Lotteries in Colonial America by Neal Millikan

Author:Neal Millikan [Millikan, Neal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Colonial Period (1600-1775), Social History, General
ISBN: 9781136674457
Google: R4KpAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-05-09T03:35:39+00:00

Figure 4.2 Fortuna (1541), print made by Sebald Beham. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

From the time of ancient Rome, Fortuna was associated with the drawing of lots, and Chaucer and other European authors depicted her in their literature engaging in games like dice with humans. Roman citizens who had predominantly good or bad luck were considered to have a “Fortuna.”70 By the middle ages, the idea emerged that because humans controlled whether they (figuratively) boarded Fortuna’s wheel, it became a personal choice to suffer Fortuna’s wrath or gain Fortuna’s beneficence by their own actions.71 This variable aspect of Fortuna’s wheel was carried forward in colonial lotteries via the method of using wheels in which the tickets were placed and then drawn out to determine both winners and losers. Many advertisements, when trying to persuade prospective adventurers to purchase lottery tickets close to the drawing date, would note that “the Numbers [are] being rolled up ready for the wheels” to signify that the preparation for the drawing had commenced.72 In British advertisements for the English State Lotteries, Fortuna was regularly depicted standing or hovering on her wheel above men and women on whom she was bestowing her gifts.

The secularization of chance also began in the sixteenth century. In Europe, mercantile capitalism—with its inherent risks—flourished, and the scientific calculation of probability transformed chance from the will of the gods to an epistemological category.73 The emergence of probability theory in the mid-sixteenth century began with the work of Girolamo Cardano, who helped replace providential belief with scientific understanding. Cardano was obsessed with gambling and produced a manuscript (published after his death as The Book on Games of Chance) that included a section on the theory of probability. In the book Cardano used mathematical principles to solve probability problems by employing theoretical dice and card games and calculating all potential outcomes. In the seventeenth century Blaise Pascal began exchanging letters with fellow mathematician Pierre de Fermat about the probability of rolling certain outcomes in a dice game. These conversations furthered the work on probability theory and helped create a theoretical foundation for games of chance.74 Through the work of thinkers like Cardano and Pascal on probability, chance emerged as a distinct entity, separate from notions of fate and the gods.75 A reformulation of the concept of chance, begun in the scientific realm, carried over to the general public as chance began to be seen as an entity in its own right, not necessarily connected to a higher power.

By the sixteenth century most adventurers saw fortune and luck as the province of God, not Fortuna. The lottery held by Queen Elizabeth in 1567 featured posies (short mottoes or verses of poetry) written by the adventurers on the tickets kept by the managers.76 Thomas Hickes wrote “Give the best prise, I pray thee, good fortune; Unto the Queene’s Majesties town of Launston.” John Michell asked for good luck for his village: “Topsham is buylded upon a red rydge; I pray God sende a good lot to maintayne the kay and bridge.

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