How Economic Development Transformed Society in the British American Colonies

          On the eve of the revolution the American colonies had about 2.5 million people and more than eighty percent of the population lived on farms.  The majority of farmers in the colonies were able to produce some goods for the local market and some for export to other markets.  The middle colonies were known as the breadbasket of America producing large quantities of foodstuffs, while the New England region was important for its fishing and whaling industries and also for its timber exports.  The Chesapeake region and the areas to the south of it had developed plantation economies.  Thus, agricultural exports from the various colonial regions were the most important source of income at that time.  By the end of the eighteenth century Pennsylvania farmers were selling about one third of what they produced at either local markets or for foreign export.  This shows the strength of the American economy, an economy that was already diversifying and maturing at a rapid rate, in spite of the attempts by the metropolitan authorities to keep the colonies as economically subordinate.

          American agricultural production was so great that the British West Indies could not absorb all the American exports, and so other overseas markets needed to be found.   The population explosion in Europe that began in the 1720s created just the kind of market that American farmers needed, and because of the growth of these new markets, the farmers in the Chesapeake region also shifted to food production.  Thus by the end of the 1700s American agriculture was producing vast amounts of foodstuffs for export to the growing continental European markets.  In addition to these European markets, the colonies witnessed a major growth of inter-colonial trade as well.

          The booming economy in the colonies produced a market for British manufactured goods, and this new consumer market helped to power the engine of Britain’s industrial revolution.  As consumer goods became available in larger quantities the price of manufactured items fell, bring them down to an affordable level for the average person in America.  Thus people of all classes, except for the very poorest, could afford to buy these goods, and that helped to create a sense of general prosperity throughout the empire.  At the same time that techniques of mass production made goods cheaper and more available, the merchandisers of these products also discovered ways of creating a demand for their goods.  Prior to this time things had been purchased at seasonal fairs, but manufacturers opened stores and designed these facilities in order to display their products.  Manufacturers began to advertise their products in newspapers, and they also began to offer credit in order to help people to purchase things and pay for them over time, thus helping them to get things that they could not actually afford.  The swelling demand for consumer goods necessitated better communication and transportation systems between the various regions in the empire.  All of these things were happening in Britain in the 1720s and the same economic changes took hold in the American colonies beginning in the 1740s.  The fact that this economic changed occurred in the colonies as well, ultimately made England more dependent for her prosperity on the colonial markets than she had been before.

          There are six features that distinguish colonial economies from their mother country: (1) colonial societies are zones of economic expansion, (2) they are developing extractive industries for getting raw materials, (3) they do what is called primary manufacturing, but do not attempt to produce finished products, (4) in the case of the American colonies the use of slave labor was essential to development, (5) colonial societies do not produce much internal capital and thus they have to rely on capital investment from outside sources, and (6) much of what they earn on their exports goes to purchase imported goods from the metropolis.  Britain of course encouraged the continuation of this dependent economic system through the navigation acts and other laws meant to retard colonial economic development.  These laws were primarily meant to prevent the development of non-extractive industries in the colonies, but for some thirty years the British had followed a policy normally called salutary neglect, and it was ultimately this very policy that worked against metropolitan authority.  During the period before the 1740s the colonies had been left to their own devices and had experienced accelerated economic development and this development had been in a direction that ultimately would enable the colonies to act independently of England.

          The crown authorities had worried that the colonials were developing small manufacturing industries, and their fears had been well founded.  Although about ninety percent of the people living in the American colonies were involved in agriculture, there were far more artisans who could produce finished good in the colonies than in the previous century.  In Pennsylvania shoemakers were manufacturing 8,000 shoes a year.  Not only had small-scale artisans been doing this, but also farm families were involved in limited production of finished goods, including the distilling of rum, the spinning of cloth, and the production of clothes.  All of these things were produced for sale in local markets, and this kind of activity occurred particularly in the New England and the Middle Colonies.  This kind of manufacturing is normally called proto-manufacturing.

