The Fight for a New England Turpentine Trade: Empire, Markets, and the Colonial Landscape at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

Imperial wars and Atlantic markets drove a boom in turpentine production in turn-of-the-eighteenth-century New England. English Colonists used techniques learned from Huguenot refugees to exploit local pines in a quest for profits that threatened woodlands and, in at least one dramatic example, led to violent competition between colonial neighbors.