September 29, 2008
Meeting # 8
Anglo-Americans
Finding a Place in the Atlantic World
The
Reliance upon the production of a highly marketable
commodity – tobacco
Climatic circumstances --
soil/water/growing season right
Labor circumstances worked out –
slave labor/plantation arrangements
Large land holdings acquired by a
few families early on
Large work forces comprised of
forced labor imported and homegrown
Labor supply fed and clothed with
goods from other American colonies
[Smaller planters send product to
larger plantations for packing/shipment]
Product to market à
Europe (Britain/France) with little local processing
Tobacco leaves packed into
hogsheads and made ready for water transport
at plantation dockside
Shipped aboard English/Scottish
vessels to Chesapeake with finished goods
ordered on credit by planters
Shippers/agents acted as
bankers/creditors/purchasers for
planters
Some consequences:
1. Region’s available
capital/entrepreneurial energies tied up in tobacco/land
and slaves – few
substantial merchants
2. Region had little incentive to
develop sizable towns, urban facilities, even
port facilities beyond
plantation loading docks
3. Region’s
reliance upon plantation-door shipping services by non-locals
4. Reliance upon England for
market and credit made it at best a wary
and resentful of English
authority
4. Region’s politics dominated by large
land owners/planters, rather than by
more diverse political
class that included merchants, professionals
The New England Solution
Reliance upon its ability to move local products (fish/livestock/lumber) into the coastal network for exchange in lower colonies (in exchange for grain in Mid-Atlantic colonies) and in West Indies (in exchange for molasses); then become the carrier/agent for goods not from NE (sugar/rum) that had markets in Wine Islands/Southern Europe/West Africa /England
RI involvement in African slave trade – 1730s onward
More direct reliance upon the sea for its economic well being; less reliance on
the land; less dependence upon slave labor (for domestic service, mostly);
Mid-Atlantic Colonies – NY/NJ/Pa/Del
Dominated by two deeply intrusive rivers – The Hudson and
the
and two sizable port towns – NYC and
Philadelphia
Less English region than either the
Mixture of cash crop agriculture (skins/lumber/grains) and carrying seaborne activity
Pa much the fastest growing colony – religious toleration and economic opportunity -- “best poor man’s country”
English colonies part of English mercantile structure:
Global imperial competition
(French/Dutch/Spanish) ; colonies to benefit the
mother country
Incentives and penalties intended
to regulate commercial activity à Navigation
Acts
Limit trade with competitors;
protect commercial activities of the
businesses based in the mother
country from competition from
businesses in the provinces
What of direct value
to
Not food stuffs – grain/livestock/fish
– not sugar products à molasses/rum
Not slaves – English slavers supplying
English market (and Spanish market by 1720s)
Tobacco
– if it meant England controlled processing and European distribution
transportation/banking/credit
extensions…
Colonial tobacco only to
England/Scotland
Shipbuilding
Materials – England deforested by mid-17th C.
Pine masts/oak planking/secondary
woods
Colonies allowed to build
smaller vessels for English fishing/commercial fleet
Of indirect value
American colonies providing the food
for English Caribbean sugar plantations – Barbados/Jamaica
Allow planters to concentrate on
their money crop
Of insufficient concern to waste
resources closely regulating:
Inter-colonial coastal trade
Colonial trade of their
agricultural/fish/wood surpluses with non-English Caribbean colonies
Trade with French Canada
Trade with Wine Islands
(Azores/Madeira/Canary Islands)
Trade with Iberia and Mediterranean
region
Involvement in the West African slave
trade??
What of direct value
to/needed by colonies?
The finished products of England – housewares/clothing/books/cloth/wine à”luxury
goods”
Southerners secured same by borrowing
on their tobacco earnings
NEngers and
M/Atlantic buyers by accumulating gold/credit with English exporters by
providing them with
carrying services or through elaborate
multiple trades around the Atlantic rim
Colonies secure better commercial deals with mother country during five imperial wars carried on in America:
[30 years of war between 1689 and 1763/75 years]
Provide
food for troops in field and fleet in American waters/docking facilities/ship
repair…
Provide soldiers, guns,
ammunition and ships to imperial forces
Privateering – Colonies
commissioning private vessels to seek out enemy commerce;
Substantial
risks/prizes awarded to owners and crews
1. 1689 -1697 – King William’s War/League of
St.
1690 assault on
1997 -- Treaty of
2. 1702-1713 Queen Anne’s War/Spanish Succession -- English/Dutch v. France/Spain
1704 -- Indian raid on
1713 -- Treaty of
3. 1739-42 – War of Jenkins’ Ear – English vs. Spanish
4. 1742-48 – King George’s War/Austrian Succession
1745 – Wm. Pepperell assault on Louisbourg
1748 – Capture of Spanish galleon by
1748 – Treaty of
5. 1754-1763 – French and Indian War – English vs. French
(and later, Spanish)
Canadian expedition
1759 – Fall of
1763 – Treaty of Paris – British have Canada; share West
Indies
Wartime prosperity of late 1750s enjoyed
in colonial port towns of Boston/New York
Shipyards/sailors’ wages…
NYC wealth accumulated – some into KC’s
start-up
Consolidation of commercial links
throughout the English trading world
The Crugers
of NYC – Jamaica/Bristol/….
KC involvement in nation’s wars….
Post-War Economic
Turndown:
1. Loss of wartime business – urban unemployment
ensues
2. Shift in English policies with regard
to colonies – to pay their way
Parliament looking to colonies for
revenue to underwrite imperial costs
Belated/exaggerated? Recognition of
colonial economic wherewithal – and goodwill
Road to Revolution….