History 2700    Fall 2004  MacKay 

Week 3
Colonial America/ Subsistence Economy/Mercantilism

           

Mercantilism: From the 15th to the 18th century, when the modern nation-state was being born, mercantilism developed as an economic system based on:

  1. private property.
  2.  the use of markets for basic organization of economic activity.
  3. a focus on self-interest of the sovereign (the state), not the self-interest of the individual owners of economic resources B therefore, the basic purpose of economic policy being to strengthen the national state and to further its aims.
  4. the government exercising much control over production, exchange, and consumption.
  5. the state being preoccupied with accumulating national wealth in form of gold and silver.
  6. the best way to acquire gold and silver being through trade B a surplus of exports over imports--and establishing colonies.

Subsistence Economy-  the products are made not for sale but for consumption inside of economically closed producing unit (the family, the community); it is opposite the market economy, where the products of work are intended for sale in the market. 

Readings:  Major Problems: Chpt 2:  Documents 1, 2, 4, 6; Chpt. 3:Documents 1, 2, 3, 7, 8

Also: use the chart describing the English Colonies.
Also: short article on Atlantic Slave trade: http://encarta.msn.com/text_761595721___2/Atlantic_Slave_Trade.html

Of the 6.5 million immigrants who survived the crossing of the Atlantic and settled in the Western Hemisphere between 1492 and 1776, only 1 million were Europeans. The remaining 5.5 million were African. An average of 80 percent of these enslaved Africans—men, women, and children—were employed, mostly as field-workers. Women as well as children worked in some capacity. Only very young children (under six), the elderly, the sick, and the infirm escaped the day-to-day work routine.

Academic Journal/Response topic #4:  What was "mercantilism" and why did it encourage European countries to develop overseas empires?  Reference:

Richard Hakuyt's Discourse of Western Planting, 1584: http://www.ukans.edu/carrie/docs/texts/hakluyt.html

Academic Journal/Response topic #5: What was the "Middle Passage"? How is the enslavement  and diaspora of Africans by Europeans a dynamic of mercantilism?

For information about the Middle Passage, see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p277.html

Some useful Internet sites:

Archiving Early American History:
http://www.earlyamerica.com/

Workshop in Early American History (with images and documents)
http://loki.stockton.edu/~gilmorew/0colhis/c2wkshop.htm

Links to Sources for Early American History:
http://www.clements.umich.edu/Links/Histsub.html

A timeline for the Colonial Period from the History Place: http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/revolution/rev-early.htm