The Frontier in American HistoryTurner, Frederick Jackson
History
The Frontier in American History
Turner, Frederick Jackson
Frontier and pioneer life -- United States; Frontier thesis; United States -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion
III. The Old West began the movement of internal trade which developed
home markets and diminished that colonial dependence on Europe in
industrial matters shown by the maritime and staple-raising sections.
Not only did Boston and other New England towns increase as trading
centers when the back country settled up, but an even more significant
interchange occurred along the Valley and Piedmont. The German farmers
of the Great Valley brought their woven linen, knitted stockings,
firkins of butter, dried apples, grain, etc., to Philadelphia and
especially to Baltimore, which was laid out in 1730. To this city also
came trade from the Shenandoah Valley, and even from the Piedmont came
peltry trains and droves of cattle and hogs to the same market.[108:1]
The increase of settlement on the upper James resulted in the
establishment of the city of Richmond at the falls of the river in 1737.
Already the tobacco-planting aristocracy of the lowlands were finding
rivals in the grain-raising area of interior Virginia and Maryland.
Charleston prospered as the up-country of the Carolinas grew. Writing in
the middle of the eighteenth century, Governor Glenn, of South Carolina,
explained the apparent diminution of the colony's shipping thus:[108:2]
Our trade with New York and Philadelphia was of this sort,
draining us of all the little money and bills that we could
gather from other places, for their bread, flour, beer, hams,
bacon, and other things of their produce, all which, except
beer, our new townships begin to supply us with which are
settled with very industrious and consequently thriving
Germans.
It was not long before this interior trade produced those rivalries for
commercial ascendancy, between the coastwise cities, which still
continue. The problem of internal improvements became a pressing one,
and the statutes show increasing provision for roads, ferries, bridges,
river improvements, etc.[109:1] The basis was being laid for a national
economy, and at the same time a new source for foreign export was
created.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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