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The Weaning of the American Economy: Independence, Market Changes, and Economic Development*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Gordon C. Bjork
Gordon C. Bjork
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

Disagreement on the state of the economic health of the new nation has persisted since contemporary observers disputed over the changes wrought by the end of the War for Inpendence. In recent years, diagnosis has ranged from the gloomy picture of commercial depression painted by Curtis Nettels to the rather different evaluation of Merrill Jensen, who found the period “one of extraordinary economic growth.”

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1964 , pp. 541 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1964

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References

1 Coxe, Tench, A View of the United States, in a series of papers … (Philadelphia, 1794), p. 3Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as A View of the United States.

2 A pamphlet entitled, The Internal State of America; Being a true Description of the Interest and Policy of that Vast Continent. Reprinted in Bigelow, John, ed., The Works of Benjamin Franklin (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904), X, 394–400Google Scholar.

3 Nettels, Curtis P., The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775–1815 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1962)Google Scholar.

4 Jensen, Merrill, The New Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1950), pp. 423–24Google Scholar.

5 Ford, Paul L., ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892–1899), V, 413Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Jefferson.

6 For the extent of the decline, see Schumpeter, Elizabeth B., English Overseas Trade Statistics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960) Table 18, p. 62Google Scholar.

7 Winterbotham, William, An Historical, Geographical, Commercial and Philosophical View of the United States of America, and of the European Settlements in America and the West Indies (New York, 1795), III, 111Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as An Historical View.

8 Gray, Lewis C., History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Washington: The Camegie Institution, 1933), II, 573Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Southern Agriculture.

9 Ibid., II, 605.

10 For customs-house records cited, see Bjork, Gordon C., “Stagnation and Growth in the American Economy, 1784–1792” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1963)Google Scholar, appendices III-2–2 and III-3−1.

11 Pitkin, Timothy, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America (New Haven, 1835) pp. 84–85Google Scholar.

12 Letter to Lord Carmarthen, Philadelphia, May 17, 1787. Found in J. Franklin Jameson, ed., “Letters of Phineas Bond, British Consul at Philadelphia to the Foreign Office of Great Britain, 1787, 1788, 1789,” American Historical Association, Annual Report … 1896.

13 A letter in The American Museum, a periodical published by Matthew Carey in Philadelphia from 1787 to 1792, VI, 238.

14 For a more complete account, see Bjork, Stagnation and Growth, appendices to ch. iii.

15 Ibid., appendix III-6.

16 Ibid., appendix III-7.

17 Ibid., Table 4-B.

18 See Bezanson, Anne, Prices and Inflation During the American Revolution, 1770–1790 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951), p. 346CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See Bjork, Stagnation and Growth, Table 4-D.

20 Champion, Richard, Considerations on the present situation of Great Britain and the United States of North America, with a view to their future commercial connections (London, 1784)Google Scholar.

21 See Imlah, Albert H., Economic Elements in the Pax Britannica: Studies in British Foreign Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 For a description of the sources and methods used in the construction of these values, see Bjork, Stagnation and Growth, appendix IV-1.

23 Letter from Horatio Nelson to Lord Sydney, November 17, 1785, Nevs, B.W.I. Colonial Office 152/64.

24 Ford, Jefferson, V, 413.

25 Coxe, A View of the United States, p. 340.

26 North, D. C., The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961), p. 229.Google Scholar

27 Bezanson, Prices and Inflation, p. 259.

28 Nussbaum, Frederick L., “American Tobacco and French Politics 1781–1789,” Political Science Quarterly, XL, No. 4 (Dec. 1925), 501.Google Scholar

28 Posthumus, N. W., Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1946), p. 86Google Scholar.

30 Bjork, Stagnation and Growth, appendix III-1.

31 Ibid., appendix III-2 and pp. 160–62.

32 Population estimates are presented in Bjork, Stagnation and Growth, appendix II-3.