rule were not on the rocky beaches of New England in 1620, seeking refuge as religious pilgrims, but some 13 years earlier, in the salt marshes of Tsenacommacah, or the Chesapeake Bay in English, by a failed business venture known as the Virginia Company of London. Encyclopedia Virginia describes the Virginia Co. as “a joint-stock company chartered by King James I in 1606 to establish a colony in North America. Such a venture allowed the Crown to reap the benefits of colonization—natural resources, new markets for English goods, leverage against the Spanish—without bearing the costs.” While the tenure that the Virginia Co. held was relatively short in comparison to some of our contemporary corporate entities, some 18 years in all, the guiding philosophy of profits over people, and nonstop linear economic growth by any means necessary, were forged in this salty bottom land, with the dead workers bodies left to rot in the sand when profits eventually failed to materialize.

Colonization of the Chesapeake up until this point was solely carried out by the Spanish, who abandoned all efforts in 1571 due to several disastrous attempts made by Jesuit missionaries. The Virginia Co., eager to capitalize on the speculative riches of the land, advertised their plan to “adventurers” seeking “to make habitation, plantation, and to deduce a colony of sundry of our people into that part of America commonly called Virginia,” and on December 20 of 1606, three ships and 104 settlers set sail for Virginia. Knowing little to nothing about the region, its current inhabitants the Powhatan Indians, where to source food, where to get water, etc. the settlers seemingly chose the first place that looked good to them. And in April 1607, after planting a cross, and spending a few days being perpetually attacked by local Native groups, the “combustible and belligerent bunch” settled “on [a] marshy jut of land fifty miles up the James River,” calling it “Jamestown.”

The settlers planned to trade or buy food from the neighboring Powhatan villages, as well as receive regular supply shipments from England. In the meantime, they would use their energy to search for gold, silver, and any other resource that could be exploited for profit. One major complication to this plan was the adherence to the highly stratified English class hierarchy that kept the group near a constant state of “bickering and intriguing against one another”, precious time spent away from the most important matter at hand, growing food for themselves. The Library of Congress explains that, “part of the problem was, the ‘gentlemen’ resisted working like mere laborers.” To complicate matters further, the English had arrived during an especially heavy drought period, so food stores with local Indian Nations were especially low. Powhatan/English relations were also built atop of the local Native groups previous experiences with the Spanish, who had exhibited utter depravity in their punitive measures a few decades prior. Captain John Smith, leader of the colony at times, was told by a local Monacan/Manahoac man named Amorolek that “We heard that you were a people from under the world, to take our world from us.” The practice of stealing food stuffs and other living essentials from the villages adjacent to Jamestown didn’t help matters either, only leading to more violent conflict between the Powhatan and the English. By January 1608 there were only thirty-eight men left at Jamestown fort.

Jamestown had become, essentially, a small military outpost on the edge of Indian Country, marred by near constant guerilla warfare, disease, and famine. The brackish water surrounding James Fort was heavily contaminated by human waste and organic plant material, giving the colonists regular bouts of dysentery, or bloody flux as it was known then, proving fatal on many occasions. The colonists still refused to plant their own crops, relying almost solely on the Powhatan, who even told the English on one occasion that “we plant any where . . . and we know you cannot live if you want [i.e, lack] our harvest, and that reliefe we bring you.” The Virginia Co., desperate to salvage what they could from their initial investment in the colony, advertised again that “adventurers . . . buy shares at twelve pounds, ten shillings each; volunteers could win shares by paying their way to Virginia; and skilled laborers would be offered land.” And by June 1609, a fleet of ships carrying 500 some men/women/children, livestock, supplies, etc. set sail for the Virginia colony.