          Of course England tried to prevent the development of non-extractive industries, e.g., Sir John Trenchard warned that the colonies would ". . . by the natural Course of humane Affairs, interfere with most Branches of our Trade, work up our best Manufactures, and at last grow too powerful and unruly to be governed for our Interest only" [Mulholland, 100].  Alas, imperial officials were simply unable to control colonial economic development no matter how hard they tried.  The efforts made to control the colonies actually helped to breed an independent spirit among the American people, a spirit that did not take kindly to the assertions of imperial power.  In addition to the types of limited manufacturing already mentioned above, the colonies had developed some major productive industries, including ship building and rigging, and even iron production.  In fact one-seventh of all iron production in the Atlantic region was being done in the British North American colonies, and was the third largest producer in the world behind Russia and Sweden [see Mulholland, 116].  All sorts of related industries developed around both shipbuilding and iron production in the colonies, and this contributed to the economic boom influencing the development of American society.

          The effect of this economic change on the social life of the colonies was of major importance.  The economic boom and the growth of a consumerist economy undermined the traditional hierarchical structure of society.  As time went on, wealth became the main determinant of a person’s place in the social hierarchy.  The older system had taken into accounts many factors in determining a person’s place in the social hierarchy, including wealth, but not limited to this one element.  Other factors that played a part in determining a man’s place in relation to others included: his age, the types of jobs he had held in the town, his usefulness to the local community, the social standing of his family, and his families contributions to the Church.  But with the new economic system these factors diminished in importance.

          The social hierarchy was also reflected in the educational system.  Students at Yale were taught to show respect by removing their hats when they encountered a professor, and there were strict guidelines on the distance at which they were to do this.  The more important the person was the farther away from them one was to remove their hat out of respect for their social position.  These kinds of actions were also used in familial situations as signs of respect based on the persons standing in the family, such distinctions included the honor to be shown to one’s father, or the honor shown by a younger brother to an older brother.  At that time, colonial America was a society that took social rank very seriously.  So seriously in fact, that social rank even played a part in the local Church.  The seating arrangement in a Church was based on the social position of the person and his family.  The more prominent the person was, the closer to the front of the Church he would sit, conversely the further one got from the pulpit the less important a person they were in the congregation.  Some Churches even had balconies and individuals in the lowest social ranks were normally seated in them.

          Another important change during the eighteenth century involved a demographic shift within the colonies.  The number of individuals of English descent coming to the colonies had been falling as a percentage of total of new arrivals, and this caused an overall decrease in their share of the population of the colonies in general.  This demographic change altered the face of the American colonies.  The culture remained very English, but other influences entered into the mix, both at the cultural and the religious level.  Calvinism had long been dominant in the New England area, and this region remained the most English of all the different parts of the colonies.  But Scottish Presbyterianism (another form of Calvinism) also began to become important as the number of Scottish and Scotch-Irish immigrants began to make up a larger proportion of the population.  By 1790 in North and South Carolina the combined Celtic population had become the majority, while in other colonies there were substantial minorities of Celtic peoples, and in some cases, although they were not the majority of the population, they were the single largest group.

          The economic development of the colonies, the disintegration of the social hierarchy, the demographic and religious changes, all contributed to developments in American political life prior to the revolution.  The fact that people had to choose between the various competing denominations in order to go to Church helped them to become acquainted with choosing between alternative courses of action.  The sixteenth century Protestant Reformation provided a spiritual view of human equality that only bore fruit in eighteenth century America.  Colonials were eventually able to apply this concept of choice not only to religious identification but also to their choice of a political ideology to promote and follow.

          With the breakdown of the social hierarchy it was no longer seen as anathema to promote a specific program to effect change in society, and all this led to a more egalitarian view of American culture.  In this new social situation even the lower classes (normally still landholders) were seen as capable of determining their own proper course of action, and because of this, the older idea that serving one’s own self-interest was wrong, began to fade into the background.  Political factionalism was slowly becoming acceptable.

