Papers presented by Jeremy Land since 2019

2025 Atlanta, Georgia

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

Abstract:

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.

2022 Mexico City

"Currency, Credit, and Imperial Deficiencies: Colonial American Business Practices and Maritime Trade before Independence"

Abstract:

This paper explores how colonial American merchants conducted business with a nearly constant shortage of credit, currency, and imperial support for maritime commerce. With little specie on hand, largely due to the lack of attention or capacity from the British Empire, American merchants developed intricate and often complicated credit and accounting networks and tricks that allowed trade to continue. Producers and merchants both experienced the same issues and worked together in a variety of ways to overcome the chronic deficiencies in locally available currency. Moreover, the British imperial state placed legal limits on American commerce, but merchants consistently found avenues around the rules and regulations, in many instances smuggling to obtain the goods customers demanded. Through a discussion of 18th century business practices, the paper argues that Britain lacked the imperial capacity it needed to support the maritime commerce of American merchants, and merchants, as a result, developed mechanisms and practices that disregarded the state’s policies to meet their individual commercial needs.

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2020 Charlotte, North Carolina

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

Abstract:

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.

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