Colonial America

Fri, 30 Jan 1998 18:25:24 -0800
Paula Sherman (ishi@snet.net)

Hello,
I am a graduate student in Early American History at the University Of
Connecticut and am currently trying to find some resources or
discussions on the way that colonial America fits into world system
theory. There is a group of historians who say that colonial America was
capitalistic to begin with(which I am leaning towards), but just as many
say that it was not and only became capitalistic around 1815.

When you look at Virginia for example, colonist did not grow their own
food for over twenty years. They were too busy planting fields of
tobacco and stealing the food they needed from neighboring Native
Americans. Colonial leaders even passed laws trying to force farmers to
plant corn and other needed staples to feed the colony but colonists
simply refused.

But on the other side of the argument there were many farmers in the
back country who had no real connection with the market economy. Is it
accurate to say that every single exchange or barter that took place in
a community was of a capitalist nature?

The other thing that puzzles me is that when you look at the uneven
development of the colonies, it seems to fit the model. The colonies
were started as a post for exporting raw resources back to Europe. Much
of these resources(including of course those extracted from Latin
America) helped to fuel the Industrial Revolution. The places that
developed the quickest like Boston, the Chesapeake, Charlestown, etc..,
were all caught up in capitalism from almost the begining. The interior
did not develop and many historians explain this as a problem of
transportation of goods over rough territory. It was just too costly to
transport some goods to coastal markets so they traded within the
community.

But how is this really different from the uneven development that has
plagued Latin America? Development there followed the same pattern.
Areas that developed the quickest were always caught up in capitalism
and producing for export.

This is something that I really want to understand as a historian of
early America. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated since I
cannot find any resources that deal with colonial America in the context
of world system theory.

Thanks,
Paula Sherman
ishi@snet.net