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.1The psychology of expansiveness implied by the demographic performance of thepopulations of colonial British America, especially on the continent, was also reflected inthe extent of territorial expansion and the mobility of the population.At the conclusion ofQueen Anne s War in 1713, the continental settlers were still clustered in a series ofnoncontiguous nuclei close to the Atlantic seaboard.There were two large centers ofsettlement, one in the Chesapeake and another covering the coastal regions of eastern andsouthern New England and reaching up the Connecticut River valley.Two smallerconcentrations of population fanned out from Philadelphia and New York, and there wereisolated groups of settlement on the central Maine coast, in the upper Connecticut Rivervalley in what is now southeastern Vermont, around Albany on the Hudson River, on theupper Delaware River in the vicinity of Easton, Pennsylvania, on the lower Delaware, atthree widely dispersed points in Tidewater North Carolina, and at Charleston and PortRoyal in South Carolina.During the next fifty years, population spilled out in all possible directions from thesenuclei until by the 1760s and 1770s there was one long continuum of settlementstretching from Georgia to Maine and reaching inland for more than 150 miles, and newnuclei were building in East and West Florida and Nova Scotia.This rapid spread ofsettlement was one sign of the high levels of geographical mobility among settlers in allregions on the continent.Although southerners were somewhat more mobile than New Convergence: development of an American society 33Englanders, no region had a persistence rate much above 60 percent during the thirdquarter of the eighteenth century, and farmers everywhere showed an especially strongpropensity to move.Residents from New York north tended to move longer distancesnorth into upper New York and New England; those from Pennsylvania south tended tomove west and south into the broad upland areas between the seacoast and theAppalachian Mountains.2But the most impressive evidence of growth lies in the economic realm. Led by agrowing demand for colonial exports, linked to an expanding commercial empire,protected and promoted by a strong imperial system, and endowed with an abundance ofnatural resources, the economy of colonial British America, John McCusker and RussellMenard have observed, became increasingly successful between 1607 and 1775.Therewere marked differences between the economies of the plantation colonies of theChesapeake, the Lower South, and the West Indies and those of the farm colonies fromPennsylvania north.Those of the latter were less highly specialized, much less capital-and labor-intensive, less dependent on servile labor, especially the use of slaves, andsomewhat less tied to external markets.At the same time, the economies of all thecontinental colonies were somewhat more complex and better balanced than those in theWest Indies.Yet the economic performance of every region over time was impressive.Growth seems not to have been especially rapid before 1740, but every availableindicator numbers of slaves, rising levels of personal wealth, volume of agriculturalproduction, amount of exports, value of imports from Britain, quantities shipped in thecoastal trade suggests extraordinary growth thereafter.McCusker and Menard estimatethat the gross national product (GNP) multiplied about twenty-five times between 1650and 1770, increasing at an annual average rate of 2.7 percent for British America as awhole and 3.2 percent for British North America.This increase, they posit, may haverepresented a real per capita growth rate of 0.6 percent, which was twice that of Britainand was sufficient to double income over that period.3By the time of the American Revolution, this vigorous economic growth had produceda standard of living that may have been the highest achieved for the great bulk of the[free] population in any country up to that time. In her massive study of the wealth ofthe continental colonies, Alice Hanson Jones has found that for the continental coloniesas a whole in 1774 average per capita wealth composed of land, slaves, livestock,nonagricultural productive goods, and consumer goods was £60.20 This figure mayhave been lower than that of England and Wales, for which there is no reliable estimateof per capita wealth after 1688, the date for which Gregory King estimated that it wasalready about £55.But Jones concludes that it must nevertheless have been of a veryrespectable order of magnitude in comparison with that of the metropolis.There were,of course, marked regional variations.As McCusker and Menard have revised Jones sfigures, New England with a net worth per free white person of £33 was the poorestregion, followed by the Middle Colonies with a figure of £51 and the southern coloniesthe Chesapeake and Lower South combined with the striking amount of £132 [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.1The psychology of expansiveness implied by the demographic performance of thepopulations of colonial British America, especially on the continent, was also reflected inthe extent of territorial expansion and the mobility of the population.At the conclusion ofQueen Anne s War in 1713, the continental settlers were still clustered in a series ofnoncontiguous nuclei close to the Atlantic seaboard.There were two large centers ofsettlement, one in the Chesapeake and another covering the coastal regions of eastern andsouthern New England and reaching up the Connecticut River valley.Two smallerconcentrations of population fanned out from Philadelphia and New York, and there wereisolated groups of settlement on the central Maine coast, in the upper Connecticut Rivervalley in what is now southeastern Vermont, around Albany on the Hudson River, on theupper Delaware River in the vicinity of Easton, Pennsylvania, on the lower Delaware, atthree widely dispersed points in Tidewater North Carolina, and at Charleston and PortRoyal in South Carolina.During the next fifty years, population spilled out in all possible directions from thesenuclei until by the 1760s and 1770s there was one long continuum of settlementstretching from Georgia to Maine and reaching inland for more than 150 miles, and newnuclei were building in East and West Florida and Nova Scotia.This rapid spread ofsettlement was one sign of the high levels of geographical mobility among settlers in allregions on the continent.Although southerners were somewhat more mobile than New Convergence: development of an American society 33Englanders, no region had a persistence rate much above 60 percent during the thirdquarter of the eighteenth century, and farmers everywhere showed an especially strongpropensity to move.Residents from New York north tended to move longer distancesnorth into upper New York and New England; those from Pennsylvania south tended tomove west and south into the broad upland areas between the seacoast and theAppalachian Mountains.2But the most impressive evidence of growth lies in the economic realm. Led by agrowing demand for colonial exports, linked to an expanding commercial empire,protected and promoted by a strong imperial system, and endowed with an abundance ofnatural resources, the economy of colonial British America, John McCusker and RussellMenard have observed, became increasingly successful between 1607 and 1775.Therewere marked differences between the economies of the plantation colonies of theChesapeake, the Lower South, and the West Indies and those of the farm colonies fromPennsylvania north.Those of the latter were less highly specialized, much less capital-and labor-intensive, less dependent on servile labor, especially the use of slaves, andsomewhat less tied to external markets.At the same time, the economies of all thecontinental colonies were somewhat more complex and better balanced than those in theWest Indies.Yet the economic performance of every region over time was impressive.Growth seems not to have been especially rapid before 1740, but every availableindicator numbers of slaves, rising levels of personal wealth, volume of agriculturalproduction, amount of exports, value of imports from Britain, quantities shipped in thecoastal trade suggests extraordinary growth thereafter.McCusker and Menard estimatethat the gross national product (GNP) multiplied about twenty-five times between 1650and 1770, increasing at an annual average rate of 2.7 percent for British America as awhole and 3.2 percent for British North America.This increase, they posit, may haverepresented a real per capita growth rate of 0.6 percent, which was twice that of Britainand was sufficient to double income over that period.3By the time of the American Revolution, this vigorous economic growth had produceda standard of living that may have been the highest achieved for the great bulk of the[free] population in any country up to that time. In her massive study of the wealth ofthe continental colonies, Alice Hanson Jones has found that for the continental coloniesas a whole in 1774 average per capita wealth composed of land, slaves, livestock,nonagricultural productive goods, and consumer goods was £60.20 This figure mayhave been lower than that of England and Wales, for which there is no reliable estimateof per capita wealth after 1688, the date for which Gregory King estimated that it wasalready about £55.But Jones concludes that it must nevertheless have been of a veryrespectable order of magnitude in comparison with that of the metropolis.There were,of course, marked regional variations.As McCusker and Menard have revised Jones sfigures, New England with a net worth per free white person of £33 was the poorestregion, followed by the Middle Colonies with a figure of £51 and the southern coloniesthe Chesapeake and Lower South combined with the striking amount of £132 [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]