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Essay Subject: Examines economic issues leading to war with Britain. Slavery, agriculture, raw materials, manufacturing, trade, taxes.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines economic issues leading to war with Britain. Slavery, agriculture, raw materials, manufacturing, trade, taxes. Paper Introduction: By the 18th century, the relationship between the American colonists and Britain and the British Parliament had as its basis a complex pattern of economic ties and conditions. The fact that the American Revolution was initiated over taxes and economic independence more than any other single issue was no historical accident, for while Britain and the American colonies were tied together in a number of cultural, social and political ways, the relationship (as is the rule between a mother country and her colonies) remained at base an economic one. This paper examines the ways in which the economic performance of the American colonies affected the colonists’ relationship with Britain, discussing the deterioration of that relationship in the years before the Revolution. In some key ways, the Americans suffered in terms of their relat Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. As Americans began tobe able to supply more and more of their own needs through thediversification of their farming and manufacturing and at the same timecould bring in money through trade with non-English partners, theirposition of enforced economic dependence on England inevitably became lessand less tenable. The French visitor noted withgreat prescience that this left the southern colonies vulnerable againstthe northern ones. Thissuccess both gave them a taste of independence and ensured that they wouldbe taxed more heavily. The American Colonies, 1492-175 .New York:Frederick Ungar. (197 ). (1969). Bloomington: IndianaUniversity. Tobaccoplantations needed a steady and voluminous supply of cheap labor thus theneed for slaves, who cleared fresh woodland for tobacco planting (for theideal soil type for tobacco is virgin land), spread manure on the soil,created hills for planting, pruned and topped the plants, weeded, pulledoff the virulent tobacco worms, cut the plants, hung them to dry, heapedthem in piles to "sweat", then sorted and packed the leaves (Jensen, 1969,p. Violation of the Navigation Act would end in ``forfeiture and loss ofall goods and commodities" (Greene, 196 , p. It could also serve as an effective symbol of how the colonists- once dependent upon Britain for everything - were now truly dependentupon England for nothing. Thispassage spells out explicitly the importance of stock to colonial trade -which had clear implications for American economic independence and thus tofriction with England. The increase in manufacturing in the colonies brought increasedpotential for independence. The anonymous journal of the French traveler in 1777 (Seeber, 1959)also provides insights into the ways that the colonies' increasing power asan independent trading partner affected the colonists' relationship withBritain. Each of the six economic factors affecting the relationship betweenEngland and the colonies cited by Jernegan shall be discussed in furtherdetail here, relying on primary documents when possible. Understanding from personal experience the effectiveness of blockingfree economic activity Americans responded with precisely this same tactica few years later, after the Stamp Act of 1765 significantly worsenedrelationships between England and the colonies. These three factorsstimulated westward movement of the population and the settlement ofcheaper and poorer lands, mostly by newer immigrants. This wasespecially true, he wrote, of those goods produced and traded by thenorthern colonies, which tended toward more toward the manufacturing of thenecessities of life while the southern colonies produced almost exclusivelyrefined luxuries (Seeber, 1959, p. References Greene, J. 332-4) gives further evidence of the increasinglysophisticated economics of farming in the colonies and the shift in somemeasure away from the single crop of tobacco. New York: Columbia. Such rivalry betweenhome and colonial industry can be seen as early as the end of the 17thcentury, with such measures as the Woollen Act (passed 4 May 1699). The strategy of the diversification of crops away from tobacco isdescribed with approval in such texts as Peter Kalm's 1751-52 discussion ofthe use of maize in colonial agriculture. It was the draconiannature of this particular act (and the calculated way in which it was aimedat the colonists' ability to trade) that made this parliamentary act one ofthe chief instigations of the revolution. 117). Christophers, Jamaica, etc., which produce very good return in money or merchandise (Jernegan, 1959, p. indigo to the West Indies),increasing the economic independence of the colonies. By the 18th century, the relationship between the American colonistsand Britain and the British Parliament had as its basis a complex patternof economic ties and conditions. 