Early Werelian rockets reached Yeowe 365 years BP. Exploration, mapping, and prospecting were eagerly pursued. The Yeowe Mines Corporation, owned principally by Voe Dean investors, was given sole right to prospecting. Within twentyfive years, larger and more efficient ships made mining profitable, and the YMC began regular shipments of slaves to Yeowe and ores and minerals to Werel.
The next major company established was the Second Planet Forest Woods Corporation, cutting and shipping Yeowan timber to Werel, where industrial and population expansion had reduced forests drastically.
Exploitation of the oceans became a major industry by the end of the first century, the Yeowan Shippers Corporation harvesting the lily mats with immense profit. Having used up that resource, the YSC turned to the exploitation and processing of other sea species, especially the oilrich bladderweed.
During the Colony’s first century, the Agricultural Plantation Company of Yeowe began systematic culture of introduced grains and fruits and of native species such as the oereed and the pini fruit. The warm, equable climate of most of Yeowe and the absence of insect and animal pests (maintained by scrupulous quarantine regulations) permitted an enormous expansion of agriculture.
The individual enterprises of these four
Corporations and the regions where they operated, whether in mining, forestry, mariculture, or agriculture, were catted “Plantations.”
The four great Corporations maintained absolute control over their respective products, though there were over the decades many battles (legal and physical) over conflicting rights to the exploitation of an area. No rival company was able to break the Corporations’ monopoly, which had the full, active support — military, political, and scientific — of the Government of Voe Deo, a major beneficiary of Corporation profits. The principal investment of capital in the Corporations was always from the government and capitalists of Voe Deo. A powerful country at the time of the Settlement, after three centuries of the Colony Voe Deo was by far the richest country on Werel, dominating and controlling all the others. Its control over the Corporations on Yeowe, however, was nominal. It negotiated with them as with sovereign powers.