University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Spring 1980 MARKETS AND MERCHANTS: ECONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA, 1700-1775 PETER VICTOR BERGSTROM Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation BERGSTROM, PETER VICTOR, "MARKETS AND MERCHANTS: ECONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA, 1700-1775" (1980). Doctoral Dissertations. 1245. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/1245 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This was produced from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. 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Ml 48106 18 BEDFORD ROW. LONDON WC1R 4EJ, ENGLAND Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8027785 Bergstrom, Peter Victor MARKETS AND MERCHANTS: ECONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA, 1700-1775 University of New Hampshire Ph.D. 1980 University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 18 Bedford Row, London WC1R 4EJ, England Copyright 1980 Bergstrom, Peter Victor All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. MARKETS AND MERCHANTS: ECONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA, 1700- BY PETER V. BERGSTROM M.A., Marquette University, 1973 A DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History May, 1980 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1980 Peter V. Bergstrom Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This dissertation has been examined and approved. .Sj&drtati<jJh nD^relctor, Darrett B. Rutman Professor of History Charles E. Clark, Professor of History Robert M. Mennel, Professor of History ■<L , ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Marc L. Schwarz, Associate Professor of History 7 ___ Donald J. Wilcox-v Professor of History AI do. James W. Cerny; Assistant Professor of Geography Date Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As with any project of this sort, the debts encumbered by the author are many. In my particular case they are of three sorts: personal, intellectual and institutional, I rank them in this order for, without the continued if not always continuous support of my wife Catherine and my director Darrett Rutman, this undertaking may never have been completed. Between the two of them they bouyed me up and beat me back to the project more times than I care to remember; yet to the two of them I will be forever grateful. Several other personal debts must also be acknowledged in order to keep the record honest. A special word of thanks must be offered to Anita H. Rutman for her guidance in learn­ ing the peculiar paleography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as her unending words of encouragement. James W. Cerny, of the Department of Geography and the Com­ puter Center of the University of New Hampshire not only guided me through the mazes of early American cartography, but kept me afloat while learning to program on both of the University's computers. John D. Krugler and Frank L. Element of the Department of History at Marquette University must be acknowledged for their early and continuous support of my graduate career before coming to New Hampshire. Lastly, all my fellow graduate students at the University of New Hamp­ shire who put up with me for six years deserve thanks. iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Intellectual debts can never be repaid in full since one is not always aware of where the sparks of ideas first come from. Nevertheless, a number of people, some of whom I have not met personally, deserve mention. First of all, to all of those whom I mentioned above my thanks for lending me the benefit of cheir ideas as well as their friendship. Secondly, I wish to thank the other members of my disserta­ tion committee: Dr. Charles E. Clark, Dr. Robert M. Mennel, Dr. Donald Wilcox, and Dr. Marc Schwarz. Interaction with their diverse points of view over the years has been most instructive. Third, I must acknowledge the school of eco­ nomics and historical thought represented by Lawrence Harper, Douglas North, and Jacob Price. They have all laid parts of the groundwork upon which I hope I am building. Finally, I wish to acknowledge a special intellectual debt to a scholar whom I have come to know both by his work and now in person. John M. Hemphill, who discovered most of what we now know about Virginia's tobacco trade, has brought me many new in­ sights on the subject of the Virginia economy, and sparked my imagination for further work. A special word of gratitude must also be extended to the Graduate School of the University of New Hampshire for its continued financial support. For three years they gener­ ously awarded me teaching assistantships, for one year a research assistantship, and finally a dissertation fellowship. In addition I am particularly grateful to Dr. John H. Lockwood, Associate Director of Research and the members of v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the Research Council of the University of New Hampshire for granting me two awards from the Central University Research Fund which, coupled with 'two summer fellowships made,archival research in Washington, D.C. and Virginia possible. An award from the Gunst Fund of the Department of History also helped in the purchase of microfilm of original documents. By way of conclusion I also wish to acknowledge the many favors done for me at research institutions where I did my .research. First and foremost I thank the ever patient staff of the Dimond Library, University of New Hampshire for valiantly fielding my most outrageous requests for more micro­ film and more interlibrary loan. Ms. Diane Tebbetts of the Reference Department deserves special praise. I must also thank the many people at the Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, the Virginia State Library, the Alderman Library, University of Virginia, the Swemm Library, College of William and Mary, and the Virginia Historical Society. Last, and certainly far from least, I wish to thank the staff — past, as well as present— of the Research Department of the Colonial Williamsburg Founded..'on. They have outdone them­ selves in helping me, first as a visiting researcher in 1977 and now since I have joined their staff as a member of the York County Project. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................ iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................... vii LIST OF TABLES . viii LIST OF MAPS AND GRAPHS ................................ X ABSTRACT .............................................. xi CHAPTER 1 Historians, Economists, and the Economic Development of the Colonial Chesapeake ..... 1 CHAPTER 2 Geographic Expansion and Population Growth During the Eighteenth Century ........ 20 CHAPTER 3 "Plums for the Picking1': Virginia