121) Again, thisincrease in stock production affected a number of elements of the economicrelationship between the colonies and England, for stock produced not onlyfood but the raw materials for the manufacture of textiles and thus oftrade. He wrote that thesouthern fields and forests were stocked "with animals of all kinds" andproduced through the cultivation of the industrious and diligent colonist"fodder, wheat, seed, woolens, and hemp" (Seeber, 1959, p. The French traveler wrote that the commercial relations betweenforeigners - especially the French - and the Anglo-American colonists wereof great detriment to the English (Seeber, 1959, p. At the same time, large tracts of land were being accumulated by a fewwealthy men, a growing scarcity of good unoccupied land in the Tidewaterregion caused a rapid rise in land values and poor agricultural methods ledto soil depletion and so drops in crop productivity. Butthe American colonists, bound to England by language, custom, and king,were unwilling to accept the fact that England was in turn bound to themonly for the money and goods that they could squeeze out of their colonies. The traveler distinguishes between the roles of the southern andnorthern colonies (a distinction that must always be borne in mind whendiscussing the economic state of the colonies at least through the CivilWar). As tobaccobecame harder to grow, farmers branched out to crops like indigo and rawmaterials utilization like cutting timber. 414-5). A description of rice and indigo farming in South Carolina in 1761(Jensen, 1969, pp. The result of thecombination of these factors was to increase sectarian regional discord inthe colonies as well as to increase the resentment on the part of thesepoorer, westward-bound Americans of taxes levied by Parliament. 414). As a result of this feared competition, severe limitationswere laid on American manufacturers: [No] woollen manufacturers whatsoever, made up or mixed with wool or woolflocks, being of the product or manufacture of any of the English plantations in America as aforesaid, shall be loaden upon any horse, cart, or other carriage, to the intent and purpose to be exported, transported, carried, or conveyed out of the said English plantations to any other of the said plantations, or to any other place whatsoever... In some key ways, the Americans suffered in terms of theirrelationship with Britain by having succeeded too well economically. (Jensen, 1969, pp. This paper examines the ways inwhich the economic performance of the American colonies affected thecolonists' relationship with Britain, discussing the deterioration of thatrelationship in the years before the Revolution. This does not surprise the modern reader of history, forhome countries always establish colonies to create sources of revenue. It was not only foreign travelers to America who noted the colonies'increasing independence as a trader from England. (198 ). On the threshold of liberty: Journal of aFrenchman's tour of the American Colonies in 1777. Great Britain and the American Colonies, 16 6-1763.Columbia: University of South Carolina. (Althoughit should be noted that it was the wealthiest American landowners andmerchants who most vocally and probably most successfully resisted payingtheir taxes - proving again that there is very little new under the sun.)These factors did not affect the economic relationship between England andthe American colonies as substantially as those six listed in the precedingparagraph, but they did contribute to the overall worsening of therelationship between England and America (Jernegan, 1959, pp. 53). 357). An anonymous French traveler who wrote a diary of his experiences andobservations in the colonies in 1777 notes that Americans had in recentyears greatly increased their stock raising capacity. 371). Such products helped increasethe ability of the colonies to trade (viz. 121). He praises the plant (which washardier than tobacco) for its many potential uses, from making bread, tomaking porridge-like mush to supplying the malt for beer. 329). But throughout the 18thcentury, the American colonists became increasingly aware of and resentfulof the fact that their relationship to England was one of simple economicgain to Britain. If one examines the earliest English New Worldsettlements, there is no resentment of levies having to be returned toEngland because there was nothing to lay levies on. Wealth of a nation to be. Jernegan, M. It probably also further hastened a realizationon the part of the colonists that while Britain found it acceptable to takenatural resources from America and to use its New World settlements aselements of its global political strategy, it would not easily toleratewhat it saw as economic interference with its home-produced finished goods. 