Colonial America
Page 38
By 1713, British North American colonial economies had, with a few exceptions, embarked on paths of development shaped by the British Atlantic economic system, with its flows of people and its patterns of consumer demand. Most colonists were increasingly becoming part of a wider market economy, devoting much of their productive energy to produce goods or services to sell to others. The ways in which they took part in that economy – the types of production in which they engaged and the labor systems that they developed in order to produce goods for the market – varied greatly, particularly between the South and the North. It is these variations we will now examine.
2 The Southern Plantation System
Historians have disagreed as to whether economic growth in British North America during the eighteenth century occurred because colonial economies developed a greater capacity to produce goods, or because of the growing demand in Europe for American-produced staples. A related question is whether the domestic market was more important than the export market in the southern economy.8
To some extent the first distinction is artificial, since supply and demand are two sides of the same coin. However, both factors played some part in expanding exports from the South. Making the second determination has also proved difficult. Exports were certainly important to the South, because the region was geared to the production of cash crops. On the other hand, the majority of its population were owners of small farms who produced primarily for their own needs. Since the export of staples is usually considered the most dynamic element in the southern economy, it will be considered first.
The most important staple in mainland British North America was tobacco. Even by 1700 production had reached 28 million pounds and it continued to climb, reaching 80 million pounds by 1760. By this time tobacco comprised almost 45 percent of mainland colonial exports. The total value of the exported crop was some £700,000. Seventy percent of it was grown in Virginia.
This increase had been achieved as a result of both supply and demand factors. Among the more important supply elements was the growth in the labor force. In 1660 the population of Virginia had been 25,000, Maryland had 10,000 settlers, while North Carolina had only a few hundred. By 1760 Virginia had almost 350,000 inhabitants, Maryland 160,000, and North Carolina 120,000.
Another supply factor was improved efficiency. By the eighteenth century, the average tobacco worker was able to attend between two and three acres or up to 10,000 plants, producing between 700 and 1,000 pounds of tobacco. The seventeenth-century average attendance had been only 3,000 plants.
Also on the supply side was the availability of land. Without this, extra hands would have been to no avail. Land and people were two advantages enjoyed by the Chesapeake colonies in particular.
But demand factors were also very important. During the eighteenth century European purchases of tobacco continued to grow steadily. After the 1707 Act of Union between England and Scotland exports of tobacco were further stimulated by the advent of an aggressive Scottish merchant community to market the crop. This was especially beneficial to smaller producers who until then had to rely on the intermediary services of the larger growers. As we have seen, even the decline in price was advantageous, as it widened the market. By the middle of the eighteenth century, tobacco was no longer a luxury for most of Europe's population.
Two kinds of tobacco were cultivated during the eighteenth century, one the sweet-scented variety originally introduced by John Rolfe, the other the Orinoco from South America. The type planted was partly a matter of climate. The Orinoco was a hardier plant and better able to thrive in the shorter summers of the upper Chesapeake and less fertile soils of the Piedmont. Much of this was exported to continental Europe. However, most tidewater planters continued to grow the more traditional sweet-scented variety, since this was most popular in Britain.
Despite the growth in production, the cultivation of tobacco was not without its problems. Late frosts posed a serious hazard in the early stages, while too much rain was similarly disastrous before harvesting. In between, pests like the tobacco fly and hornworm could ruin a crop. The owner then had the difficult decision of when to cut his tobacco, since a mistake would leave him with an inferior product. Curing and packing were also delicate operations that required great care if the tobacco was to get to market in good condition.
To protect its industry, Virginia developed a system of inspection. For almost a century various attempts to control the quality of the tobacco had met with fierce opposition from the small-scale planters, who feared that their inferior bulk product would be excluded. An act passed in 1712 was subsequently disallowed by the Privy Council, but an amended version, passed in 1730, required all tobacco to be brought to a public warehouse for inspection to ensure that it was properly cured. One unanticipated benefit was that the receipts provided a useful circulating medium. The system of inspection was sufficiently successful to be copied by Maryland in 1748.
A common criticism of the tobacco industry in the eighteenth century was its extravagant use of land. Tobacco made heavy demands on the soil, wearing it out in three or four years, after which the planter had to move on to fresh acreage. While land was so abundant, however, this practice made economic sense, for as Jefferson later noted, it was cheaper for British North Americans to buy a new acre than to manure an old one. Such reasoning was not generally appreciated by European visitors, who forgot they were looking at agriculture from a different perspective when making derogatory remarks. In Europe labor was plentiful and land scarce; moreover, the countryside had been under intensive cultivation for many centuries. Hence behavior in North America that seemed slovenly and wasteful was often the result of attempts to avoid the high cost of labor. Best practice on the two continents necessarily differed at times.
