Chapter 3, Property (New Worlds, Land of the Free, American Revolutions, The Fate of the Gullahs) Summary and Analysis

The "New World" would be the West's world. Europeans would take over the entire Western hemisphere, but most of all the Spanish and British empires, who went looking for gold and treasure and religious freedom. The colonization created a natural experiment where two Western cultures would be exported to a wide range of new peoples, the English in the North and the Spanish in the south, and see how they functioned. The real difference between the two civilizations, in Ferguson's mind, was the sanctity of individual freedom and the security of private property rights that allowed the English to get ahead.

The two differences are symbolized by two ships. The first landed in...