Abstract
This chapter begins with an explanation of how the Caribbean sugar industry developed and of its importance to the Atlantic economy as a whole. This is followed by a discussion of the ways in which this industry’s growth, the concurrent imperial warfare, and local public policies influenced the patterns of population growth in the British North American colonies. The initial perspective encompasses the development of the Middle Atlantic and New England regions and their principal port cities, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Then, the focus narrows onto New York and an analysis of why this City grew relatively slowly before about 1763 and why immigration accelerated thereafter. The chapter concludes with a review of the economic and political influences that positioned New York City as the central metropolis of a region extending from the headwaters of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers to Montauk Point on Long Island and from New Haven, Connecticut, to the Raritan River valley in New Jersey.
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- 1.
1800 U.S. Census, population of New York and Kings Counties.
- 2.
By 1760, New York City’s economic hinterland included the Hudson Valley, the lower Mohawk River valley, and most of Long Island, northeastern New Jersey and southwestern Connecticut. Assume, therefore, that the population the City’s hinterland included all New Yorkers plus half of New Jersey’s and one-quarter of Connecticut’s populations. Philadelphia’s hinterland at the time encompassed all of Pennsylvania’s population, the other half of New Jersey’s, all of Delaware’s, and, perhaps, 10% of Maryland’s.
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Gurwitz, A. (2019). An Island in the Center of Its Hinterland. In: Atlantic Metropolis. Palgrave Studies in American Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13352-8_2
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