The activity of entrepreneurship goes back to ancient times. As for America, our nation was founded, quite literally, by entrepreneurs.
In 1607, the Virginia Company sent three ships across the Atlantic and unloaded 109 passengers at what become Jamestown, Virginia. They were embarked on a new business enterprise that they hoped would be profitable--American plantations. Eventually, Jamestown was nearly abandoned. Only when John Rolfe introduced West Indian tobacco in 1612 did Virginia find an export that had a market that grew explosively and made Virginia rich.
New York was founded by the Dutch, not the English, and profit was the sole reason for setting on Manhattan. So bent on money making were the Dutch that they did not get around to building a church for 17 years, worshipping instead in the fort. It what is now known as "Upstate New York," my earliest ancestors had settled in this part of the world as early as the 1630s and traded among the American Indians. One, Cornelis Antonissen Van Sleyck, a mason and carpenter, was even adopted into the Mohawk tribe after being married to Otstock, whose mother was American Indian and father was a Frenchman named Hartell. Cornelis was given the name “Broer” by the Mohawk Tribe; as well as receiving a considerable amount of land from the Tribe and the Dutch government.
Even after the British took the colony in 1664, the Dutch devotion to commerce remained. Harking back to the early source of its economic success, the fur trade.
Sir William Johnson was the King’s Superintendent of Indian Affairs in America and the only direct representative of the Crown, aside from the Royal Governor. Johnson received the only baronetcy ever granted on American soil; for keeping the American Indians peaceful during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). He settled in “The Gate of the Adirondacks,” and later married a Mohawk Indian woman.
Sir William had persuaded a shipload of Scottish Highlanders from Perth shire to brave the Atlantic to establish the glovemaking industry in America. When Johnson brought over his settlers one contingent came from Perth in Scotland, a town which had a glove makers’ guild very early. That infant industry of theirs became the main one of the county.
Note: The Highlanders brought their tools—needles, thread, and the sword-like shears necessary for cutting leather—and they brought the closely guarded guild craft techniques of Europe.
Material they found in abundance. Indians provided the leather hides that gave gloves a unique durability and feel. The crystal-clear water from the Adirondack Mountains was perfect for the tanning of hides to a velvety soft texture. And the U.S. glovemaking craft was born. The Perth men found a ready raw material in the furs and skins of the nearby forests and made gloves for themselves, their neighbors and finally with the advent of the Yankees, for distant customers. The leather gloves and mittens produced were traded with the tin peddlers from Boston and the local economy flourished.
At his death on July 11, 1774, Sir William owned practically all of the Kingsborough Patent, all of the Mayfield Patent, which two patents cover the towns of Johnstown, southern Bleecker, Caroga and Mayfield, and he owned much of the land in the eastern part of what is now called Fulton County as well. In settling the county, he had followed the English practice of land tenure by leasing the lands to the settlers at a very moderate rental and had sold practically none of his vast territory. He was the largest resident landholder in New York and probably in all the colonies---and in those days, the wealth of the country was in its lands.
Nietzsche's famous maxim, "That, which does not destroy me, makes me stronger."
The economist Albert O. Hirschman said, "This sentence admirably epitomizes several of the histories of economic development projects in recent decades. We are now told that the presence of war-like Indians in North America and the permanent conflict between them and the Anglo-Saxon settlers was a great advantage, because it made necessary methodical, well-planned, and gradual advances toward an interior which always remained in close logistic and cultural contact with the established communities to the East."
The lesson for entrepreneurs and leaders is: Developing businesses and countries requires more than capital. They need to practice in making difficult economic decisions. Economic progress is the product of successful habits--and there is no better teacher than a little adversity.
Allowing incorporation as a matter of law, rather than requiring an act of the executive or of the legislature, began in the United States as early as 1811, when New York State passed a general incorporation law for certain businesses. Soon enlarged in scope, the ability to incorporate simply by filling out the right forms freed the process from politics, and the number of corporations exploded.
By the time the 13 colonies declared independence, they were, after only 169 years, the richest place on earth per capita. No wonder the British fought so hard to suppress the rebellion. Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" was published the same year as independence was declared. Being very young, America did not have the burden of hundreds of years of economic cronyism. The U.S. has consistently come closer to the Smithian ideal, over a longer period of time, than any other major nation.
Nothing encourages entrepreneurial activity more than the freedom to take risk. The opportunities for people with ideas and a willingness to take risks are plentiful in America, and there is plenty of capital available to bring those ideas to life. So the future of entrepreneurship in this country remains bright.
Sources: John Steele Gordon: Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power