Abstract

"Private Enterprise, Public Benefits: Colonial American Road Building and Global Markets"

Jeremy Land, University of Helsinki (land25.jeremy@gmail.com)

In the records of colonial New England town councils, it is nearly commonplace to find discussions of road building and who would be burdened with the costs. Often, town councils would accept offers from merchants and other businessmen to build roads with their own capital and funds, but in exchange, the council would grant these builders rights to tolls. When compared with the modern day building of toll roads, these arrangements are not too dissimilar. Much like today, many of these roads were built with a mix of private and public funds, with governments understanding the benefits to the public of easily navigable roads, bridges, and infrastructure. But why would merchants be involved in building roads for, frankly, meager profits, as these toll roads rarely paid their costs off in any reasonable amount of time? This paper explores the role of merchants in financing roads to the interior and how these roads benefited both the public and the merchants – even if the toll profits were insufficient. Rather than examine the direct cost-benefit analysis that so often complicates the modern-day building of roads and highways, the paper will examine the push and pull effects of the global maritime economy had on the development of interior infrastructure in British America. These roads were not just for public benefit, nor were they just for private profit. Rather, the roads were meant to increase and make more efficient access to and from the interior farms and timberlands so that goods could flow both ways to meet the constantly growing demand for both exports and imports. Ultimately, the business of road building also provided merchants an outsized influence in the politics of both local and eventually regional politics.