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.4The sources of this remarkable prosperity lay in a combination of the demands forfood and other commodities on the part of the burgeoning population and in growing Diversity and unity in early North America 34overseas markets for colonial products.Though the proportion of income gained throughexports declined over time, it was still substantial in 1770.Exports of all varieties,including ships and shipping services and those vended in both overseas and coastaltrades, may have contributed from 17 to 19 percent of total income.The annual averageworth of the six highest-valued commodities exported over the five years 1768 72 wereas follows: tobacco, £766,000; shipping earnings, £610,000; bread and flour, £412,000;rice, £312,000; dried fish, £287,000; and indigo, £117,000.The Chesapeake wasresponsible for 42 percent of total exports, twice the figure for the Lower South and theMiddle Colonies and more than two and a half times that for New England.The value ofexports per capita and per free white resident increased from North to South, reflectingthe greater per capita wealth of the free white populations of those regions.5A substantial rise in colonial buying power occurred on the eve of the AmericanRevolution.The Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake, and New England all took somewhatless than a third and the Lower South somewhat more than a tenth of total commodityimports into the continental colonies.The Chesapeake had the highest average value ofimports per free white resident, followed by the Lower South, New England, and theMiddle Colonies in that order.The Chesapeake and the Lower South still had a favorablebalance of exports over imports, but the Middle Colonies imported commodities worthmore than twice as much as those they exported, and New England, which displayed asubstantial deficit in food production during the late colonial period, imported nearlythree times as much as it exported.Yet both the Middle Colonies and New England seemto have made up a considerable proportion of these deficits, perhaps as much as 60percent, by invisible earnings derived from the sale of ships and shipping and othermerchandizing services.Both import and export figures reflect the development of aconsiderable coastwise trade among the colonies.Though all four regions participated inthis trade, it was dominated by New England and the Middle Colonies, and it marked theearly stages in the articulation of an integrated American economy through whichproducts from all regions were widely distributed for domestic consumption on acontinental scale.6As McCusker and Menard have remarked, these figures describe a strong, flexible,and diverse economy& able to operate without a considerable metropolitan subsidy, atleast in peace time.In stark contrast to the situation during the first generations ofsettlement, none of these continental regions relied heavily on foreign investment.Rather,they accumulated most of their capital on their own through the productivity of theirinhabitants, savings, and capital improvements, developments that were also reflected inthe emergence of a resident and highly skilled commercial sector.The impressiveperformance of the economies of every one of these regions in turn probably alsoheralded, to one degree or another, increased specialization of production and aconsequent lowering of production costs; improvements in transportation and a resultingdecline in distribution costs; advances in human capital, including rising technicalexpertise; improvements in economic organization; and at least some technologicaladvances such as occurred in shipbuilding and shipping.7This impressive demographic, territorial, and economic growth supported anincreasingly complex society with an ever larger range, more dense distribution, andmore deeply established agglomeration of social institutions.These included families andkinship groups; neighborhoods and hamlets; stores and artisanal establishments; local Convergence: development of an American society 35judicial and administrative institutions; churches; transportation facilities, includingroads, bridges, ferries, and a few canals; and a variety of cultural institutions, includingschools, libraries, clubs, and other social organizations.Although many of theseinstitutions were well represented in the countryside, others, including especiallycommercial and artisanal establishments and cultural institutions, were most fullydeveloped in the towns.The extensive spread of population and the continuing rustication process itrepresented meant that as the eighteenth century proceeded, a declining proportion of thepopulation lived in towns.Yet substantial urbanization occurred in all of the older settledareas, especially after 1720.Boston was the largest colonial town into the 1740s, when itspopulation leveled off to between 15,000 and 16,000, where it remained for the rest of thecolonial period
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