Commerce and Trade in Colonial America: 1609 to 1789

Abstract

The great migration of Europeans from the Old World to the New that began as a trickle in the sixteenth century continued for the next three centuries, often achieving the status of a flood. The early settlers, regardless of their reasons for giving up everything they knew to migrate to the Americas and other emerging colonies, soon established a business system and institutions similar to the ones they knew at home. However, it was not long before the colonial business system took on a character of its own, one that was best suited to the exigencies of poor internal transportation, isolated settlements, and the mercantilist policies of the mother country (McAllister 1989).