Colonial Economy

Making a Living in the Colonies

• Life in Colonial America was based largely on agriculture.
• Most colonists farmed or made their living from businesses related to farming like milling flour.
• Geography played an important role in the colonies’ economic development.
• Colonists learned to adapt to the climate and terrain of the region where they lived.

Commercial New England

• In New England, long winters and thin, rocky soil made large scale farming difficult.
• Most farmers here practiced subsistence farming.
• Subsistence farming produces just enough to meet the needs of the family with little left to sell or trade.

Commercial New England

• New England Farmers often depended on their children for labor.
• Spinning yarn, milking cows, fencing fields, and sowing and harvesting crops.
• New England had many small businesses
• Nearly every town had a mill for grinding grain and sawing lumber.

Commercial New England

• Shipbuilding was an important New England industry
• Lumber for shipbuilding came from New England’s forests
• Northern coastal cities served as centers of colonial shipping trade, linking the Northern and Southern colonies.
• Fishing and whaling were also important industries in New England.

Commercial New England

What was the role of farming in New England?

The Middle Colonies

• Most people in the Middle Colonies were farmers on a larger scale.
• They had more fertile soil and a slightly milder climate than New England.
• Farmers here plowed and planted larger areas of land and produced bigger harvests than did New Englanders.
• In New York and Pennsylvania, farmers grew large quantities of wheat and other cash crops—crops that could be sold easily in markets in the colonies and overseas.

The Middle Colonies

• Farmers sent wheat and livestock for shipment to New York City and Philadelphia, which became busy ports.
• By 1760, New York, with 14,000 people, and Philadelphia, with 19,000 people, were two of the largest cities in the American colonies.

The Middle Colonies

• The Middle Colonies also had industries. Some were home-based crafts, such as carpentry and flour making. Others were larger businesses—lumber mills, mines, ironworks.
• The Middle Colonies’s agriculture attracted many Scotch-Irish, German, Dutch, and Swedish settlers.
• They gave the Middle Colonies a cultural diversity, or variety, not found in New England.
• Why was there little cultural diversity in New England?

Life in the Southern Colonies

• Most settlers in the Southern Colonies made their living from large scale plantation farming because of the rich soil and warm climate.
• harvests of easy-to-sell cash crops, such as tobacco or rice.
• Little commerce or industry developed there.
• For the most part, London merchants rather than local merchants from the colonies managed Southern trade.

Life in the Southern Colonies

• Most large plantations were located in the Tidewater, a region of flat, low-lying plains along the seacoast.
• Planters built their plantations on rivers so they could ship their crops to market by boat.
• Small plantations often had fewer than 50 enslaved workers. Large ones typically had 200 or more.

Life in the Southern Colonies

• Between the Tidewater and the Appalachian Mountains lay a region of hills and forests known as the backcountry.
• Its settlers included hardy newcomers to the colonies. They grew corn and tobacco on small family farms.
• Backcountry farmers greatly outnumbered large plantation owners.
• Some had one or two enslaved Africans to help with the work.
• Still, the plantation owners were wealthier and more powerful.
• They controlled the economic and political life in the South.

​

Tobacco and Rice

• Tobacco was the principal cash crop in Maryland and Virginia. Growing tobacco and preparing it for sale required a lot of labor.
• At first, planters used indentured servants to work in the fields. These servants worked for a time and then went free.
• When indentured servants became scarce and expensive, Southern planters began using enslaved Africans instead.

Tobacco and Rice

• Slaveholders with large farms grew wealthy by growing tobacco. They sold most of it in Europe.

​

• Sometimes, though, there was too much tobacco on the market—more than buyers wanted. To sell the extra tobacco, planters had to lower their prices.

​

• As a result, their profits fell. Some planters switched to other crops, such as corn and wheat.

​

Tobacco and Rice

• The geography of South Carolina and Georgia helped make rice the main cash crop there.
• In low-lying areas along the coast, planters built dams to create rice fields, called paddies.
• Planters flooded the fields when the rice was young and drained them when the rice was ready to harvest.

​

Tobacco and Rice

• Most Europeans did not have experience with growing rice, so many relied on the knowledge of enslaved Africans who had lived in rice growing regions.
• Enslaved Africans often did all the work.
• Growing rice was more difficult and more dangerous than raising other crops. The land for growing rice had to be reclaimed from areas that were covered in swamps.

Tobacco and Rice

• Rice proved to be a profitable crop. Prices rose steadily as rice became popular in Europe.
• By the 1750s, South Carolina and Georgia had the fastest-growing economies in the colonies.

​

• Why was agriculture so important to the southern colonies’ economy?

Review

• What was agriculture like in New England?
• What was agriculture like in the Middle Colonies?
• What was agriculture like in the Southern Colonies?

Review

• The Middle Colonies were known for
• a) poor farmland
• b) a diverse population
• c) plantations
• d) their whaling industry

Review

• The success of the large plantations of the Southern Colonies depended on
• a) region’s many ports
• b) large families
• c) slavery
• d) rocky soil

The Growth of Slavery

​

• Many West African kingdoms enslaved those they defeated in war.
• Slave traders from Arab lands bought some of these enslaved people. Others were forced to work in gold mines or farm fields.

The Growth of Slavery

​

• Colonists needed a large labor force to work on their plantations.
• Slavery and the slave trade became major parts of the colonial economy.

The Middle Passage

• The trip across the ocean was called the "Middle Passage."
• This name came from the fact that it was often the middle, leg of the three-part route known as the triangular trade.
• People called this route "triangular" because, as the ships traveled between their destinations, their paths formed the three sides of a triangle.

​

The Middle Passage

• The Middle Passage was horrific for enslaved Africans
• Chained together for more than a month, prisoners could hardly sit or stand.
• They received little food or water.
• Africans who died or became sick were thrown overboard.
• Those who refused to eat were whipped.

​

The Life of a Slave

• Many colonies had slave codes, rules governing the behavior and punishment of enslaved people.
• Some did not allow enslaved workers to leave the plantation without the slaveholder's written permission.
• Some made it illegal to teach enslaved people to read or write.

The Life of a Slave

​

• Overseers were plantation bosses who kept the African slaves working hard.
• Punishments ranged from whipping for even minor misdeeds to hanging for more serious crimes.
• Enslaved workers who ran away were punished severely when caught.

The Life of a Slave

• Enslaved Africans had strong family ties
• But families would often be broken up.
• They developed a strong culture that drew on the languages, customs, and religions of their African homelands.

The Life of a Slave

• Some enslaved Africans learned trades, such as carpentry, blacksmithing, or weaving.
• Skilled workers could sometimes set up shops, sharing their profits with the slaveholders.
• A few were lucky enough to buy their freedom