Unfortunately for those at Jamestown, a strong Atlantic hurricane season sunk two of these vessels, and rerouted several of them far south towards the Caribbean, with many of the supplies never arriving in the colony. By September 1609 there were 400 some colonists at Jamestown and they were starving. Still, they refused any attempts at growing their own food. “They scour the woods listlessly for nuts, roots, and berries.” As the unrelenting winter months commenced the latest starving time, “they offer the only authentic examples of cannibalism witnessed in Virginia. One provident man chops up his wife and salts down the pieces.” Others dig up graves to eat the corpses.” Recent archeological investigations at Jamestown have found the human remains of a fourteen year old English girl in a trash deposit, since named “Jane.” Dr. Douglas Owsley of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. has “confirmed suspicions that these remains demonstrated cannibalism at Jamestown. Examination of the girl’s skull identified multiple chops and cuts from three different sharp, metal implements, such as a knife and cleaver, or small hatchet . . . The report goes on to outline additional evidence of the skull and shin bone having been butchered for meat.” We might rightfully question why a fourteen year old girl was there to begin with. By spring of 1610 only sixty settlers remained alive.

The years that followed the disastrous winter of 1609/10 replayed this undulating pattern of suffering and death, as more and more settlers were coaxed across the Atlantic Ocean, influenced by corporate propaganda, as well as the desperate economic realities back home in England. Gold and silver were still in the eyes of every settler in Jamestown, all hoping to steal a fortune similar to what had existed in Mexico or Peru. Instead, they would find only Matchqueon, or fool’s gold as it is colloquially known in English. In this absence of mineral wealth, the company attempted to force a profit out of anything it could. Sassafrass, silk, potash, pitch, tar, and timber all failed to make any impact in the European marketplace. And if it had not been for the settler John Rolfe’s taking a chance on the tobacco seed he had acquired in the Caribbean, the whole venture may have gone belly up. But this “Sot weed,” or “Oronoco,” as the Siouan speaking Nations called it, took hold of the European markets, and tobacco was planted in any available space, in the yards and roads of Jamestown.

The colony adapted to a perpetual war state with the Powhatan, acquiring more Indian territory for planting their “wicked weed.” But the sowing, weeding, worming, topping, suckering, curing, packing, and shipping of the plant had created a labor vacuum in the colony, so hundreds of England’s orphans, poor, and criminals were shipped en masse to Jamestown. The population of the Virginia colony, on the books, was roughly 4,270 colonists by 1622, with thousands of these men, women, and children, arriving in the boom years following the end of the First Anglo-Powhatan War. Later on in 1622, Powhatan’s brother, Opechancanough “launched a massive and sudden attack on settlements up and down the James, killing perhaps a quarter [347] of the colonists.” After Opechancanough’s attacks, only 1,240 colonists remained. Where did the other 2,336 go? As it turns out, many were unable to survive the “seasoning” period, leading to staggering death tolls from disease. Property and profits took precedence over human life in colonial Virginia, just as they do today. And while short term gains for the Virginia Co. stockholders were made off of tobacco exports, unpredictable planting seasons left the industry perpetually coming up short. So, after a formal investigation into the incidents at Jamestown were carried out, “the Crown formally revoked the company’s charter and assumed direct control of the Virginia colony”, effectively ending the most influential corporate entity in the history of North America.

The British Empire continued to use this disregard for human life in the name of nonstop profits as the standard operating procedure in the colonies. It was certainly used in the trans-Atlantic shipping routes that carried tobacco to Europe, and later perfected during the forced migration of human cargo via the Royal African Company, the main supplier of enslaved Africans to British North America, but only after all attempts to enslave the Native population had failed. This brutally corrupt and immoral practice of chattel slavery thus became our nations birthright, proving far too convenient to the ruling class to abolish, as forced labor built our government offices and school buildings. Resistance efforts led by revolutionary Black/Native maroon communities located on the fringes of organized white society kept an increasingly paranoid white planter class under the continual fear of insurrection and revolt, leading to harsher slave codes, which, over time, informed the laws governing all nonwhites. Chinese and European immigrants felt this merciless reality while building the railroads that stretched our country west into Indian Country. As did the Pennsylvania anthracite coal workers, California farm laborers, and North Carolina textile industry did before the bloody union struggles that resulted in mass corporate disobedience and violent conflict, like the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Homestead Strike, and the Matewan Massacre.

