The pattern of trade

Before the application of steam to transport the cost of all types of carriage was very high, and therefore trade was small in relation to total output. Moreover, before the building of railways the costs of carriage were much lower by water than by land, so that much more trade was done between regions, even regions far apart, which were linked by sea or river than between regions, even regions of the same country, which were connected only by land. There was some long-distance trade in European products within Europe itself, for example the exchange at Leipzig of the industrial products of Saxony and Silesia for the primary products of eastern Europe, and a substantial trade in Zurich, Basle and Strasbourg which acted as intermediaries between Germany, Italy and southern France. But the main areas of trade were concentrated around the great seas— the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Baltic—and the main European trading cities were those which mediated the exchange of goods between the more densely settled areas of western and central Europe and the regions on the periphery.

The most important complex of trade was that between Europe and the Americas. The West Indies had a large surplus of products which were in demand in Europe, principally sugar, coffee and some minor products such as cotton, indigo, pimento and ginger. The hybrid colonies from Maryland to Carolina also had staple crops. The northern colonies had few staples of value in European markets, but a surplus of food and lumber.