The Economic Development of Colonial New England - Research Paper Example

? The Economic Development of Colonial New England Number The economic development of New England in the colonial period entailed two broad revolutionary transformations. First was the transition from the Native American economy to the Puritan colonial one. Second was the emergence of a dual economy, with New England serving as a node in one of the most lucrative and – as New Englanders themselves would later see it (cf. Weeden 1899) – immoral areas of international trade. This dual economy persisted until the American Revolution, after which the New England economy was once again transformed in a revolutionary manner with the industrial revolution (Merchant 1989). This third revolution was built on the fertile ground laid during the colonial period. Colonial economic development of the New England colonies, beginning in 1620, profoundly transformed the existing indigenous economy of gathering, hunting, fishing, and long fallow/polyculture farming (Merchant 1989). Europeans had already established a presence in the region for over a century as fur traders, essentially building upon the existing native economy. The trade did transform the economy by introducing new goods, new diseases, new religion, and intensifying the hunt for beaver and other small mammals. The New England colonists, however, introduced revolutionary change in the ecological and economic environment by introducing notions of private property, displacing the Native Americans, establishing farms and populous villages with a full rounded life, fully intending to make the land their new homes (unlike the transient fur trading posts largely made up of men), and engaging in several wars. However, the New England colonists were distinct not only from the Native Americans, but from the fur traders and their own countrymen to the South in the Chesapeake Bay colonies which, like the fur traders, were also largely skewed toward male settlement rather than families (cf. Merchant, 1989; Heyrman, 1991). The New England territories were rich in forests and fur trapping, with many harbors, but not in good farmland. Farms, accordingly, were small, mainly to provide food for individual families, with the inventories of most farmers showing five or six sheep and hogs, one or two horses, a few cattle, and several bushels of grain. The farmers were able to overcome the odds and create “comfortable abundance” for themselves (Merchant, 1989, p. 99). In whatever trade that existed, however, no particular cash crop, livestock, or commodity dominated. This caused the New England colonies to be perceived as less valuable to England, compared to Virginia or the West Indies (Newell, 1998). Much has been written about the settlers’ Puritan faith, their Calvinist work ethic, their moral discipline, their patriarchal nuclear family structure, and so forth, so that it has become part of the American foundation myth. By this foundation, it has been argued, New England avoided the kind of social disruption that unfettered commercial expansion and avarice had brought to plantation colonies in the Chesapeake and Caribbean (cf. Innes, 1995; Main, 2001). The New England economy during this period was relatively egalitarian, with each family being allotted an average of 150 acres. Spectacular wealth could not be created in these communities, which also meant that the economy did not produce the extreme inequalities found elsewhere (Heyrman, 1991). The Puritan settlers, however, lived on average nearly twice as long as Virginians and about ten years longer than men and women in England. New England also had relatively low rates of infant mortality. While the people of Europe and the Chesapeake colonies barely reproduced themselves, the number of New Englanders doubled about every 27 years; a typical family raised seven or eight children to maturity (Bremer, 1995). While some products of the inland towns such as potash made market journeys profitable and others such as cattle could be driven to market, most products were too heavy and bulky to make long journey over poor roads profitable. Some townspeople did begin to specialize in trades, but the vast majority of farmers did not adopt the specialized agricultural techniques that could have brought them closer to the center of Boston seaport trade. Five generations later in the mid-18th century, as grandsons inherited smaller farms, they did not rush to join the market system. Many young families instead moved on to found new communities on the frontiers of western Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire (Heyrman, 1991; Merchant, 1989). There were “a few fishing villages and fur-trading centers on the periphery of the New England settlements which departed dramatically from Puritan norms” (Heyrman, 1991, p. 788) in terms of social structure, values, and inequalities. However, by and large, there was a dual economy of mercantilism, fishing, and shipbuilding in the seaports like Boston, Salem, Newport, and Gloucester, and subsistence-oriented farming in the villages, which persisted until after the