Like all industries, tobacco suffered cyclical movements in its prosperity. Prices were highest – around two and a half pence a pound – in the periods 1700–4, 1714–20, 1735–43, and 1747–53, which generally coincided with peace in Europe. In between, prices often fell below one penny a pound.
The uncertainty concerning prices and the difficulties of production led many Chesapeake planters to turn to wheat after the outbreak of war in the 1740s. Wheat could be grown in fields left fallow after tobacco, often as a winter crop. Over a 20-year period 12 crops of wheat might be grown to three of tobacco, though the value of tobacco was approximately six times greater. George Washington was one of those who switched to wheat after the French and Indian War ended in 1763. Wheat permitted the use of ox-drawn plows, making it less labor-intensive and therefore allowing more time for building and other improvements. Production climbed steadily throughout the later colonial period, though its export value, around £150,000 by 1760, was still less than one-fifth that of tobacco. Most wheat was shipped to southern Europe or to the West Indies.
By comparison, South Carolina's economy was still in transition in 1713. The deerskin and Indian slave trades had been its lifeline during the seventeenth century. These would soon decrease with the end of the Yamasee War and the decline in the supply of game.9 A profitable market for rice, however, was beginning to develop in both the Mediterranean and northern Europe. Production, which rose from 10,000 to 100,000 barrels between 1720 and 1760, was boosted by the expansion of cultivation to the adjacent areas of North Carolina and Georgia. Other factors also helped production. One was the partial removal of rice from the enumeration list in 1730, which allowed its direct export to Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean. Production was also aided towards the end of the colonial period by the use of wind-powered fans for winnowing the rice and of draft animals for pounding it, which made processing easier and more efficient. By 1760 rice accounted for about 20 percent of colonial commodity exports, bringing in about £300,000. This made it the second most valuable export after tobacco. However, like tobacco, it was susceptible to market fluctuations. This was especially true during the War of Jenkins' Ear, when the price plummeted from nine to two shillings
a hundredweight.
Rice, unlike tobacco, was a relatively hardy plant to grow. The main requirement (and difficulty) was the need to immerse the crop in water at various stages during the growing season. This meant the construction of special fields protected by embankments, with ditches, sluice gates, and reservoirs to control the water supply. A dry spring or early summer could mean disaster if the reservoirs ran dry, while too much rain might lead to flooding at the wrong time. For this reason some planters began experimenting with river tidal flows to get a more dependable supply of water, but the technology and capital to do this were not widely available during the colonial period.
Map 11 The provincial economy, 1700–1760.
Another crop developed in South Carolina after 1740 was indigo. Its production at this time was the result of attempts by the planters to diversify in response to the problems caused by the war in Europe. When boiled in special vats, the leaves of this plant yielded a brilliant violet dye, which was especially prized before the invention of chemical substitutes. The advantage of indigo was that it could be grown on land where rice cultivation was not possible. The disadvantage was that it was not easy to produce, since the periods of fermentation, distillation, and drying were difficult to assess, making quality control a nightmare. Nevertheless, production rose steadily, helped after 1748 by a bounty of sixpence a pound from Parliament. Indigo provided an export value of approximately £100,000.
Cotton, the crop usually associated with the Deep South in nineteenth-century North America, was still almost unknown. The short-staple variety was impracticable to harvest on any scale until Eli Whitney invented his famous gin, though some slaves and poor whites spun a little yarn for their own use. Otherwise, all the colonies at this time imported sea island cotton from the West Indies if they wanted fabric from this material.
The first southern colonizers had envisioned a mixed economy of commerce, manufacturing, and farming, but their hopes had been sadly disappointed. Timber was plentiful, but shipbuilding was restricted by a lack of skilled labor. In the eighteenth century, however, a lumber industry developed using water-powered saw mills. Its principal product was staves for making barrels to export the South's cash crops. Shingles for roofing and clapboard were also produced, and found a ready market in the West Indies, where all wood products were scarce. Sales of these products brought in perhaps £50,000.
Timber also supported the naval stores industry. As the century progressed, the Royal Navy required ever larger quantities of pitch and tar for making vessels watertight, as well as turpentine for varnishing woodwork. Until the eighteenth century these items were obtained mainly from the Baltic, but political uncertainty in that area eventually induced the navy to seek alternative supplies from the North American colonies. To encourage this Parliament passed an act in 1704 providing for bounties on the production of masts, hemp, pitch, and tar. The pitch and tar industry was especially important for the Carolinas, since both had a vast supply of suitable pine trees. The resinous timber was heated slowly to make the tar run out without catching fire. Initially the industry flourished in South Carolina, but as rice cultivation became more widespread there, production shifted to North Carolina. The export value of this product was about £60,000 annually.
