Abstract
America’s economy grew rapidly throughout the eighteenth century, with expanding settlement of the interior, growth in economic output, and a doubling of population approximately every 25 years. Overseas trade played a vital role. Furs, fish, ship masts, whale oil, tobacco, rice, and indigo were exported to Britain and Ireland in exchange for a wide range of manufactured goods and textiles. A negative trade balance with Britain was compensated for in part by the export of fish, grain, flour, salted meat, and livestock to the Caribbean islands in exchange for sugar, rum, and molasses, and by exports to southern Europe. The colonies, well-endowed with timber for shipbuilding, also earned a considerable amount from the sale of vessels and the provision of freight services.1
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Notes
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Perkins, E.J.: The economy of colonial America, second edn, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; Shepherd, J.F. and Walton, G.M.: ‘Economic change after the revolution: pre- and post-war comparisons of maritime shipping and trade’, Explorations in Economic History, vol. 13, no. 4 (1976), pp. 397–422.
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Gillingham found records of 22 insurance brokerages that operated in Philadelphia at various times during the eighteenth century (not including Buckridge Sims). Gillingham, H.E.: Marine insurance in Philadelphia 1721–1800, Philadelphia: Patterson and White Co., 1933, p. 52.
For a general history of the war, see Anderson, F.: Crucible of war: the Seven Years’ War and the fate of empire in British North America, 1754–1766, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
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Kingston, C. (2016). America 1720–1820: War and Organisation. In: Leonard, A.B. (eds) Marine Insurance. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137411389_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137411389_9
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