The University of Maine DigitalCommons@UMaine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fogler Library Summer 8-23-2019 Feeding the Empire: Grain, Warfare, and the Persistence of the British Atlantic Economy, 1765-1815 Patrick Callaway University of Maine, patrick.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.edu/etd Recommended Citation Callaway, Patrick, "Feeding the Empire: Grain, Warfare, and the Persistence of the British Atlantic Economy, 1765-1815" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations.edu/etd/3092 This Open-Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact um.
FEEDING THE EMPIRE: GRAIN, WARFARE, AND THE PERSISTENCE OF THE BRITISH ATLANTIC ECONOMY, 1765-1815 By Patrick Callaway B. University of Montana-Western, 2004 B. University of Montana-Western, 2005 M. Montana State University, 2008 A DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (in History) The Graduate School The University of Maine August 2019 Advisory Committee: Liam Riordan, Professor of History, Advisor Jacques Ferland, Associate Professor of History Stephen Hornsby, Professor of Geography and Canadian Studies Stephen Miller, Professor of History Scott See, Professor of History Copyright 2019, Patrick Callaway All Rights Reserved ii FEEDING THE EMPIRE: GRAIN, WARFARE, AND THE PERSISTANCE OF THE BRITISH ATALNTIC ECONOMY, 1765-1815 By Patrick Callaway Dissertation Advisor: Dr.
Liam Riordan An Abstract of the Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History August 2019 The importance of staple agriculture in the development of the modern world can hardly be overstated. The connotations surrounding the word “bread” and the phrase “staff of life” bear witness to the close association between the availability of grain and the overall well-being of western societies. It is not a coincidence that bread is both an important religious symbol and a causal force in the maintenance or collapse of entire societies. This dissertation aspires to provide a clearer understanding of the leading place of overseas trade in the American economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by showing how European war restored colonial trade relationships and reintegrated the US into trans-Atlantic and international economic exchanges led by grain exports.
By challenging the assumption that the rupture of the American Revolution led naturally to economic separation, this project argues that material forces and long-standing cultural ties were more powerful than politics in shaping the contours of the British Atlantic world in the nineteenth century. Assessing the political economy of the grain trade deepens our understanding of the late colonial and early republican US. Grain was also vital to the British Atlantic and British North American economy of this era. The inherent difficulties of overcoming national, imperial, and war-divided historiographies conceals grain from our easy gaze.
Mistaken ideas of periodization and politically inspired limitations to historical assessments ultimately hide connections that were fundamental at the time. The availability of surplus grain, particularly from the mid-Atlantic colonies in what would become the United States, were essential to the viability of societies around the British Atlantic. Simply stated, without food society ceases to function. Ideology falls to the wayside, plantations cease production, populations collapse, and long-distance warfare becomes impossible.
Examining the availability of food products, the laws enabling or limiting trade, and the extraordinary (and sometimes illegal) steps taken to ensure that the staff of life was available to fuel social development was crucial to the rise of Anglo-American power in a tumultuous Age of Atlantic Revolutions whose political drama should not completely eclipse its economic foundations. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A project of this size and length creates a number of debts for the author. First, I would like to thank my committee members for their work over the past several years. In particular, I would like to thank my adviser Dr.
Without his keen insight this project would not have been possible. I would also like to thank a number of supporters over the past several years. Particular thanks is owed to the Canadian American Centre at the University of Maine, the University of Maine History Department, the Program in Early American Economy and Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the David Library of the American Revolution, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Graduate School of the University of Maine for supporting this research. I would also like to thank Fulbright Canada, and the History Department at Dalhousie University for their support in completing this project.
In particular, I wish to thank Dr. Jerry Bannister for hosting me during my Fulbright award. I also thank the Provincial Archives of Nova Scotia, the Library and Archives of Canada, the Library Company of Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the David Library of the American Revolution. Without the help of dedicated archivists, this project would not be possible.
At a personal level I also owe many debts from the past several years of this degree. Special thanks to Brittany and Chris Goetting for the friendship and support over the years. Thank you also to my colleagues in the University of Maine history program during this long journey. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.
iii LIST OF TABLES. THE GRAIN TRADE IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES, 1768-1793: THE STAFF OF LIFE AND PERSISTANCE OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. BRITISH NORTH AMERICAN AGRICULTURE, THE GRAIN TRADE, AND THE NEW EMPIRE TO 1794 .73 New France and Quebec, 1749-1768 .77 Quebec and Nova Scotia: The CO 16 Records (1768-1772) .83 The War For American Independence and Economic Reformulation.88 Upper and Lower Canadian Agriculture, 1783-1793 .94 Nova Scotia Agriculture, 1783-1793. THE OPPROTUNITIES AND COSTS OF NEUTRALITY, 1793-1809.
