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The Economic Growth of the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake Colonies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Allan Kulikoff
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Abstract

The Chesapeake economy failed to grow during the first half of the eighteenth century, but experienced rapid development during the third quarter of the century. Economic stagnation before 1750 resulted from the inability of tobacco planters either to increase productivity or to reduce costs of production, whereas an increase in grain exports and rising amounts of Scottish credit to planters explain growth during the pre-Revolutionary decades. Nonetheless, whites were able to purchase increasing quantities of consumer goods by exploiting the labor of the increasing numbers of black slaves who produced most of the region's tobacco.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 275 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1979

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References

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13 Calculated from Prince George's Inventories, 1731-34, Maryland Hall of Records, Annapolis (hereafter MHR); this group rose from 9 to 13 percent of the living population between 1733 and 1755.

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20 Data from Naval Office Records (CO 5 and Customs 16/1, Public Record Office, film at Colonial Williamsburg Research Library) and Soltow, James H., The Economic Role of Williamsburg (Charlottesville, 1965)Google Scholar, Table III following p. 22 for South Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and Upper James Naval Districts, were adjusted for missing quarters and divided by the number of taxables found in Greene and Harrington, , American Population, pp. 150–151Google Scholar and in county court order books, Virginia State Library. The decline in tobacco exported per worker was estimated by dividing the highest rate before 1731 by the highest rate after 1731 and assumes no change in participation rates. Earle, , Tidewater Settlement System, pp. 24–27Google Scholar contends that production per worker declined 47 percent after the passage of the inspection acts.

21 The correlation between pounds of tobacco and bushels of grain exported per worker was 0.105 before 1760 and 0.663 after 1760.

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26 Total agricultural products in France rose 1.3 percent a year 1725/45-1745/65 and 0.7 percent 1745/65-1765/85. European population rose about 0.9 percent a year in the second half of the century and tobacco-growing areas of the Chesapeake increased 2.4 percent. Marczewski, , “Aspects of Economic Growth of France,” p. 375Google Scholar; Deane, and Cole, , British Economic Growth, 78–80Google Scholar; Helleiner, , “Population of Europe,” pp. 63–67Google Scholar; Greene, and Harrington, , American Population, pp. 150–51Google Scholar com pared with Virginia tithables.

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28 Computations from data in Historical Statistics, pp. 1184-91, 1198; a Virginia tobacco price series collected by Harold Gill; and Naval Office Records for Virginia; details available from author.

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36 Distributions of wealth (movables, land, slaves) among tenant nonslaveholders, tenant slave-holders, slaveless landowners, men who owned both slaves and land, and merchants can be calculated for 1733, 1755, 1776. Gini coefficients for these data were 0.536 in 1733, 0.525 in 1755, and 0.591 in 1776.

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38 Sheridan, , “British Debt Crisis,” p. 167Google Scholar; exact totals were 53 percent under £100, 11 percent to merchants, and 36 percent to gentlemen.