Persistence of country trade: the failure of towns to develop in Southside Virginia during the eighteenth centry

Abstract

Country trade, the local retail and service trade that operated through country stores rather than towns, villages, and hamlets, prevailed in Southside Virginia throughout the eighteeth century. The focal points of this trade were plantatons, coiurthouses, and ferry sites. The persistence of country trade occurred because an urban system failed to develop in this region of the southern Virginia Piedmont. There was no urban sytem because of the dominance of the export staple tobacco, which did not create any because of the dominance of the export staple tobacco, which did not create any significant regional tertiary or manufacturing activity. The tobacco marketing system continued the old frontier-mercantile trade structure composed of entrepot and decentralized backcountry points. Central place theory, with its assumptions of a closed settlement system and a hierarchical structure of places, has little application in this region of interregional trade and decentralized places, and only the early stages of Vance's long-distance trade model are applicable to the Southside experience. There is, however, a strong conformity with Earle and Hoffman's staple theorye of settlement and economic developoment. It is suggested that country trate and its contexts should not de overlooked when considering settlement and trate in early America, especially in the American South.