American Revolution (Heyrman, 1991; Merchant, 1989, p. 100). Over time, trade began to become central to the overall New England economy. Pilgrims began trading in furs at least since 1621, and by 1636 Pilgrim exports to England since the time of settlement had reached 12,000 pounds of beaver pelts and 1,000 pounds of otter. Massachusetts Bay merchants who bought land from the Maine Indians in the 1640s began cutting pines and shipping them to England. The early merchants traded furs, lumber and fish for necessary manufactured items from England, such as cloth, blankets, stockings, leather goods, iron pots, weapons, gunpowder, and salt. These were sold to New England farmers for cows, sheep, wheat corn, and oats, which they re-sold at a profit (Merchant, 1989, pp. 57, 98). The establishment of the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1629 provided an initial external market for the Plymouth colony. During the English Civil War, however, fewer ships arrived from England, and merchants established trade routes with Spain, Madeira, the Azores, the Canary Islands, Newfoundland, and the West Indies. The decline of the fur trade in the 1660s saw the shift of exports moving to wheat and livestock, and imports to sugar, molasses, and rum (Merchant, 1989, p. 99). This brought New England into direct participation in the notorious triangular trade. This trade largely occurred in the coastal seaports and led to New Englanders building a maritime industrial complex that eventually challenged England’s (and, after 1707, Great Britain’s) commercial control over the Atlantic Ocean (Mangra 2007). New England, in fact displaced England as a node in one of the transatlantic trade triangles, with New England rum being the chief item exchanged for gold and slaves on the Guinea Coast. The distillation of rum began in Salem as early as 1648, obtaining the molasses by selling “unmerchantable fish” (Weeden, 1899, p. 186). According to Governor of the Connecticut Colony, Edward Hopkins, for more than thirty years prior to 1764, Rhode Island sent to the African West Coast 18 vessels per year, carrying 1,800 hhds. of rum (Weedon, 1899, p. 459). This displaced French brandies on the Coast after 1723. The commerce in rum and slaves produced roughly ?40,000 per annum for remittance from Rhode Island to Great Britian. Boston and Newport were the major centers of distillation, and their rum became the staple export to Africa. According Weeden (1899, p. 459), “The quantity of rum distilled was enormous, and in 1750 it was estimated that Massachusetts alone consumed more that 15,000 hhds. molasses for this purpose. The consumption of rum in the fisheries and lumbering and shipbuilding districts was large; the export demand to Africa was immense.” Slaves did not feature prominently in the New England labor force, but they did form some part of it, numbering about 1,000 in 1708, rising to more than 5,000 in 1730 and to about 13,000 by 1750. New England became the center of the slave trade in the colonies, supplying captive Africans to the South and the Caribbean. Slaves were a valuable shipping commodity that soon proved useful at home, in large-scale agriculture, in ship-building, and aboard merchant ships (Harper, 2003) During the first half of the 18th century Massachusetts merchants led in slaving, and in the second half they were superseded by those of Rhode Island, which eventually became synonymous with the American slave trade (Alderman, 1972; Coughtry 1981). Many Rhode Island citizens owned a share or more in a slave voyage at one time or another. Commercial success bred a wealthy class that became a slave-owning aristocracy, including the Brown family (whose name adorns Brown University), and John Hancock, the revolutionary leader (Boston Tea Party Historical Society, 2008; Harper, 2003). By 1675 New England's shipbuilding and fishing industries, in particular, had flourished, being tied to this triangular trade. Throughout the 18th century, most craft involved in the slave trade were built in the colonies rather than England. In the case of South Carolina, statistics reveal that more ships were constructed in New England (twenty-six) than anywhere else, followed by Bermuda (eleven), and Virginia (seven). Just over 20 percent of slave ships in South Carolina ports were registered in New England (Littlewood, 2000, pp. 120, 123). This industry created potent backward linkages into the domestic sector. For instance, in 1683, a large 4,000-5,000 acre timber commons was established to support the shipbuilding industry in Massachussets, and it is estimated that 250,000 trees were felled from 1698 to 1713 (Levy, 2009). Land speculation, the growth of towns, and industrial diversification and expansion were all stimulated. Exports in the Atlantic economy, while never quite sufficient to balance the regional trade deficit, still helped to create and sustain a growing consumerism by 1700 (Newell, 1998). Indeed, the development of the local town economies provided much support for the coastal towns’ participation in triangular trade, and they in turn benefited from it (Temin, 2000). Importantly, by