          This prepared the way for the acceptance of the radical Whig political ideology in the colonies.  The Whigs in England were distrustful of the government, and they feared that it was eroding the liberties of the English people.  They opposed the idea of a professional standing army because they feared that it could lead to a dictatorship.  They saw the present British Parliamentary system as unrepresentative of the population of England, and thus it did not serve either the local or national interests.  They complained about the malapportionment of the Parliament seeing it as in some sense a crime, because some areas with very few people had the same power as very crowded areas, and in fact some of the most populous areas in England had no Member of Parliament at all.  The radical Whigs dissenting political views had an impact on the development of politics in the colonies, especially as it concerned the apportionment of seats in the lower houses of the legislatures and also in the colonial antipathy towards a professional army.

          As far as the military was concerned, after the Seven Years War many colonials looked at their encounters with regular troops during as a proof that the Whigs criticisms were valid.  One of the best examples of this centered on the massacre of General Braddock’s army by the Indians in 1755.  General Braddock had ignored the ideas of the citizen soldier George Washington, and the colonials clearly felt that had Braddock listened to Washington, the massacre could have been avoided.  The mythic image of the citizen soldier came to dominant American political life and it can be said that this idea was the main reason why at the end of every major war America has by and large dismantled its military.  So, all of these changes, whether they of an economic, social, or religious nature, helped to shape the political culture of the American people.

The Breakdown of Relations between Britain and Her American Colonies

          I will first examine the factors that caused the break up of the first British Empire by looking at the policies of the metropolitan leaders in London, and then will conclude by briefly examining the political and social situation in the colonies themselves and how this also contributed to the break down of the Imperial system.  In the early part of the eighteenth century Sir Robert Walpole’s policy of Salutary Neglect was the dominant view in London.  That policy allowed the colonies to basically develop without direction or interference from the mother country.  The policy was successful in the sense that it permitted development to occur at an accelerated rate, both at an economic and social level, but as Middleton points out in his book, Colonial America, this policy did not serve the interests of the metropolis, and thus it was ultimately flawed [see Middleton, 441].  Imperial officials were not blind to the dangers inherent in this policy, but they also were not able at the time to really control the development of the American colonies, because the British Empire by the early eighteenth century was not well organized.  Thus, for imperial officials to control how the American colonies were to grow and develop, it would require that they completely overhaul of the British imperial system.   Once the necessity of reorganizing the Empire had become clear, metropolitan officials in London began to take steps that would limit the independence of the colonies, and thus would once again subordinate them to the needs of the homeland.  Imperial authorities began this much-needed reform in the 1740s and 50s.

          When crown authorities began implementing the necessary changes in imperial administration in order to restrict the freedom of the American colonies, the change was not done all at once; instead, imperial officials began a gradual push for change.  It was in a sense a policy of piecemeal change, and so officials in London did not see it as a major alteration of the relationship of the metropolis to the colonial areas, but instead saw it as a return to the older policy of the empire.  A policy that put the interests of the mother country ahead of the colonies and this policy from London's perspective was quite natural.  After all the colonies had been founded in order to benefit England.  Their real purpose was to increase the wealth and thus the economic well being of the homeland.  What imperial officials were not prepared for was the resistance to the change by colonial leaders, and this resistance only increased with time and as London became more forceful in its attempts to subordinate the colonies, a greater degree of disaffection between the two parties occurred. 

          In 1742 the Board of Trade was given powers to appoint major executive officers in the colonies, including the colonial governor, cabinet officials, and attorneys general, just to name a few.  It was also at this time that the Board of Trade began requiring governors to report on conditions in the colonies on a regular basis.  Lack of information had been a major problem in the past and the government was determined to rectify this situation.  Governors were also told to strictly adhere to the instructions they received from London, and if they violated their instructions they were sharply rebuked by crown officials.  London was also determined to gain control of the court systems in the colonies, and ordered the governors to effect a complete overhaul of colonial laws in order to update them and to conform them to the British legal system.  Prior to court reform judges served under a system of good behavior, but from London’s perspective it was important that judges serve at the royal pleasure, in this way royal officials could remove judges when it was deemed necessary.  Thus by the 1740s it became clear that metropolitan officials were determined to control the political situation in the colonies.