BRITISH NORTH AMERICA, 1794-1809 .154 The Embargo, Enforcement, and Smuggling to the Canadas .157 Smuggling to the Maritime Provinces by Sea. THE UNITED STATES AND THE PENINSULAR WAR. SMUGGLING, WAR, AND THE UNUSUAL (BUT FAMILIAR) SOLUTION TO HUNGER, 1809-1815………………….217 The War of 1812: Trade During the War Years .227 1812-13: Halifax and the Maritime Trade. 232 1812-13: The Canadas and Cross-border Trade .241 1813: Halifax and the Maritime Trade.250 1814: Halifax and the Maritime Trade.255 1814: The Canadas and Cross-Border Trade .257 1814: Halifax and Maritime Trade (Part 2) .262 1815: Peace, and a Return to Normalcy.274 BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR .293 v LIST OF TABLES Table 2.
Exports to the British and Foreign West Indies, 1768-1772. Exports to Southern Europe, 1768-1772. Exports to Ireland, 1768-1772. Exports to Great Britain, 1768-1772.
American Grain Exports by Year, 1791-1793. American Exports by Destination, 1790-1793. Net Exports and Imports from/to Quebec, 1768-1772. Net Exports and Imports from/to Halifax, 1768-1772.
US Grain Exports, 1793-1796. Commodities Exported to the West Indies, 1793-96 by Total and Percentage of Total US Exports. Commodities Exported to Iberia and Southern Europe, 1793-96 by Total and Percentage of Total US Exports. Commodities Exported to Great Britain and Ireland, 1793-96 by Total and Percentage of Total US Exports.
Commodities Exported to Europe, 1793-96 by Total and Percentage of Total US Exports. American Grain Exports by Year, 1797-1800. US Exports by Market, 1797-1800. US Flour Exports (Barrels), 1800-1803.
US Flour Exports, (Barrels), 1805-07. US Grain Exports to Iberia, 1809-1811. US Grain Exports to Iberia, 1812-14. Halifax Imports from the US, September-December 1813 .254 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The importance of staple agriculture in the development of the modern world can hardly be overstated.
The rise of the west and the expansion of Europe relied upon various grain products, among which corn, wheat, and rice relatively quickly became the staples that fed the majority of the world’s population. The connotations surrounding the word “bread” and the phrase “staff of life” bear witness to the close association between the availability of grain and the overall well-being of western societies. It is not a coincidence that bread is both an important religious symbol and a causal force in the maintenance or collapse of entire societies. Unlike other commodities, there is no substitute for grain.
If adequate supplies are not or cannot be grown locally, surpluses from another region must be imported. Control of grain carries political consequences of the highest order. Despite the importance of subsistence as the foundation for all economic and political relationships, this is a relatively neglected subject of study. Few historians think of bread or grain as significant until there is a supply or distribution crisis that causes chaos.
Understanding the trans-Atlantic and circum-Atlantic grain trade is vital to understanding how the early modern Atlantic world functioned. 1 1 Three quite different studies make plain the crucial place of subsistence agriculture for the rise of the west. See the condemnation of the origins of sedentary agriculture and early state formation in James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017); the classic view of environmental historian Alfred W.
Crosby’s Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed, 2004); and the outcome of North American colonization as foreordained by the disparities in the timing of the Neolithic Revolution in Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004). 1 This dissertation examines the production and export of grain and related food commodities from the mainland British North American colonies (and subsequently the United States) throughout the Atlantic world in a period of sustained warfare from 1765 to 1815. It bridges the long-standing political periodization that separates the late colonial and early republican periods of US history as well as the American-Canadian divide to argue for the persistence and even expansion of late-colonial Anglo-American economic integration into the nineteenth century. Three related investigations shape this project.
First, it explores trade patterns before and after the American Revolution by analyzing merchant documents and government trade records about grain, a staple foodstuff. The contours of colonial trade for 1768-1772 are particularly well known due to the rich American Board of Customs records, however, a systemic examination of how the Revolutionary political transformation changed the grain trade remains elusive. This is particularly true of the key role that “American” grain played in supporting the northernmost British colonies that remained within the empire and later became Canada. 2 Second, the dissertation examines the slow growth of grain production in and exports from British North America in the post-Revolutionary period, and the implications this had for US commerce.
British North America possessed limited agricultural potential, primarily due to ecological factors, made dire when its population boomed due to the loyalist migration that outstripped the existing capacity of subsistence farming. Ironically, US independence linked British North America more firmly to the American economy than prior to the Revolution, a bond that persisted through the War of 1812 and beyond. Grain production shortages in British North America led British authorities to encourage economic reconciliation with the US to 2 See John McCusker and Russell Menard, The Economy of British North America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985). 2 access essential grain, which caused a divergence between British political objectives and foreign policy, on the one hand, and the pragmatic needs and economic interests of British officials, the military, and settlers in North America, on the other.
This key tension also shaped the emergent US political economy as Federalist and Democratic-Republican administrations struggled to navigate reintegration into the British Atlantic economy, which especially exposes how the Jeffersonian goal of political neutrality in its foreign policy was undermined by a desperate need for external markets to restart the war-ravaged economy. This critical tension informed key developments from the Peace Treaty of 1783, to the Embargo of 1807, the War of 1812, and its aftermath. The third major theme examined here is the role played by US grain exports to Iberia to sustain the allied British forces in the Peninsular War from 1809 to 1813.