One major fact of American economic life—underpopulation and labor scarcity—persisted throughout the entire colonial period. Another extremely important aspect of British colonization and a crucial factor in securing and maintaining Britain’s hold on the North American frontier was the extremely high rate of population growth in the colonies. What generated the characteristic of apparent underpopulation was the vast amount of available land, which “thinned” the population spatially and established high population densities in only a few major port towns. This occurred despite the exceptionally high rate of growth, which was so high—the population approximately doubled every 25 years—that Thomas Malthus worrisomely referred to it as “a rapidity of increase, probably without parallel in history” (Potter 1960). Malthus and others pointed to the American colonies as a prime example of virtually unchecked population growth. Wouldn’t such a rate of increase, which was twice the population growth rate in Europe, ultimately lead to famine, pestilence, and doom?
Such European polemics were far from the minds of the colonists. Indeed, Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay in 1751 extolling the virtues of rapid population increases in the colonies. Overpopulation never occurred in the colonies, despite the various methods that were used to encourage or force (in the case of African captives) population relocation to the New World. Nor did the high natural rate of population increase create population pressures in the colonies; population growth was generally viewed as a sign of progress and a means of reducing the uncertainties, risks, and hazards of a sparsely populated frontier region.
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