          A major component of the imperial reform concerned the payment of salaries and other expenditures at the executive level of colonial administration.  The governors were to get the lower houses of the colonial assemblies to vote a perpetual revenue that would go to the crown in order to pay imperial officials.  This perpetual revenue would replace the yearly vote of the lower houses for governmental expenditures.  Metropolitan officials wanted to get these perpetual expenditure laws in order to ensure that imperial officials in the colonies would be independent of the colonial lower houses, and would thus be able to act in the interests of the crown.  If the lower houses were allowed to continue a yearly expenditure vote in order to fund salaries of imperial officials, the independence of those officials would be jeopardized and the power of local officials would be too great.  This would mean that imperial officials appointed by London would be divided in their loyalties, because their pay would be contingent on the good will of the lower houses of the colonial legislatures, and they would be tempted to do only what had popular support in the colonies.  In this regard, the governor of New York was instructed not to sign any bill passed by the legislature unless they first voted a perpetual revenue bill.  The governor was also to instruct the legislature that all future laws passed must have what is called a suspending clause, this was a legal instrument which basically meant that a law could not take effect until it had been approved by the royal government in London.  All of this was an attempt by the metropolitan authorities to weaken the lower houses of the colonial legislatures.

          London saw the lower houses of the colonial assemblies as far too powerful, Imperial officials wanted to take away the legislatures authority to add new legislative districts, or to set the length of terms in office, and even wanted to stop the lower houses from being able to reapportion themselves.  All of these measures were meant to strengthen the powers of officials appointed by the crown government in London, and thus simultaneously to weaken the power of the local colonial officials.  At about this same time, the imperial government decided that it should take control of the relations with the various Indian tribes on the colonial frontier.  This was seen as a direct attack on the colonies own well being and self-interests, because for the colonies the Indians were seen as a constant threat.  The lower houses of the colonial assemblies vehemently attacked all of these actions of the imperial government, because they saw them as a violation of the constitutional relationship that existed between the colonies and the crown.

          All of these reforms were put on hold during the Seven Years War (1756-1763), but it should be noted that the members of the Board of Trade knew as early as the start of the war, that the program of reform in the colonies in America had basically failed.  It became clear that when the reform was to begin again, it would be necessary for the Parliament itself to intervene because it alone had the power and prestige that would be needed to actually reform the relationship between the colonies and the metropolis.  Clearly, the imperial government could not continue its reform policy while carrying on what was in effect a world war, but with the conclusion of the war the government in London began a thorough reform of imperial structures.  This time Parliament would put the American colonies under greater pressure to accept the changes.

          The war radically changed the situation of the British Empire in North America, because for the first time British hegemony on the continent was clearly established.  The expulsion of the French from North America and of the Spanish from Florida changed the nature of the relationship between the colonies and the metropolis.  This was especially true from the colonial perspective because there was no longer a major threat from a foreign European power, and the only enemy that remained from the perspective of the colonials were the Indians.  Colonial attitudes had greatly changed during the war years and they were extremely proud of their British identity.  The colonial leaders in particular felt that they had contributed to the victory of the British Empire against her enemies, and thus they should be recognized as equals of the leaders in the mother country.  Colonial leaders wanted a reform of the relationship between the colonies and the metropolis, a reform that would recognize the new status of the American colonies as real partners in the empire.

