The Economic Development of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1720 to 1775

Abstract

HE last decade has been marked by a quiet renaissance in early T American economic history. Numerous articles and several books have reexamined the colonial period with an approach that emphasizes the use of quantitative data and modern theory. One important topic, however, remains little explored: economic development. Much of the writing on this question has been avowedly impressionistic and,serves to underscore Ralph Andreano's pronouncement about American colonial growth that no period of our national development remains as untouched by testable generalizations as does this one.' Several descriptive essays, while listing such valid reasons for growth as abundant land and a rapidly growing population, shed little light on variations in the pace of expansion or on the relationship between the thirteen colonies and the Atlantic economy.2 At a methodological extreme from such survey articles is a recent econometric model of colonial growth. But this construct is highly abstract and not closely related to the evidence available for the colonial period; the authors confess that it is not a theory to be tested in this book.3 A detailed examination of colonial