Earmarks of Settlement
In Anglo-American history, "settlement" is the last stage in conquest, it is when invaders become controlling occupiers rather than: visitors, transients, curiosities, opportunities or necessary evils. Settlement marks a change in regime, in culture, economy, and society. On England's first frontier, in the southeast of North America, settlement marked an end to pre-market, subsistence economies, supplanting them with law, centralized order, and markets. Settlement replaces a life-style rooted in personal freedom with a life-style rooted in personal obligations and liabilities. Participants in subsistence economies live for today and depend on wit, will, and good fortune to survive tomorrow. Participants in market economies are expected to defer today's joy in the interest of a less frightening tomorrow. For example, 'starving time,' that time between the consumption of last years's produce and the arrival of this year's harvest was a common ...