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The Economic Growth of the Chesapeake and the European Market, 1697–1775

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Jacob M. Price
Jacob M. Price
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

The relative position of the Chesapeake in the economy of the thirteen colonies before the American Revolution is a matter of some ambiguity. On the one hand, we are traditionally taught to view Virginia and Maryland as somewhat backward compared to their northern neighbors, particularly in their lack of large towns and of those forms of a centralized market economy commonly based upon urban commercial centers. On the other hand, simple quantitative measurement seems to indicate that they were among the most highly developed of the colonies. Virginia was the most populous of all, and even Maryland had more inhabitants than New York. If between them they were to account for about 30 per cent of the population of the thirteen colonies on the eve of the Revolution, they were even more strikingly to account for close to 50 percent of colonial exports to England. If we add in oft-neglected Scotland as a recipient, then the Chesapeake's share of exports to Great Britain passes 60 per cent. If we had chosen to make our measurements as of a generation earlier, then the Chesapeake's share of colonial exports would have been even higher.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1964 , pp. 496 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1964

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References

1 This paper contains the précis of an argument which will be developed in much greater detail in parts of a book on French-British-Chesapeake trade in the eighteenth century which the author expects to publish in 1966. Since very full documentation will be given there from French, British, and American archives, etc., footnotes will be kept to a minimum here. Unless otherwise indicated, all English tobacco statistics before 1772 are from Public Record Office, London (hereafter, PRO) Customs 2 and Customs 3; all Scottish tobacco statistics before 1772 from Customs 14; and British trade statistics from 1772 onwards from Customs 17. Summary data for Scotland were also taken from PRO B.T.6/185 folios 192, 204, etc., and from National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Ms. 60. General colonial trade and population data are from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D.C., 1960) ch. Z. “England” is used throughout to include England and Wales only, “Great Britain” to include England, Wales, and Scotland.

2 Miscellaneous accounts of 1st Viscount Lonsdale: Muniments of the Earl of Lonsdale, Lowther, Westmoreland.

3 For Amsterdam prices, see Price, Jacob M., The Tobacco Adventure to Russia … 1676–1722 (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n. s., LI, Part I (Philadelphia, 1961), 103Google Scholar. It is virtually impossible to compile a good, long-term series of London tobacco prices. It is hoped, though, that John M. Hemphill, II, will soon publish the Virginia price series on which he has been working for many years.

4 As in note 2.

5 The most useful general accounts of the French tobacco monopoly are Bonneau, Jacques, Les législations françaises sur les tabacs sous l'ancien régime (Paris: L. Larose and L. Tenin, 1910)Google Scholar; and Gondolff, E., he tabac sous l'ancienne monarchie: la ferme royale, 1629–1791 (Vesoul: Ancienne Imprimerie Cival, 1914)Google Scholar. There is a good chapter on this subject in Matthews, George T., The Royal General Farms in Eighteenth Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958)Google Scholar. All these accounts are highly institutional, neglecting both commercial and political-personal factors. For some indication of the complexity of the latter, cf. Price, Jacob M., “The French Farmers-general in the Chesapeake: the MacKercher-Huber Mission of 1737–1738,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., XIV (1957), 125–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 The eastern provinces of French Flanders, Artois, Hainault, Cambrésis, Alsace, and Franche-Comté (all acquired in 1648 or later) were never within the monopoly's jurisdiction. Tobacco grown there was not imported into France proper in quantity by the monopoly except during wartime shortages. Before 1720, when tobacco cultivation was permitted in certain specified parishes in the southwest (within the modem departments of Lot-et-Garonne and Tarn-et-Garonne), such tobacco was rarely sold by the monopoly north of a line running roughly from La Rochelle to Lyons.

7 For English tobacco-tax yields, see Price, Jacob M., “The Tobacco Trade and the Treasury, 1685–1733” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1954), 107–8Google Scholar.

8 On the Scottish stores, see Price, Jacob M., “The Rise of Glasgow in the Chesapeake Tobacco Trade, 1707–1775,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., XI (1954), 179–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Soltow, J. H., “Scottish Traders in Virginia, 1750–1775,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XII (1959), 83–98Google Scholar.

9 Based upon the yields of the two shillings per hogshead export duty in Virginia. For 1713–14, see PRO T.1/175/18; for 1773–74, see PRO C.O.5/1352, pp. 79–82.