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Agriculture and Society in Early America by JAMES T LEMON

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Agriculture and Society in Early America by JAMES T LEMON ,i i Agriculture and Society in Early America By JAMES T LEMON PERUSAt of the last fifteen years of importance happened. Certainly, niost Agricultural History, this journal's farmers and their families carried on American counterpart, would low-risk diversified production, much for almost lead one to believe that agriculture in home consumption using primitive tools in a the colonial period never existed! Few kind of shifting cultivation, referred to articles on the period spanning nearly two below as extensive long fallow agriculture. centuries have appeared since papers from By later standards, external markets were the I967 Colonial Agriculture Symposium limited. Local and intraregional trade was were published in I969. A limited number of modest. Aggregate growth was largely a important studies have appeared elsewhere consequence of the expansion of settlement in a variety of forums, especially the leading inland, rather than by intensive convertible period journal, The William and Mary husbandry, urbanization, manufacturing, Quarterly. The few agricultural historians or agricultural production for overseas. The dealing with the era apparently have decided most highly commercialized areas, the to seek debate and recognition there, rather Chesapeake and South Carolina, experi- more than with the scholars writing in enced little urbanization in the usual sense of Agricultural History with its traditional stress concentrated non-agricultural populations. on the nineteenth-century midwest and The rates of development (intensification) south. The Director of the Institute of Early by nineteenth-century measures were American History and Culture, the William minuscule if at all and almost too subtle to and Mary Quarterly's publisher, has recently detect. But, while per capita growth was called for greater interest in practices of tiny, after the trying initial formative years, farmers on the land. Certainly what, how all colonies established a high material and when people did work on the land standard of living in world terms. Overall, remains somewhat opaque. A recent over- production exceeded need, though the poor view of 'The Domestic Economy' has in cities and even some rural areas bore the pointed to gaps and contentious issues.' brunt of unfair distribution. Perhaps one reason for the relative neglect This general statement obscures the of agriculture has been a persistent sense intensity of recent debate on the social and among many that before W9o or at least I75O economic context of farming. While it is true particularly in the northern colonies, little of that actual practices of husbandry and production have received too little attention, ' Since tile Symposiunl discussion, aside from reviews, only fourteen much energy has been thrown into an articles dealing with the period up to about 179o have appeared in A,~,rictdmral History, averaging about one per year. This is not the argument on how 'modern' these farmers base for debate! Indeed, a symposium on 'Science and Tedmology' were. On the one side, some social historians in volume 54, 198o, did not include tile colonial period. Thad W Tare, 'Tile Perception and Modification of the Natural Landscape: have stressed familial and communitarian All Interpretation of Early American Agriculture and Forestry', values and action and hence have tended to Paper, Organization of American Historians, 1984. Richard B Sheridan, 'Tile Domestic Economy'. in Jack P Greene andj P. Pole ignore the material, and have played down (eds), Colo.ial British America: Essays i. tlu' Neu, History of tire Ealq), commercial activity. In the most recent Moderlt Era, Baltimore, 1984, pp43-85. The several state and regional historicaljournals also should be consulted. studies, the question has not been so much 76 i • ! AGRICULTURE AND SOCIETY IN EARLY AMERICA 77 ![ whether people traded or not, since it has conference in September I985 bringing been accepted that they did, but whether the together scholars from both sides of the quality of trading differed then from later Atlantic in Williamsburg, Virginia. The 'capitalism'. Increasing recognition of a far long-term sense that America was 'new' and greater degree of local trading of goods and 'exceptional' is likely to be challenged at least labour than earlier scholars noted has to a considerable degree through such a brought this to the fore: were these process. Obviously differences will remain interchanges within a reciprocal community but perhaps the traditional isolationist stance model or within an abstract or at least of many Americans, including scholars, will external market mechanism? Probably the be modified. Britain and Europe have to be answer is both, though how much 'personal' seen as a context for events and processes in or 'impersonal' remains problematic. Like the New World, in the setting o fpolitical and some historians in Britain who have sought military agendas and of a price system the grand transition from feudalism to affecting all rural inhabitants of America. capitalism