The continued expansion of cash crops in the South was made possible by the growth of the labor force, primarily through the purchase of African slaves. As was pointed out in Part II, before 1700 Virginia and Maryland had relied on indentured servants, although South Carolinians had always preferred slaves, including both Native Americans and Africans. The eighteenth century witnessed a rapid increase in the size of the African labor force in both the upper and lower South, as planters sought to extend their holdings and increase their profits. In 1680 Virginia had 3,000 slaves and 15,000 indentured servants. By 1715 the ratio of slaves to indentured laborers was almost exactly the reverse, with 23,000 slaves in the province, and another 1,000 being imported annually. Even these figures were dwarfed by the dramatic increase between 1743 and 1756. The total number during this period rose from 42,000 to 120,000 as a result of both importation and the fertility of the existing population.
Maryland and the Carolinas experienced similar increases. In 1690 there had been 1,500 enslaved Africans in South Carolina; by 1720 the figure had risen to 12,000, reaching 57,000 in 1760. By then Virginia and South Carolina were each importing over 2,500 enslaved Africans annually; and even North Carolina was buying several hundred. During the 1750s imports often exceeded 7,000 slaves a year.
The reasons for the growth of slavery were varied, as we have seen. White laborers from England became less willing in the late seventeenth century to migrate to the Chesapeake as indentured servants. Most indentured servants left their masters at the end of their service and thereafter became too expensive. According to the Reverend Peter Fontaine of Virginia, in 1750 a free white servant would expect to be paid almost £20 a year, while for another £7 or £8 a planter could “have a slave for life.” The cost of slaves relative to indentured servants had significantly decreased since the seventeenth century, especially as the numbers of enslaved Africans being shipped by British traders increased the available supply.
Other reasons probably had to do with the behavior of servants and slaves themselves. British servants who ran away could blend into the surrounding population, while Africans could not. Northern Europeans languished (and often died) in the tropical or semi-tropical conditions found in the southern colonies, while Africans understood how to grow their own food and build adequate housing out of available materials. British servants could resort to the courts for redress if they were mistreated, while African slaves, unused to the English legal system, were less likely to do so.
As slavery became more common and numbers of African slaves grew, racial fears and antipathies also became more virulent, making it easier for owners to exploit blacks than whites. Most plantation tasks were of a dull, routine nature. While white indentured servants were apt to resist such work, both male and female slaves could be forced to put up with them.
It was traditionally assumed that slave-ownership was limited to the wealthy few. Scholarship has now shown that it was more widespread, especially in the tidewater, where 40 percent of households in many counties had three or more slaves. Even in the piedmont 20–30 percent of households owned one or two slaves. Of course ownership was distributed unevenly, many households having only one, while others had half a dozen or more. Large plantations with more than 20 slaves were relatively scarce and were found most frequently in South Carolina, where rice and indigo cultivation and the production of naval stores were expensive businesses which could be undertaken only by large producers.10
Despite the widespread ownership of slaves, their use did not go unquestioned. Many South Carolinians feared that slaves would become too numerous and eventually overpower them. Accordingly, attempts were made in the early 1730s to restrict slave imports by imposing a tax, linked to a promise of 50 acres of land without quitrents for 10 years for every white person settling new townships in the backcountry. The Crown saw the tax on slaves as a restriction on trade and disallowed the measure.
Similar efforts to restrict the slave trade were made in Virginia, though concern there was not as great as in South Carolina, since Africans were not a majority of the population. Nevertheless, some thoughtful Virginians already recognized that white planters there were influenced by a system of economic incentives that would inevitably lead to greater reliance on plantation agriculture and slavery. Hiring wage laborers was expensive, so most planters invested instead in slaves, a cheaper investment in the long run. This meant that there were few opportunities for free laborers. White men sought instead to become planters, and as a result did not spend time learning the skills that in the North would lead to better wages and opportunities for advancement. As a result there were fewer skilled coopers, smiths, joiners, wheelwrights, leather workers, weavers, and bricklayers in the South than in the Nort
h. The full consequences of this lack were not felt until the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, when the South was to find itself increasingly disadvantaged by its lack of skilled labor and commercial acumen.
One possible alternative to slave labor was the use of convicts. In 1718 Parliament passed a law providing for their transportation to America. While occasional convicts had been sent over since the time of the Restoration, the numbers now greatly increased, reaching a total of 30,000 by 1760. Some two-thirds went to the Chesapeake, where they worked in gangs like the slaves, serving sentences between seven and 14 years. The advantage for employers was that convicts were cheaper than any other hired labor. No purchase or transportation charges were incurred, nor were freedom dues payable when their sentences were completed. Not all were hardened criminals; many were first offenders convicted of minor crimes for whom transportation was a chance to make good. However, the practice did not become popular with most colonials, and the convicts were invariably blamed for increases in crime. Benjamin Franklin suggested America should send her rattlesnakes to England in “return for the Human Serpents sent us by the Mother Country.” A larger problem was that there were not enough convicts to supply the demand for labor, so slaves were preferred.