For similar reasons, colonials dominated the great volume of coastwise commerce. Early in the seventeenth century, the Dutch of New Amsterdam had anticipated the profit potential in distributing European products along the colonial coast in exchange for tobacco, furs, grain, and fish, which were then sent to Holland. After the Dutch lost power in North America in 1664, their hold on these trades declined, and New Englanders—together with enterprising merchants in New York and Philadelphia— dominated the coastal trades of North America.
In terms of the money value of products exchanged, coastal commerce was less than overseas trade with either Britain or the West Indies, but it was equal to each of these major trade branches in physical volume. As James Shepherd and Samuel Williamson (1972) have shown, just before the Revolution, coastwise trade accounted for about one-third of the volume of total overseas trade. Compared with the North, the coastwise commerce of the South was much less important, but even there it contributed perhaps one-fifth of the tonnage that entered and cleared southern ports (Johnson et al. 1915).
With regard to commerce within the interior and between the countryside and towns, we can say little in quantitative terms. to recent work by a host of scholars, including James A. Henretta, Winifred B. Rothenberg, and Thomas M. Doerflinger, much of it based on probates, tax lists, and other original sources, we know much more about the rich diversity of rural trade and activity (see their chapters in Hoffman et al. 1988). Statistical estimates of volume still elude us, however. Backcountry people traded their small agricultural surpluses for goods they could not produce themselves—salt, medicines, ammunition, cotton yarn, tea or coffee, and the like. In the villages and towns, households were less self-sufficient, although even the wealthiest homes produced some goods for everyday consumption.
Boston’s natural endowments helped the city attain a place of prominence as a trading and shipping center; but the mountains to the west inhibited access to the hinterland, and Boston ultimately fell behind New York in the commercial rivalry between these two great ports.
In the complex of colonial domestic trade between country and town, it became common practice for the town merchant to extend credit to farmers, either directly or through the so-called country traders who served as intermediaries. Advances were made for the purposes of obtaining both capital equipment, such as tools and building hardware, and the supplies necessary for day-to-day existence. At the end of the growing season, farmers brought their produce to town to discharge their debts.
World History