In our time, on December 27, 2022, 61-year-old Amazon employee Rick Jacobs died of a cardiac arrest before a shift change at Amazon DEN4 warehouse in Colorado Springs, CO. “Witnesses say a makeshift barrier around the deceased worker using large cardboard bins was used to block off the area on the outbound shipping dock where the incident occurred,” ensuring minimal disruption to productivity and workflow. Rafael Frias, Rodger Boland, and Alex Carillo all died over the summer of 2022 at Amazon warehouses in New Jersey, including one death occurring on July 13, corresponding with an Amazon “Prime Day” promotional event. Such promotional events, holidays, or even the weeks leading up to them, are when full-time Amazon employees are required to work fifty-five hours or more of “mandatory overtime”. Another horrifying string of Amazon related deaths came in December of 2021 when “structural flaws” in an Edwardsville IL. Amazon warehouse led to its collapse during a rare winter tornado, claiming the lives of Austin McEwen, Clayton Cope, Larry Virden, Kevin Dickey, Deandre Morrow, and Etheria Hebb. It remains unclear how many Amazon employees have died on the job. However, a recent U.S. Dept. of Labor study showed that, “inspections found work processes that were designed for speed but not safety and resulted in serious worker injuries.” Other scrutiny has been directed towards unsafe levels of heat in warehouses and loading docks, harmful pace of work, lack of time allotted for personal hygiene, etc. In April 2022, Amazon announced it would no longer be paying sick leave for employee’s infected with COVID-19 during the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. 

Unfortunately, the towering presence of corporate American control continues to influence the socio-political reality for those living under its shadow. And never has it been quite so obvious in our lives as it is now, as three years of rolling pandemic waves have produced the largest mass disabling event of our lifetime, creating a worker shortage unparalleled in our modern history. It was not an infectious disease specialist who championed a reduced COVID-19 quarantine period from ten days to five, but the CEO of Delta Airlines, Ed Bastian. Libertarian billionaires continue to tout artificial intelligence technology, for which there is little oversight and unknown consequences, as a solution to a problem we didn’t even know we had. And in a shocking rollback of our shared civil liberties, fast-food chains, agricultural fields, and slaughterhouses turn increasingly towards undocumented and child labor, quickly eroding protections that Americans fought tirelessly for over the last century and more. Amazon, as well as other global corporate juggernauts, have shown us exactly what they would prefer to use their vast resources and powers towards, union busting and quashing all worker dissent. Same as it ever was.

There is another corporate constant that remains the same, however, and that is, through these tired centuries, that not one of these corporate entities has passed the test of time and survived continually to our present day. Yes, the power-ways, money, and influence, ripple and spread greed like a disease, as we have seen with the transition from the Virginia Company of London, violently forging an empire out of Indigenous lands, and then further mutating into the Royal African Company, to supply an endless want of “free labor” to build said colonies. But these joint stock companies, conglomerates, and modern monopolies are not immortal, and are vulnerable to death by bankruptcy, suicide, and cannibalizing each other, as we have seen time and time again. And as the media doles out their hollow eulogies, we are reminded that American workers still retain some agency in shaping the fate of our corporate masters. Through boycotting corporations like Amazon, an act that is in solidarity with labor movements and striking workers, by withholding our physical/creative labor, non-participation in their news/streaming services, or their vast online catalog of merchandise, we hit them where it hurts, disrupting their short-term gains, quarterly business reports, and the push for constant profits. Will we turn a blind eye, as those did during the incomprehensibly cruel era of the Antebellum Slaveocracy, in the name of convenience, or modernity? All that remains clear, if history is any guide, is that there is no bottom to the potential depravity acted out by these corporate criminals.