334). A 1731 description of South Carolina give a pre-Revolutionary accountof the importance of raising stock in the economy of the colonies. (1959). At the same time that farming was becoming more diverse and morestable, Americans were also learning to take greater advantage of naturalresources. Jensen, M. In protests that followedthe Stamp Act, American merchants banded together in non-importationagreements, pledging not to buy British goods - a boycott that was to proveso effective that commerce between Great Britain and America came to astandstill. (1959). The increasing use of slaves was based in a number of factors from thegrowing size of plantations to the deterioration of soils that made farmingmore intensive. Such a conflict between goods produced in England and the colonies wasprobably inevitable by the 18th century, as Jones (198 ) notes, because thecolonies had spent 15 years building up both an English-styleinfrastructure (which must therefore almost necessarily compete withBritish industry) and sufficient individual wealth to make their own way asmerchants, farmers and traders (Jones, 198 , p. Theseincluded precisely those articles that were most profitable to theAmericans: "sugars, tobacco, cotton-wool, indicoes, ginger fustick [thewood of a tropical American tree used to produce a yellow dye), or otherdying wood" (Greene, 197 , p. The Navigation Act passedby Parliament in 166 was aimed explicitly at limiting the ability of thecolonists to do business with other countries, requiring that only Britishships be used by the Americans and that certain "enumerated articles" couldnot be shipped anywhere but to England or other English colonies. Jones, A. Jernegan (1959) lists six economic factors that significantly andsubstantially affected the relationship between Britain and the colonies:(1) a rapid and significant increase in the importation of black slavesinto the South and indentured servants in the middle colonies; (2)increasing distress felt by the tobacco planters due to low price and over-production and thus a diversification of crops away from tobacco andtowards corn, wheat, indigo, et cetera; (3) a larger utilization by thecolonists of basic raw materials, including timber, ore deposits andgrazing rights; (4) raising greater numbers of stock to produce both meatand textile by-products; (5) a very substantial increase in manufacturing(particularly shipbuilding, textiles and iron products); and (6) a rapidexpansion of trade with regions other than England, especially Africa andthe foreign West Indies (Jernegan, 1959, p. 55). 369), fish became asignificant natural resource, especially for northern colonists andespecially after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 (Jernegan, 1959, p. New York: Oxford University. 365). South Carolina was home to: "a prodigious number of swine, which multiply infinitely and are kept with very little charge, because they find almost all the year acorns, walnuts, chestnuts, herbs, roots, in the woods, so that you give them ever so little at home and they become fat, after which you may salt and send great quantities to the Isles of Barbados, St. Thatact noted that the increasing production of wool in the American colonies"will invariably sink the value of [English] lands, and tend to the ruin ofthe [English] trade, and the woollen manufacturers of this realm" (Jensen,1969, p. 294). All farming is labor intensive, but tobacco is particularlyunforgiving of the laxity caused by too few hands to do the work. Seeber, E. The importance of slavery to the growing of tobacco is madeclear in texts such as a 1775 account of tobacco farming from "AmericanHusbandry". In addition to timber, which was one of the primary resources ofthe middle and southern colonies (Jernegan, 1959, p. Indigo is a crop for thesummer months while rice is a winter crop, and so a farmer could make useof his land throughout the entire year by alternating these crops.Moreover, a long-enough gap existed between these planting seasons forfarmers to cut and sell timber as well (Jensen, 1969, p. English historical documents: American colonialdocuments to 1776. Corn was alsoextensively used for feeding horses, cows, oxen, doves, ducks and geese,which in turn allowed the colonists to raise more stock (Jensen, 1969, pp.334-338). This description is an important one, for it demonstrates how complexthe economic relationship between England and the colonies was. The fact that the American Revolution wasinitiated over taxes and economic independence more than any other singleissue was no historical accident, for while Britain and the Americancolonies were tied together in a number of cultural, social and politicalways, the relationship (as is the rule between a mother country and hercolonies) remained at base an economic one. 356-58). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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