What was the major export from the middle colonies in the eighteenth century?

The expansiveness that marked all phases of colonial development characterized the colonial economy of the 18th century. Established production, with the added stimulus of a rapidly growing population, made for a generally healthy economy. The expanding frontier brought opportunities for profitable speculation in western lands, which were of particular importance to the "debtor" Colonies. These Colonies were underdeveloped and dependent upon investment and speculation from abroad, which had an inflationary effect that encouraged rapid economic development.

On the other hand, mercantilist dogma ruled the minds of 18th-century economists, and the mother country assigned the Colonies such passive roles as supplying raw materials and providing markets for English manufactures. Mercantilism actively discouraged the growth of American industries, except extractive industries. Economic dependence upon England produced a chronically unfavorable balance of trade that kept the Colonies drained of hard money. Expedients to relieve this condition, such as land banks and paper money, roused the British Parliament to enact prohibitions. The colonists ultimately found relief in building a favorable balance of trade with the West Indies, and Spanish coins softened the monetary impact of English mercantilism.

With land cheap and plentiful, agriculture dominated the colonial economy. The various crops supplied local needs and provided also an exportable surplus of foodstuffs, indigo, and tobacco. Commerce ranked next in the colonial economy. Overseas and coastal shipping, fur trade, and land speculation made prominent contributions to economic welfare. And finally, despite the role assigned to colonies under mercantilist doctrine, manufacturing secured a foothold during the 18th century. Among the more important industries were fishing, lumbering, manufacture of naval stores, shipbuilding, and the mining and the limited manufacture of iron. (See Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, pp. 66-68.)

Economic differentiation among the Colonies, already clearly evident by 1700, grew much more pronounced during the 18th century. Each geographical grouping developed its own set of specialties.

New England made its living from the sea, as illustrated by Salem Maritime National Historic Site (pp. 57-58). Fishing had been of major importance from the beginning, but shipping soon surpassed it. By the middle of the 18th century, New England vessels covered the globe. The "triangular trade" evolved between New England, Africa, and the West Indies. Rum made in New England was carried to Africa and exchanged for slaves, who were taken to the West Indies and traded for molasses, which in turn was taken home and converted into rum. New England ships also conducted a brisk trade in agricultural products with the West Indies and southern Europe, as well as a coastal commerce among the Colonies. England tried vainly by legislation to channel all colonial trade through her own ports, but throughout the 18th century the continental Colonies could not be restrained effectively from trading in any world market that would admit them. New England industry logically served the maritime interests, with ships, lumber products, iron, and rum comprising the leading items of manufacture. Preoccupied with commerce and industry, hampered by poor soil and climate, New Englanders came to rely on agriculture very little on the whole. (See Old Deerfield Village, pp. 177-180.)

The middle Colonies were aptly styled the "food" or "bread" Colonies. They exported large amounts of grain and livestock and smaller quantities of foodstuffs, furs, and other products. Their agricultural units tended to be much larger than those in New England because their economy was based on surplus production. The surplus went to the other continental colonies, to the West Indies, and to southern Europe.

Maryland, geographically associated with the plantation Colonies to the south, grew more and more diversified as small farmers moved into the "back country" west of Baltimore. By midcentury, though still ranking as a debtor colony, Maryland supplemented tobacco exports with small quantities of foodstuffs.

Virginia depended on a single crop, tobacco, and in the 18th century the plight of the tobacco planter steadily worsened. The plantation, though it was a large agricultural unit, was still not self-sufficient. The planter depended upon exporting tobacco to obtain virtually all necessities of life, and the declining tobacco market threw him deeper into debt. But for the presence of vast tracts of western land suitable for large-scale speculation, many tobacco planters would have faced ruin. One among many existing illustrations of Virginia plantation life may be seen at George Washington Birthplace National Monument, pp. 72-73.

Unlike Virginia, North Carolina relied on several crops. Naval stores provided the economic base but tobacco and, in the back country, cattle and other foodstuffs also ranked as significant. North Carolina remained a debtor colony throughout the colonial period, nevertheless.

South Carolina enjoyed a thriving prosperity, in conspicuous contrast to the other southern Colonies. Based at first on a lucrative fur trade, profits were bolstered soon by the cultivation of rice and indigo. By midcentury, rice had become the staple and a source of wealth to a small group of planters. The typical rice plantation was considerably smaller than the Virginia tobacco plantation. Back-country South Carolinians found cattle raising the most profitable occupation and produced a surplus for export.

The fur trade, particularly important in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New York, was an economic factor in almost every colony at one time or another. It was significant politically as well as economically. It was the fur traders, to cite one example, who brought back the first information about the Ohio Valley, and the fur traders together with the land speculators played a large part in bringing on the French and Indian War.

In all of the Colonies land speculation was a continuing phenomenon, and the fever reached its height in the last three decades before the Revolution. Attention centered on the Ohio River Valley, principally because of the pressure of population in Pennsylvania and the Valley of Virginia. After the Peace of Paris in 1763, English capitalists became deeply interested in the financial possibilities. Their attempts to participate helped to build up resentment in influential colonial circles.

Contrasting sharply with the generally healthy condition of the continental Colonies, the "sugar island" colonies of the British West Indies suffered real ills. Shackled by a one-crop economy, the island planters had to import even the smallest necessities. The collapse of their American and European markets in the face of French competition forced them into fatal dependence upon the English home market. In the West Indies the economic trend strengthened the economic rule of the mother country. In the continental Colonies, on the other hand, the direction of growth weakened the economic rule of Great Britain and at the same time kindled colonial resentment of attempts to enforce the rule.

While the continental Colonies diverged economically from England and from their sister colonies in the Caribbean, they underwent a significant internal economic schism. The conditions of frontier life created a new society, sharply differentiated from that of the seaboard. The frontier people, although of mixed racial origins, were drawn together by common economic interests. As small hunters and farmers, their standard of living remained chronically depressed compared to that of the "East." They formed a debtor class, deeply suspicious of the eastern merchants they owed and increasingly bitter over their own political impotence. As a class, these people were either indifferent or hostile to Europe and things European, but these feelings ran a poor second in intensity of their feelings against their seaboard compatriots.

Common to all Colonies, this sectional cleavage was most pronounced in the Carolinas where it expressed itself in the "Regulator" movement of the 1760's. The dramatic climax came near the Alamance River in western North Carolina. In a pitched battle on May 16, 1771, the North Carolina Regulators were defeated and dispersed (see p. 217) The Regulator movement coincided with the first rumblings of the American Revolution, and has been misinterpreted often as a manifestation of colonial resentment toward the mother country. In fact, it was caused chiefly by frontier resentment toward the ruling economic classes of the seaboard.