Book contents
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume I
- General Introduction: What is America and the World?
- Introduction: What Does America and the World “Mean” before 1825?
- Part I Geographies
- Part II People
- Part III Empires
- Part IV Circulation/Connections
- 13 West Africa, 1500–1825
- 14 The Commercial Worlds of Early America
- 15 Uncertain America: Settler Colonies, the Circulation of Ideas, and the Vexed Situation of Early American Thought
- 16 America and the Pacific: The View from the Beach
- Part V Institutions
- Part VI Revolutions
- Index
14 - The Commercial Worlds of Early America
from Part IV - Circulation/Connections
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2021
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume I
- General Introduction: What is America and the World?
- Introduction: What Does America and the World “Mean” before 1825?
- Part I Geographies
- Part II People
- Part III Empires
- Part IV Circulation/Connections
- 13 West Africa, 1500–1825
- 14 The Commercial Worlds of Early America
- 15 Uncertain America: Settler Colonies, the Circulation of Ideas, and the Vexed Situation of Early American Thought
- 16 America and the Pacific: The View from the Beach
- Part V Institutions
- Part VI Revolutions
- Index
Summary
By the eighteenth century, North America thrived on its global commercial connections. For colonists like Benjamin Fuller, a Philadelphia dealer, and Thomas Nightingale, a South Carolina trader, these connections were the engine of their working lives. Over the middle of the eighteenth century, both men constructed complex business networks as they made their way by buying and selling a huge variety of commodities with an equally eclectic variety of people. Their complicated networks were the matter of which early American commercial connectivity was constituted, and they illustrate how Americans’ trading worlds were a complex combination of overseas, hemispheric, and continental ties.
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- The Cambridge History of America and the World , pp. 314 - 335Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022