Transcript of By: Alexis Dyer Victoria Juhasz Rebecca Telese Nicole Williams Colonial Economies.
Colonial EconomiesTobacco.
Overproduction.
Production of tobacco exceeded demand so the price of tobacco
suffered severe declines.
Farmer’s expanded their fields for tobacco and due to that more
slaves came in.
Rice.
By building dams and dikes along rivers it created rice
patties.
Rice was hard to grow, so more African slaves were hired to do the
hard work.
Eliza Lucas cultivated the West Indian plant which was indigo and
found it was a blue dye.
Indigo contributed to the South Carolina economy.
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More diverse agriculture in the north.
Harnessed water power to run small mills for grinding grain,
processing cloth, and milling lumber: large scale ship building
operations began to form.
Iron works:
The first effort to make a metal industry was in Saugus,
Massachusetts.
They used water power to control the heat in a charcoal
furnace.
Ended up becoming a financial failure.
Metal works gradually became an important part of colonial
economy.
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The Extent and Limits of Technology
Half the farmers in the colonies were so primitively equipped that
they didn’t even have a plow.
Members of households didn’t have any pots or kettles for
cooking.
Only about half the households owned guns and rifles.
Many households had few, if any, candles.
Relatively few colonial families owned spinning wheels or looms, so
they must have purchased their yarn and cloth from merchants.
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The Rise of Colonial Commerce
Colonial commerce was remarkable because it was able to survive it
all.
They experimented with different types of currency like:
Tobacco certificates (secured by tobacco stores and
warehouses)
Land certificates (secured by property)
Beaver skins
The mainland colonies received sugar, molasses, and slaves from the
Caribbean markets in return for rum, agricultural products, meat
and fish.
Many colonial products-fish, flour, wheat, and meat, all of which
England could produce for itself-required markets outside the
British empire.
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The Rise of Consumerism
The population began to grow with new prosperity and commercialism,
which created a hunger for the consumption of material goods, which
would show off their wealth and social status.
One thing that spurred it was the increasing separation of the
American societies by class.
Europe was creating more affordable good for American’s to
buy.
Consumption also grew because of increasing tendency among
colonists to take on debt, to finance purchases, and the
willingness of some merchants to offer credit.
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The Rise of Consumerism (continued)
The growing importance of consumption and refinement was visible in
the public spaces.
The ideal of being educated, refined, gentlemanly, or ladylike,
became increasingly powerful throughout the colonies. They bought
magazines about London society, and they strived to develop
themselves as witty and educated conversationalists.
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THE END