within a narrow range of time, Quantitative analyses will not resolve several in the United States have argued for a these large problems. But over the past transition from the 'iridependent mode fifteen years or so, seemingly intractable data production' or the like (not feudalism, which have yielded results through diligent never appeared firmly through institutions numerical probing together with judge- in America) to 'capitalism'. Historians, it ments based on qualitative material. seems, are anxious to find a decisive deep Certainly we do know more about regional change and then initially through mentalit6 differences, population, production, con- rather than institutionally. If 'America was sumption, trade and growth, even while not born free, rich, and modern', when did it some issues remain contentious. become so? If'far from turning into modern entrepreneurs, Puritan men became rural Regions and population patriarchs in towns remarkable for their From the tiny early seventeenth-century cohesion and stability', how did their seaboard settlements, early Americans had descendants somehow become capitalists? spread over a vast area by the time of the war Many brief periods have been put forward as of independence: strung out along more than the time of massive change in consciousness: IOOO miles of the Atlantic seaboard from t68os, x74os, I79OS and even I83os. While it Maine (then still part of Massachusetts) to can be argued that in all these periods Georgia and contiguously up to 2oo miles substantial changes did occur in certain inland. Beyond the Appalachians, occupa- regions, these writers beg the question of tion of the Ohio Valley was beginning. In the what conditions in prior periods set up eighteenth century a ten-fold increase in changes. Surely 'before' there were some population was matched by a ten-fold entrepreneurs and 'after' some who were not expansion over the land. After some particularly economistic.-" unsuccessful attempts, several colonies had Perhaps clearer perspectives will be been permanently established in the early reached through assessing early American seventeenth century by the English (Virginia experience with British developments I6o7 and in New England from I62o between I6oo and I8oo. Debates on how onward, Maryland (I634)), the Dutch (New American and British societies differed are Amsterdam in 1625, Hudson Valley, and the only beginning -- as indicated by a Delaware Valley-- all taken by the British in ' Tilt.' qtlotatiolls art' (roln tilt' inost recent al'~]i'lllat}on that tile I664), the French (Port Royal I6o7 and colonial era was dif(crent (at least in New England),Joyce Applcby, Quebec I6O8), and the Swedes in the (k11Jit,llism ,lnd tile New Social Order: Th; Republican Vision o.f the 179os, New York, x984, P7. Delaware Valley. By the time Pennsylvania i!i! 78 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW i was established in i68 I, with the exception dimensions complicate discussions. A gross of Georgia, all of the thirteen colonies that distinction made in the mid-eighteenth collectively declared independence in I776 century based on slavery and climate was had been partly, some even largely, settled. North and South, then more finely, New Besides, the sugar islands of the West Indies England, the Middle Colonies, and Upper and Newfoundland cod were very import- and Lower South. The relevance of the term ant to the material needs of Britain. In turn, 'Middle' especially is still being debated, by I775, the colonies together took the bulk though most economic discussions would of British exports. stress the importance of New York and By then, the population in what became Philadelphia as centres, with East and West the United States had risen to about 2.5 Jersey divided between the two. Also, New million (about a fifth or so black), or about a York's regional economic power gradually third of that of England and Wales, whereas penetrated to the east as far as the in r7oo the 25o,ooo reached only about 5 per Connecticut valley, undermining the notion cent. (By 18oo the United States population of New England as a homogeneous region would reach a level of about half of Britain's, too. The South is divided into the Tidewater 5.3 to Io.5 million.) Obviously, then, Chesapeake tobacco region of Virginia and population growth in America was much Maryland, and the Lower South growing faster than in Britain, but the ever- rice/indigo focused on Charleston and expanding area was much vaster than in the Savannah. North Carolina eventually tight little island so that densities remained shared something of both. But the back- much lower. Even small Rhode Island did country of the Southern colonies from not exceed the more populous parts of Maryland to Georgia took on a different England. As for urban populations, after the quality, as much Pennsylvanian because of initial establishment of cities anchoring the mixed agriculture as Southern. Slaves, who lifelines to the metropolis, the urban began to replace English indentured servants population as a proportion fell until the late rapidly after I68O on the tidewater, were less eighteenth century, when the pace of obvious in the backcountry.
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