ECONOMICS OF COLONIAL AMERICA

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Overview This is about a comparison of the economies of the North, middle and southern colonies and how those choices at the beginning affected life over a hundred years later.

middle

north

south

Supply and demand Supply and Demand is one of the simplest principles of economicsWhen demand is high

and supply is low, prices increaseWhen supply is high and demand is low prices go down

The point where the lines meet is equilibrium, it is what markets want.

Role in triangle trade

http://www.eduplace.com/kids/socsci/books/applications/imaps/maps/g5s_u3/index.html

Southern colonies made agricultural raw materials that went to England to help their clothing manufacturers

Northern colonies made whale oil, lumber and ships

Middle colonies made tobacco and grains that got shipped to the west indies

Parliament took steps to sabotage American industry so it couldn’t compete with English industry ( and also provide a market.

Coal and pig iron were shipped to Europe

Northern colonies The New England colonies had poor soil so most families were subsistence farmers, growing unprofitable crops.

Industries in Northern Colonies

en.wikipedia.orgWhaling

provided meat, whalebone, and whale oil ( used in candles)

Lumber

shipbuilding

Middle colonies Northern middle colonies Chesapeake colonies

Focused on trade and commerceHad ship building, lumber

and shipping

Grew grains and livestock but based on tobacco

Used servants

Tobacco planters stagnated the economy during the 1750s

Used slaves

Tobacco Tobacco was a principal cash crop of 3 colonies since Jamestown discovered the crop in the early 1600s. Due to its importance tobacco

was used a currency such as in the following scenarios : persons encouraging Negro meetings were to be fined 1000 pounds of tobacco; owners letting Negroes keep horses were fined 500 pounds tobacco; if a person wanted to become married, he had to go to the rector of his parish and pay the man so many pounds of tobacco; a man's wealth was estimated in annual pounds of tobacco

Due to overproduction, the European markets overflowed with tobacco so prices declined The colonial solution

was to use junk tobacco, thus demand fell. Virginia’s Inspection Acts finally solved the problem by requiring that tobacco be shipped to a warehouse before sale. In times of overproduction, excess tobacco could be stored in a warehouse.

Why the middle colonies couldn’t make a stable system.

Supply, Demand and Tobacco

Going back to the supply and demand chart, the tobacco’s supply and demand were at the intersection originally. Then, demand led to overproduction which made prices fall. ( the intersection of the pink lines).

Low prices made quality fall, lowering the demand but creating a new problem: no one wanted to buy

Southern agriculture The crops grown in the south ( tobacco, cotton , indigo, rice ) led to a plantation economy in which plantations were continually buying land since that was the only way to increase profits. This is similar to feudal systems of the richest people being the land owners and getting a disproportionate share of resources.

The plantations led to a need for a lot of unskilled labor which was provided by slaves. Approximately 455,000 of them! That means that each slave has 92.3 descendants on average!

Most southern farmers were too poor to have slaves so they grew grains for themselves.

The plantation owners were at the top of the southern social structure.

Cotton Indigo and RiceSince cotton growing was extremely profitable and generations of growing crops on the same land had worn it out, plantations expanded, as did slavery since the cotton wasn’t going to pick itself and the plantation owners wouldn’t touch it. The work required picking year after year ( knocking out indentured servants) so by process of elimination slaves won. However picking cotton by hand was a long and inefficient process that wasn’t too profitable

Poor people

Thus Slavery in America was dying by the 1790s…Until Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, making it profitable to grow cotton and leading to increased slave importations

Effects of the Colonial Economy and Geography

The north industrialized after independence and became greatly populated by immigrants coming to work in factories.

The south became the source of cotton and other crops but didn’t get many immigrants because slavery meant that few jobs existed for them.

Their society grew around making sure that the slaves owned by 16% of the population didn’t rebel.

So when the civil war happened, the north won due to their larger numbers and better/more technology.

Effect 1:A House DividedThe southern colonies were united by slavery and common crops. Since their prosperity and society depended on cotton and other non-edible cash crops they banded together to defend and expand slavery.

The slave less north was the other group in early 19th century American Politics. Both sides distrusted each other so every time a new state was added This sequence of

maps shows how the territories open to slavery changed over time ( orange except for first one, and blue)

Effect 2: Mr. Lincoln’s War

When the Civil War happened, the south’s major advantage in combat ( besides knowing terrain) was the knowledge of guns and tactics that their rural background gave them. This led to the Union suffering greater casualties.Because the northern colonies had focused on industry, when the civil war came they quickly out-produced the south, as shown in this diagram

Effect 3: Empires of CommerceSeveral bigger cities in the middle colonies focused on trade and commerce and grew very big. Examples include Boston, Philadelphia and New York City

In the south, the biggest cities were found on the coast where they had access to water because the southern states didn’t have much rail or transportation.

This map shows the 10 biggest cities in the U.S., notice how most of them are by water.

Sources http://archive.tobacco.org/History/colonialtobacco.html www.nps.gov quia.com www.clio.missouristate.edu/FTMiller/121/Online/.../Middle/midcolonies.ht... www.kalmus.dk

http://www.historycentral.com/Revolt/Americans/PriorEconomic.html www.landofthebrave.info

http://www.theroot.com/views/100-amazing-facts-about-negro-0 www.nscdawa.com www.africanhistory.about.com www.threevillagehistoricalsociety.org http://www.asme.org/kb/news---article

s/articles/history-of-mechanical-engineering/how-the-cotton-gin-started-the-civil-war

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2118925?uid=3739656&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101411065453 http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/martin_awl/medialib/download/MARTFIG151.gif http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanex

perience/features/general-article/lincolns-political-landscape/

www.nysm.nysed.gov