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Economic Growth in Colonial New England: “Statistical Renaissance”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Terry L. Anderson
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Abstract

During the past few years new measures of growth have begun to emerge for the colonial period in American history which allow us to understand more fully the pace and pattern of long-run economic growth. This essay summarizes what we know about colonial growth and discusses rates of growth during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After summarizing previous work on the subject, the paper estimates eighteenth-century agricultural productivity in one New England county. Data on total wealth, livestock, crops, land, and agricultural capital are generated from estate inventories. A consumer price index for the period also is constructed. From these data it appears that the seventeenth century experienced growth comparable to modern times, whereas the eighteenth century was a bleak period in our history. Although real wealth per inventory grew at a rate of 0.5 percent per year during the eighteenth century, agricultural productivity declined at a rate of 0.8 percent.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 243 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1979

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References

1 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, 1 and 2 (Washington, D.C., 1976).Google Scholar

2 For examples of more recent work on colonial population see Anderson, Terry L. and Thomas, Robert Paul, “White Population, Labor Force, and Extensive Growth of the New England Economy in the Seventeenth Century,” This JOURNAL, 33 (09. 1972)Google Scholar; and “The Growth of Population and Labor Force in the nth-Century Chesapeake,” Explorations in Economic History, 15 (06 1978)Google Scholar; Land, Aubrey C., Green, Lois, and Papenfuse, Edward C., eds., Law, Society, and Politics in Early Maryland (Baltimore, 1977)Google Scholar; Smith, Daniel Scott, “The Demographic History of Colonial New England,” this JOURNAL, 32 (03. 1972), 165–83;Google Scholarand Smith, Daniel Blake, “Mortality and Family in the Colonial Chesapeake,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 8 (Winter 1978)Google Scholar.

3 For the pathbreaking work in this area see Jones, Alice Hanson, “Wealth Estimates for the American Middle Colonies, 1774,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 18 (06 1970)Google Scholar; “Wealth Estimates for the New England Colonies about 1770,” this JOURNAL, 32 (03. 1972)Google Scholar; and American Colonial Wealth: Documents and Methods (New York, 1977).Google ScholarAlso see Anderson, Terry L., “Wealth Estimates for the New England Colonies, 1650-1709,” Explorations in Economic History, 12 (1975), 151–76;Google ScholarKelly, Kevin Peter, “Economic and Social Development of Seventeenth-Century Surry County, Virginia,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1972Google Scholar; Main, Gloria Lund, “Personal Wealth in Colonial America: Explorations in the Use of Probate Records from Maryland and Massachusetts, 1650-1720,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1970Google Scholar; and Menard, Russell Robert, “Economy and Society in Early Colonial Maryland,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1975Google Scholar.

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36 For detailed discussion of the problems with the use of probates see Jones, “Wealth Estimates for the American Middle Colonies”; and Main, “Personal Wealth in Colonial America.”

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49 , Anderson, The Economic Growth, p. 112.Google Scholar

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