The Significance of Grain in the Development of the Tobacco Colonies

Abstract

The economic development of the American colonies is one of the least explored areas in American economic history. Since the several regions in the colonies followed somewhat different paths of development, the colonial puzzle can be gradually pieced together through research which concentrates on particular regions. The subject of this study is an important aspect of the development of the tobacco colonies during approximately the thirty years preceding 1770. George Rogers Taylor and Jacob M. Price have suggested that the second and third quarters of the eighteenth century brought “rapid economic growth” to the tobacco colonies and a “marked resumption of growth” in tobacco exports. The findings of this study will suggest some reservations concerning the leading role of tobacco during this time. The series on American tobacco exports to Great Britain suggests that there was virtual stagnation in the first quarter of the eighteenth century followed by perhaps a doubling of exports in the second quarter and then near stagnation in the third quarter until the year 1771. The reason for the leap in tobacco exports in 1771 to a high plateau of approximately 100 million pounds annually during 1771–1775 is unknown. What is important for analysis of the growth and development of the tobacco colonies, however, is that the exceptionally high exports in the last five years of the colonial period tend to mask what was apparently a slow and erratic growth in world demand for American tobacco exports in the immediately preceding decades. The assumption that tobacco was a booming sector in the economy of the upper South at this time is open to question.