कोप्लोनिअल period

Most businesses in the colonial era were small family-run farms or shops. Today we tend to think of households as units of consumption, but in the colonial era they were also units of production. Husbands, wives, and children labored to produce goods for their own consumption and for trade. Even the largest businesses in America at that time—the tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations of the South—were family owned. Profits from the sale of these goods in international markets enabled planters to buy up more land and to staff it with indentured servants and slaves. These businesses, which could include thousands of hectares (thousands of acres) of land scattered across several counties and hundreds of slaves, were often owned by one family.Those who lived in the Northern colonies did not have such a clear route to wealth and power. The most successful Northern colonists were merchants, which in the colonial era meant that they engaged in international trade. They located markets for the colonists’ exports and imported the textiles, hardware, tea, and other goods that enriched colonial life. These merchants were classic middlemen, arranging financing and shipping services so that the goods could go from sellers to buyers.Colonial trade involved extraordinary risk. Wars, frequent economic depressions, and intense competition made international trade hazardous, especially for American colonial merchants who lacked sufficient wealth to buffer themselves from misfortune. Just about all merchants went bankrupt or flirted with bankruptcy sometime in their lives. But the rewards were worth it; a few lucrative voyages and a merchant could buy a townhouse, a carriage, perhaps a summer retreat. The merchant could climb the social ladder and circulate among the powerful in this highly materialistic society. This prospect of riches and the honor that accompanied them made American colonists willing to engage in highly speculative enterprises, such as shipping flour to the West Indies or importing goods from England by the thousands without being certain of their ability to resell those goods.