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By the late 17th century, Virginia's export economy was largely based on tobacco, and new, richer settlers came in to take up large portions of land, build large plantations and import indentured servants and slaves. In 1676, Bacon's Rebellion occurred, but was suppressed by royal officials.
- Timeline of Colonial America
July 4: Adoption of the United States Declaration of...
- Bacon's Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion held by Virginia...
- Timeline of Colonial America
The economic history of the United States began with British settlements along the Eastern seaboard in the 17th and 18th centuries. After 1700, the United States gained population rapidly, and imports as well as exports grew along with it.
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Long Term Economic Growth – 1860–1965: A Statistical Compendium. Business Booms and Depressions since 1775, a chart of the past trend of price inflation, federal debt, business, national income, stocks and bond yields for the United States from 1775 to 1943. Budget of the United States Government.
- Pre-European Technology
- Colonial Era
- Technological Systems and Infrastructure
- Effects of Industrialization
- Military-Industrial-Academic Complex
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North America has been inhabited continuously since approximately 4,000 BC. The earliest inhabitants were nomadic, big-game hunter-gatherers who crossed the Bering land bridge. These first Native Americans relied upon chipped-stone spearheads, rudimentary harpoons, and boats clad in animal hides for hunting in the Arctic. As they dispersed within t...
Agriculture
In the 17th century, Pilgrims, Puritans, and Quakers fleeing religious persecution in Europe brought with them plowshares, guns, and domesticated animals like cows and pigs. These immigrants and other European colonists initially farmed subsistence crops like corn, wheat, rye, and oats as well as rendering potash and maple syrup for trade. Due to the more temperate climate, large-scale plantations in the American South grew labor-intensive cash crops like sugarcane, rice, cotton, and tobaccor...
Artisanship
Colonial artisanship emerged slowly as the market for advanced craftsmanship was small. American artisans developed a more relaxed (less regulated) version of the Old World apprenticeship system for educating and employing the next generation. Despite the fact that mercantilist, export-heavy economy impaired the emergence of a robust self-sustaining economy, craftsmen and merchants developed a growing interdependence on each other for their trades. In the mid-18th century, attempts by the Bri...
Silver working
Colonial Virginia provided a potential market of rich plantations. At least 19 silversmiths worked in Williamsburgbetween 1699 and 1775. The best-known were James Eddy (1731–1809) and his brother-in-law William Wadill, also an engraver. Most planters, however, purchased English-made silver. In Boston, goldsmiths and silversmithswere stratified. The most prosperous were merchant-artisans, with a business outlook and high status. Most craftsmen were laboring artisans who either operated small s...
The period after the American Civil War was marked by increasing intense and pervasive industrialization and successive technological advances like the railroad, telegraph & telephone, and internal combustion engine. This facilitated America's westward expansionand economic development by connecting the frontier with the industrial, financial, and ...
Agricultural production
In the 1840s, as more and more western states joined the Union, many poor and middle-class Americans increasingly agitated for free land in these large, undeveloped areas. Early efforts to pass a Homestead Act by George Henry Evans and Horace Greeley were stymied by Southern states who feared that free land would threaten the plantation system. The Homestead Act was passed in 1862 after the opposing Southern states had seceded. The Homestead Act granted 160 acres (65 hectares) to farmers who...
Urbanization
The period between 1865 and 1920 was marked by the increasing concentration of people, political power, and economic activity in urban areas. In 1860, there were nine cities with populations over 100,000 and by 1910 there were fifty. These new large cities were not coastal port cities (like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia) but laid inland along new transportation routes, including Chicago, Cleveland, and Denver. The first twelve presidents of the United Stateshad all been born into farming...
Labor issues and immigration
As the nation deepened its technological base, old-fashioned artisans and craftsmen became "deskilled" and replaced by specialized workers and engineers who used machines to replicate in minutes or hours work that would require a journeyman hours or days to complete. Frederick W. Taylor, recognizing the inefficiencies introduced by some production lines, proposed that by studying the motions and processes necessary to manufacture each component of a product, reorganizing the factory and manuf...
In the 20th century, the pace of technological developments increasingly became tied into a complex set of interactions between Congress, the industrial manufacturers, university research, and the military establishment. This set of relations, known more popularly as the "military-industrial complex," emerged because the military's unique technolog...
Health care and biotechnology
As in physics and chemistry, Americans have dominated the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine since World War II. The private sector has been the focal point for biomedical research in the United States, and has played a key role in this achievement. As of 2000, for-profit industry funded 57%, non-profit private organizations funded 7%, and the tax-funded National Institutes of Health funded 36% of medical research in the U.S.Funding by private industry increased 102% from 1994 to 2003. Th...
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Bartlett, Louisa (1984), "American Silver", Bulletin (St. Louis Art Museum), St. Louis: St. Louis Art Museum, 17 (1): 1–60, JSTOR 40716254Burian, Steven J.; Nix, Stephan J.; Pitt, Robert E.; Durrans, S. Rocky (2000). "Urban Wastewater Management in the United States: Past, Present, and Future" (PDF). Journal of Urban Technology. 7 (3...Cowan, Ruth Schwartz (1997), A Social History of American Technology, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-504605-6Martello, Robert (2010), Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn: Paul Revere and the Growth of American Enterprise, Balitimore: Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology, ISBN 9781421401003Cross, Gary; Szostak, Rich (2004), Technology and American Society, New York: Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-189643-1Cutcliffe, Stephen H.; Reynolds, Terry S. (1997), Technology & American History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-71027-0Deitch, Joanne Weisman (2001), A Nation of Inventors, Carlisle, Massachusetts: Discovery Enterprises, ISBN 978-1-57960-077-8Field, Alexander J. (2011), A Great Leap Forward: 1930s Depression and U.S. Economic Growth, New Haven, London: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-15109-1Spain, France, and especially England explored and claimed parts of the region. Starting in the 17th century, the history of the Southern United States developed unique characteristics that came from its economy based primarily on plantation agriculture and the ubiquitous and prevalent institution of slavery.
The U.S. economy was primarily agricultural in the early 19th century. [8] [9] Westward expansion, including the Louisiana Purchase and American victory in the War of 1812 plus the building of canals and the introduction of steamboats opened up new areas for agriculture.