          The events of the Seven Years War (called the French and Indian War in the American theater) greatly influenced the direction that governmental reform took, and it also effected the way that this imperial reform was viewed by the colonials.  As noted above, the war had caused dramatic changes in the structure of the empire.  In the North American theater the war had united the colonies in a way that they had not been united before, they had begun to see themselves as one people.  The war also increased the power of the lower houses of the colonial legislatures, and this was the exactly what imperial leaders did not want.  The fact that the legislatures had the power to raise funds for the military made it inevitable that they would use this power to their own advantage.  Because the legislatures controlled the purse strings they were also able to control where their colonial army was to be sent and for how long.  This caused a shift in the balance of power in favor of the legislatures and away from the imperial appointed governors.  At the same time some of these activities by the lower houses looked to loyalists in the colonies as a form of treason.

          Once the euphoria at the end of the war passed, and once it became clear that the Metropolitan leaders were determined to subordinate the American colonies to the mother country, a radical reappraisal by colonials of their relationship with Britain became inevitable.  When it became clear that men like George Washington were not going to be recognized for the leadership they had shown in the war, more people became disillusioned with British rule and began to resent what they saw as interference in the internal affairs of the colonies.  During the war Washington had shown himself to be quite adept as a general and had in fact shown that because he was a native American he was better able to fight on American soil than a British general, but he was nevertheless disappointed when metropolitan authorities refused to recognize him and reward him for his efforts.  This British attitude of disdain for Americans, helped to bring about a rupture in relations between the two countries, although at this time America was technically not a country, it was moving in that direction.

          The war brought on several changes that permanently altered the constitutional, political, economic and military situation between the colonies and the home country.  First, just prior to the war the colonies had developed sufficiently that they could function independently of Britain, the only thing that they lacked was the ability to defend themselves militarily, but once France and Spain were defeated in North America they no longer needed the British military for defense.  Secondly, the war made the colonies even more assertive about their rights, and colonial leaders had even higher expectations about the recognition of their equal status with the metropolitan ruling class.  Thirdly, on the imperial side, the expulsion of France and Spain from North America made crown officials even more assertive in their desire to subordinate the colonies and especially to make the colonies pay a portion of the debt incurred during the war.  This of course increased the suspicion of colonial leaders about the motives of the central government.  Finally, for the first time in colonial history there were now large numbers of British troops in the colonies, and they could be used to enforce imperial policy, and this in itself gave imperial officials an inflated sense of their own power.

          These four major factors helped to contribute to a real sense on the part of American colonials that the constitutional connection to Britain had broken down, and that the connection between the colonies and the mother country no longer served the interests of the American people.  They realized that they would never be recognized as equals in the British imperial system.  This caused a tension in colonial society that split it into three groups.  The first group desired a radical change in the relationship between America and Britain, while the second group basically wanted to remain loyal to metropolitan authorities, and finally the third and largest group was composed of those people who were in the middle, that is, those who were indifferent to the situation, but who could be swayed to either of the other two sides.  This middle group was very important, and whichever side gained their support would ultimately be victorious.

          Those who wanted to radically change the constitutional relationship with Britain were heavily influenced by the radical Whig political ideology.  This political ideology distrusted governmental authority, and was especially concerned about the dangers to English liberty due to the presence of a large professional army.  The British troops present in North America after the Seven Years War fed into this fear.  In addition to this, the various legislative enactments by Parliament (i.e., the push for perpetual revenue bills, the requirement that suspension clauses be put into colonial laws, the currency act, and the navigation acts, etc.) that were meant to make colonials pay for part of the war, while simultaneously making them pay the costs of imperial administration of the colonies themselves, created a siege mentality among colonial leaders, and this tended to make colonial Americans view metropolitan leaders as men who were trying to subordinate and enslave the American population.  All of these things led to growing violence against imperial officials in the colonies and ultimately to a breakdown in relations that led to the revolutionary war. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Richard Middleton.  Colonial America.  (Oxford:  Blackwell Publishers, 2001).

James A. Mulholland.  A History of Metals in Colonial America.  (Birmingham:  University of Alabama Press, 1981).

British America in the 18th Century

by Steven Todd Kaster

San Francisco State University

History 420:  American Colonial History

Dr. Paul Longmore

24 May 2002

Copyright © 2002-2025 Steven Todd Kaster