New England's first depression: Beyond an export-led interpretation

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 1-20

  McWilliams, James E ^a  

^a TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 54249159754     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/00221950260028995     Document Type: Article

References (94)

1. James Kendall Hosmer (ed.), Winthrop's Journal, 1630-1649 (New York, 1908), II, 31 (June 2, 1641).
2. Winthrop's Journal, 1630-1649 Ibid. (June 2, 1641);
3. John Tinker, "From the Downes" [England], letter to Winthrop (May 28, 1640), Winthrop Papers (Boston, 1929-1947), IV, 251;
4. Nathanial Shurtleff (ed.), Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (Boston, 1854), I, 307.
5. Information on grain and cow prices can be found in Marion H. Godfried, "The First Depression in Massachusetts," New England Quarterly, IX (1936), 660. Hooker to Thomas Shepard (November 2, 1640), Hutchinson Papers, Massachusetts Archives, Boston.
6. Bernard Bailyn, New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1955), 46;
7. Darrett B. Rutman, Winthrop's Boston: Portrait of a Puritan Town (New York, 1965), 183;
8. John McCusker and Russell Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill, 1984), 95;
9. Margaret Ellen Newell, From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England (Ithaca, 1998), 54.
10. Hosmer (ed.), Winthrop's Journal, II, 23-24;
11. Daniel Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1850 (Chapel Hill, 1994), 98;
12. Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth (New York, 1995), 288;
13. Newell, From Dependency to Independence, 55;
14. Rutman, Winthrop's Boston, 184;
15. Charles Carroll, The Timber Economy of Puritan New England (Providence, 1975), 82-83.
16. For a summary of the problems surrounding the export-centered approach, see James Sheridan, "The Domestic Economy," in Jack P. Greene and Jack Richon Pole (eds.), Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (Baltimore, 1984) 43-44.
17. See also Marc Egnal, New World Economies: The Growth of the Thirteen Colonies and Early Canada (New York, 1998), 4-21.
18. A more thorough discussion of the historiographical problem can be found in McWilliams, "From the Ground Up: Internal Economic Development and Local Exchange in the Massachusetts Bay Region, 1630-1710," unpub. Ph.D diss. (Johns Hopkins University, 2001), 1-22.
19. Bailyn, New England Merchants, 85-86;
20. Carroll, Timber Economy, 80-83;
21. Hosmer (ed.), Winthrop's Journal, II, 406, 458, 573, 722;
22. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen, 101.
23. More systematic evidence of export-trading activity can be found in several account books maintained by Bay Colony traders. See McWilliams, "From the Ground Up," 268-364.
24. Carroll, Timber Economy, 82-83;
25. Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh, No Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean, 1624-1690 (New York, 1972), 269-270;
26. Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (London, 1657), 22-25;
27. Dalby Thomas, The Rise and Growth of the West-India Collonies (London, 1690), 16;
28. Eva Germaine Rimington Taylor, Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography (New York, 1968), 127.
29. Winthrop Papers, V, 172;
30. Richard Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies (New York, 1972), 67;
31. Carroll, Timber Economy, 80-84.
32. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 62, 67-68, 87;
33. Ligon, True History of Barbados, 24, 85-86, 95;
34. Dunn, "Barbados Census of 1680," William and Mary Quarterly, XXVI (1969), 3-30;
35. Hilary McD. Beckles, "The Two-Hundred Year War: Slave Resistance in the British West Indies - An Overview of the Historiography, "Jamaican Historical Review, XIII (1982), 1-8;
36. idem, Hilary McD. Beckles "The Economic Origins of Black Slavery in the British West Indies, 1640-1680: A Tentative Analysis of the Barbados Model, "Journal of Caribbean History, XVI (1982), 36-56;
37. Elsa V. Goveia, A Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies to the End of the Nineteenth Century (Mexico City, 1956);
38. Greene, "Society and Economy in the British Caribbean during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," American Historical Review, LXXIX (1974), 1499-1517;
39. Bridenbaughs, No Peace Beyond the Line, 269-270.
40. Winthrop Papers, V, 172;
41. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 67;
42. Greene, "Society and Economy";
43. Bridenbaugh, No Peace Beyond the Line;
44. Richard Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1625-1775 (St. Lawrence, Barbados, 1974).
45. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 62, 67-68, 87;
46. Ligon, True History of Barbados, 24, 85-86, 95;
47. Dunn, "Barbados Census of 1680," 3-30.
48. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle (eds.), The Journal of John Winthrop (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 692-693 (April-March 1648): "By 1647 the Barbados planters had discovered how to cultivate sugar cane; converting most of their land to this immensely profitable cash crop, they imported slave labor from Africa and provisions from Britain and New England." New England had overcome the depression well before 1647.
49. George Francis Dow (ed), Records and Files of the Quarterly Court of Essex County (Salem, 1911-1916), I-IX;
50. McWilliams, "From the Ground Up," 158-214.
51. Contemporary commentators regularly attributed seagoing mishaps to inexperience. William Hubbard, A General History of New England (Boston, 1815), attribued mishaps to "want of experience and judgement in things of such a nature" (II). Two fishermen drowned in Massachusetts Bay "for not being acquainted with the channel" (196).
52. Dunn, Savage, and Yeandle (eds.), Journal of John Winthrop (October 10, 1646; January 1647), 684-687.
53. Journal of John Winthrop Ibid., 386 (January-February 1642).
54. The shipbuilding industry in New England remains an underexamined topic, but the following works provide a good introduction: Innes, Creating the Commonwealth, 270-279;
55. Joseph A. Goldenberg, Shipbuilding in Colonial America (Charlottesville, 1976), 37;
56. Bernard Bailyn and Lotte Bailyn, Massachusetts Shipping, 1697-1714: A Statistical Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 100-105;
57. Ralph A. Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1962);
58. Carroll, Timber Economy, 68-71.
59. Dunn, Savage, and Yeandle (eds.), Journal of John Winthrop, 384 (December-January 1642).
60. Dunn, Savage, and Yeandle (eds.), Journal of John Winthrop (October-December 1640), 340.
61. Innes, Creating the Commonwealth, 276.
62. For the origins of the linkage concept, see Albert O. Hirschman, The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven, 1958). In Innes' words, Hirschman "contends that the creation of backward and forward linkages produces an economic dynamic that is considerably greater than the sum of its parts" (383, n. 18).
63. Records of Salem Massachusetts, I, 1634-1659, Essex Institute Historical Collections (Salem, 1868), I, 98-164.
64. Further insights into early Salem can be found in Joseph Felt, Annals of Salem (Salem, 1845), 167-176;
65. Vital Records of Salem, Massachusetts (Salem, 1916), I;
66. Sidney Perley, The History of Salem, Massachusetts (Salem, 1924), I.
67. Franklin J. Waters, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay, 1655-1700 (Ipswich, 1905), 21, 77-81.
68. Other useful sources for early Ipswich include Felt, Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton (Ipswich, 1966);
69. Vital Records of Ipswich, Massachusetts (Salem, 1910), I.
70. Waters, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay, 21, 77-81.
71. Amos Everett Jewett, Rowley, Massachusetts, 1639-1850 (Rowley, 1946), 176;
72. Amos Everett Jewett, idem, The Early Settlers of Rowley, Massachusetts (Ipswich, 1932);
73. Vital Records of Rowley, Massachusetts to the End of the Year 1849 (Salem, 1928).
74. Pricilla Sawyer Lord and Virginia Clegg Gamage, Marblehead (Philadelphia, 1972), 23-25;
75. Thomas Gray, The Founding of Marblehead (Baltimore, 1984), 12-16;
76. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen, 91-108.
77. Marblehead Town Records, Essex Institute Historical Collections, LXIX, 212
78. (reprinted in Gray, Founding of Marblehead, 22-23).
79. For information about Salem's early relationship with Marblehead, see Essex Institute Historical Collections, LXIX, 208.
80. Gray, Founding of Marblehead, 26-27.
81. Marblehead Town Records, 212-213;
82. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen, 95;
83. Inness, Creating the Commonwealth, 288;
84. Newell, From Dependency to Independence, 56-59.
85. Marblehead Town Records, 210.
86. Jewett, Rowley, 210-213.
87. Jewett, Rowley, 210-213. Ibid.
88. Rowley Town Records, as partially excerpted in Jewett, Rowley, ibid., 156-157.
89. Jewett, Rowley, Ibid., 159.
90. The Records of the Town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1703 (Cambridge, 1901), 43-45 (November 10, 1640);
91. Luciius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877 (Boston, 1877).
92. Cambridge Town Records, 57-59 (January 11 and March 8, 1646);
93. Cambridge Town Records, 49 (November 13, 1643);
94. Cambridge Town Records, 52 (February 12, 1645).