Margaret E. Newell’s monograph, From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England, depicts the development of colonial New England fiscal attitudes and industries from the Puritans initial settlement in the early 1600’s to the eve of the American Revolution. The term “development” is key in her study as it relates to “increased productivity, intensive improvement of land and resources, physical expansion, and diversification into manufactures and financial services” (5). Newell argues that changes in New England’s economy coincided with existing Puritan ideals, and produced a financial situation that rivaled Great Britain’s during the eighteenth century in both physical production and political economic ideology. This conundrum would eventually lead to the American Revolution, but also prepared the colony for its eventual leap into the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century.
Previous studies of New England’s colonial period have simply noted the unimpressive growth of the economy through population expansion; export potential, agricultural innovations, and British trade policy. This information, however, casts a constricted representation of the colonial economy, and ignores the important aspects of domestic production, social attitudes, and liberal fiscal policies. Newell illustrates these developments through a plethora of primary sources: business correspondents, family letters, sermons, pamphlets, newspapers, account books, court documents, colonial laws, and a handful of secondary sources. She funnels this massive amount of data into three sections that illustrate the key turning points in the colony’s political economy.
The first few chapters deal with the basic context of New England’s settlement by the Puritans in the 1620’s. Upon arrival to the New World, the Puritans constructed their society through religion, English social ideology, and the physical environment. They created strict fiscal regulations controlling almost all aspects of trade in hopes of producing a frugal and industrious atmosphere that was beneficial to the entire commonwealth. These policies, however, where unable to stimulate the economy when the wave of immigrants associated with the Great Migration slowed after 1640. In response to this depression local governments took on the responsibility of facilitating development of their economy. They presented new ideas through Puritan rhetoric that emphasized industry, productivity, and the common good. Private initiatives, for example, where given to entrepreneurs that built roads, inns, and other needed commodities. These liberal policies, unlike the old dogmatic laws, encouraged individuals through potential profits (industry) and their religious commitment to helping the community. It also produced an infrastructure and diversified the economy, which propelled New England to a key position of the Atlantic Trade. Finally, these regulations created the precedent for New England’s relationship between the government and its people throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
By 1690, New England had evolved into an increasingly diversified economy with trading networks spanning from the American interior to across the Atlantic. The people had grown used to governmental involvement in fiscal matters, and the majority had accepted the effects of earlier regulations as beneficial. When New England initially adopted paper money in 1690, the people saw it “as a tool of government finance and a temporary economic measure that depended on adequate backing and prompt redemption thorough taxes” (107). The need arose for this measure after the huge costs of imperial wars drained the money supply, and proved so popular that by 1712 a coalition of pro paper advocates had appeared. Paper supporters (farmers, internal traders, land speculators) hypothesized that an increase in internal trade and development, fueled by paper money, would eventually lead to a diversified interior capable of uniting with the foreign sector to produce a vibrant and strong economy. The most vociferous opponents of paper money were the Atlantic traders who saw the reduction of imports as the best way to stimulate the economy. Anti paper groups denounced the monetary policy for encouraging reckless consumption and borrowing that would hinder the balance of trade and tarnish existing English social orders. By mid 1700’s, these currency debates would encompass all levels of colonial society, and produced a new political and economical ideology throughout New England.
In the final part of her book, Newell argues that the political ramifications of the currency debate influenced New England’s response to the increase in British economic regulations during the imperial crisis. The ideals of free trade and internal development through economic diversification frequently conflicted with British fiscal policy. By 1770, New England began to theorize that the future of the colony would be crippled by Parliaments actions, and turned to economic sanctions in an attempt to change British policy. Colonial advocates of internal development saw this British boycott as an opportunity to further develop domestic manufacturing. Newell uses numerous primary sources supporting internal development to illustrate the possibility of plans for a post revolutionary New England that compensated for unavoidable loss of foreign trade. The political economic strategy created at this time would also have prepared New England for industrialization of the nineteenth century.
Newell’s thesis makes a compelling case and is well supported with strong primary sources. Her argument, however, is narrow and would not apply to the American colonies has a whole. Reading her book I began to question why the South would ever want to join the Revolution. The author could have denoted the correlation between these regions to further highlight the uniqueness of New England’s situation.
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