"A Regional Complex: Colonial Business Networks in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia"

If one views a map of the Atlantic Ocean, the distance between Boston, New York, and Philadelphia seems miniscule in comparison with the distance between those three cities and Europe. Unfortunately, economic histories of the colonial economy tend to emphasize the connections between English merchants and their colonial customers. Yet, for Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, most of the three cities’ trade found its way to places NOT in the British Isles (as much as 80% for most years). Merchants in these three cities dominated coastal and West Indian trade, mostly trade between colonies. They did so primarily because of their well-established networks between merchants in the three cities. As a result of a chronic shortage of specie throughout the colonial period, British American merchants, especially in these three cities, developed complicated accounting and credit networks, providing a comparative advantage over other merchants based in the West Indies and Southern colonies. As a result, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia developed into a regional nodal center of Atlantic trade throughout the European colonies in the Western Hemisphere, not just the British Empire. The paper explores the various mechanisms that merchants in these three cities utilized to conduct and expand their trade throughout the colonial period.