the 1660s, many in the new generation of merchants moved away from the ethic of early Protestantism toward the Anglican religion and Royalist politics. They created debtors among those who were unable to make payment son their accounts and took over their land and homes as payment. By the 1690s, money itself began to be seen as a commodity (Merchant, 1989, p. 99). Indeed, changes in Puritan theology were integral to the development of a market culture in provincial New England, from 1680 to 1720s. Not only were ideas changing about usury and paper money, but England was seen as a bulwark against Catholicism, and supporting England’s commercial development was integral to this Providential mission (Valeri 2010). Throughout the 18th century, enormous amounts of capital and manpower were invested as well in the production and distribution of dried, salted cod, reaping huge pro?ts in transatlantic trade with the West Indies and Catholic Europe, ironically. Between 1768 and 1772, fish contributed 35 percent of New England's total export revenue, making it the single most valuable export product for the entire region at this time. Between 1765 and 1775, twenty Massachussets ports harbored a fleet of 565-665 vessels of 19,550-29,090 tons. During this period, 4,405 Massachusetts fishermen hauled in 350,000 quintals of fish. This was a vibrant colonial extractive industry (Mangra, 2007). The success of the New England triangular trade threatened Britain, and the Boston waterfront in particular became a flashpoint in Anglo-provincial relations that would ultimately lead to revolution. Colonial entrepreneurs believed it was their right to conduct overseas trade, while New England’s maritime laborers felt they had the right to earn wages to provide for themselves and their families. Increasing imperial control and a growing tax burden after 1763 produced enmity throughout New England against economic regulation by Britain, and stimulated a strong defense of free-trade policies (Levy, 2009; Mangra, 2007; Newell, 1998). The New England economy had by then developed from its Puritan roots as a neglected colonial backwater in Native American forests to become a major centre in international trade. It emerged as the center of the American Revolution against Great Britain. New England had a dual economy of inland, provincial towns and bustling seaports, although there were essential linkages between the two that could not be severed. The society had undertaken an important moral shift from its Puritan roots. The New England economy would undergo a further revolutionary change in the 19th century (cf. Merchant, 1989; Newell, 1998), building upon its legacy of radical economic change that had characterized its dynamic past. References Alderman, Clifford L. (1972). Rum, slaves and molasses: the story of New England’s triangular trade. New York: Crowell-Collier Press. Boston Tea Party Historical Society. (2008). Triangular trade in New England colonies. Boston Tea Party Historical Society. Retrieved from http://www.boston-tea-party.org/triangular-trade.html. Bremer, Francis. (1995). The Puritan experiment. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Coughtry, Jay. (1981). The notorious triangle: Rhode Island and the African slave trade, 1700-1807. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Harper, Douglas. (2003). Slavery in the north. Retrieved from http://www.slavenorth.com/slavenorth.htm Heyrman, Christine Leigh. (1991). New England colonies. In Reader's companion to American history, edited by Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, 786-89. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Innes, Stephen. (1995). Creating the Commonwealth: The economic culture of Puritan New England. New York: Norton. Levy, Barry. (2009). Town born: The political economy of New England from its founding to the Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Littlefield, Daniel C. (2000). The slave trade to colonial South Carolina: A profile. The South Carolina Historical Magazine, 101(2), 110-141. Main, Gloria L. (2001). Peoples of a spacious land: Families and cultures in colonial New England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Mangra, Christopher. (2007). The New England cod fishing industry and maritime dimensions of the American Revolution.” Enterprise & Society, 8(4): 799-806. Merchant, Carolyn. (1989). Ecological revolutions: Nature, gender, and science in New England. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Newell, Margaret Ellen. (1998). From dependence to independence: Economic revolution in colonial New England. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Temin, Peter (Ed.). (2000). Engines of enterprise: An economic history of New England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Valeri, Mark. (2010). William Petty in Boston: Political economy, religion, and money in provincial New England. Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8(3), 549-580. Weeden, William B. (1899). Economic and social history of New England, 1620-1789. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Read More