Decolonising global constitutionalism

• Published in: Global constitutionalism Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 1 - 6
• Main Authors: HAVERCROFT, JONATHAN, EISLER, JACOB, SHAW, JO, WIENER, ANTJE, NAPOLEON, VAL
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01-03-2020
• Subjects: Agreements; Genocide; Investments; Native peoples; Population; Puritanism; Religious persecution; Rule of law; War; England; United States > US; Virginia; Europe
• ISSN: 2045-3817; 2045-3825
• DOI: 10.1017/S2045381720000039

[...]of the 102 settlers on the Mayflower voyage only 28 of the adults were members of the Puritan congregation, while almost half of the settlers were not Puritans, but passengers who had been recruited by the company sponsoring the voyage.2 The motivations for the endeavour were a mixture of a desire for religious freedom and hope that the new colony would be profitable for the London-based financial backers who expected the colonists to do seven years of labour for the investors in exchange for receiving patent for the colonial land. Fearing that this would make any settlement ungovernable, the passengers on the ship committed to ‘covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politik, for our better Ordering and Preservation’ and promised ‘all due Submission and Obedience’ to ‘such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony’.3 Together with the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution the Mayflower Compact is often seen as one of the three foundational constitutional documents of the US. Unfortunately, as the number of settlers in the Plymouth Colony grew, the agreement between the Wampanoag and Pilgrims would break down, leading eventually to King Philip’s War in 1675–1676 that killed 40 per cent of the population of the Wampanoag nation, and the enslavement of the remaining Indigenous population.6 From a global constitutionalist perspective, the story of the Mayflower highlights both the promise and the precarity of transnational law. The Mayflower enterprise was only possible because of the three bedrock agreements: the Mayflower Compact to establish democracy and the rule of law amongst the settlers; the treaty with the Wampanoag to provide the trade and security that enabled the settlers to survive their first years in the Americas; and the contract between the settlers and the investors back in England to provide the initial funding for the expedition in exchange for the indentured labour and resource expropriation of the Americas by the colonists.