A Planter’s Republic: The Search for Economic Independence in Revolutionary Virginia. By Bruce A. Ragsdale. (Madison, WI: Madison House Publishers, 1996.)
Bruce A. Ragsdale’s A Planter’s Republic investigates the development of American resistance to the British Empire in pre-Revolutionary Virginia. In the decades leading to the American Revolution, Virginians found themselves mired in tobacco monoculture and debts owed to British merchant firms. For the Virginian gentry, these things posed an existential threat to both their livelihoods and their authority. The author argues that colonial Virginian’s effort to diversify their economy and become economically independent of the British Empire provides a framework by which historians can interpret the American Revolution.
Virginia’s gentry were inexorably linked to Great Britain both economically and culturally. The British Empire’s mercantilist economy functioned on raw materials shipped from the colonies and manufactured goods shipped to the colonies. In Virginia’s case, this meant tobacco would be shipped across the Atlantic and the trappings of English society would be imported to the colony. In the decades leading to the American Revolution, the tobacco market suffered an overall decline, leaving the Virginian gentry heavily in debt to British merchants, an undiversified economy and dwindling authority over middling planters. They had to take action to preserve their very way of life.
Faced with such a situation coupled with efforts by the British government to tax the colony, the Virginians responded by creating organizations designed to apply economic pressure to British merchants in the hopes of improving their situation. In the three decades preceding the American Revolution, Virginians entered into non-importation and later non-exportation agreements with other colonies to force a repeal of tax measures and alleviate some of the strain placed on Virginia’s economy by the tobacco trade and British credit. They emphasized diversified agriculture, and the development of local manufacturing capability. However, even after these movements gained broad popular support in the colony, they proved only moderately successful in forcing a repeal of tax legislation and completely unsuccessful in their goal of improving the Virginian economy. Simply stated, the Virginians lacked the time and ability to create a diversified economy in a society that had been dependent on tobacco as its staple crop for over a century.
A Planter’s Republic provides insight into the development of commercial resistance to the British Empire in colonial Virginia. Too often, historical narratives portray the time leading up to the American Revolution as a series of crises ultimately culminating in conflict. Ragsdale offers an alternative framework that encapsulates the underlying problems faced in Virginia that provoked such a strong reaction to those crises. The American Revolution, within this framework, was not a product of the Stamp Act crises, the Townshend Acts, or any other legislation but rather an expression of the strained relationship between the colonies and home country that had been developing throughout the eighteenth century. The monograph conveys his argument clearly and concisely, and is well supported by the evidence. It is an important contribution to the historiography of both the American Revolution and colonial Virginia.
Michael Green Texas Christian University
A Planter's Republic: The Search for Economic Independence in Revolutionary Virginia. By Bruce A. Ragsdale. (Madison, Wisconsin: Madison House Publishers, Inc., 1996. Pp. 305).
Tobacco and credit dominated the economy of colonial Virginia. Access to the personal services of English merchants offered the planter gentry the most advantageous route for the sale of tobacco and credit extension for the purchase of land and slaves. Agents in London or local factors for British companies extended credit to the planters who paid in tobacco and facilitated the purchase of durable goods and luxury items. Tobacco became the most profitable product in the trans-Atlantic trade and Virginia became the richest of the American colonies. The Virginia planter gentry lavished their profits on luxury items imported from England. A sharp recession in the 1760s with declining tobacco prices, restricted credit, and local bankruptcy alerted colonial leaders to the dangers of the mercantile economy. Some of the local leaders—Washington, Jefferson, Mason and Richard Henry Lee—began to worry that the purchase of luxury goods on easy credit was leading to a loss of colonial independence to English merchants.
Prior to 1750, the individual tobacco farmer—particularly the large plantation owners—purchased goods in England through personal agents who had served through generations as purveyors of goods and Continental taste to the colonists. The planters repaid the credit extended for goods purchased in London with tobacco sent by return voyage and sold on commission by these same agents. The large planters often served as agents for the smaller farmers in their immediate area. In mid-century Scottish companies, particularly those from Glasgow began to sell goods from stores in the colonies, allowing the small farmers to sell their tobacco directly to the export merchants. The credit extended by these factors soon captured over fifty percent of the exported tobacco.
The mercantilist economy delegated the American colonies to supply raw materials shipped to Great Britain for manufacture into needed goods and re-export to the continent or the colonies for local purchase and use. Markups and profits were tremendous. The Navigation Acts required Virginia colonist to ship pig iron to England but not to manufacture their own iron hoes, picks, and plows. Cloth production was particularly tied to factories in Great Britain. Osnasburg, a rough fabric worn by slaves, and fine linens had to be imported to meet domestic needs. The large planters who produced enough cloth for their own needs had little excess to sell to their neighbors. In addition, a lack of local currency, the issue of which was denied by the central government at the English merchants' request, and the lack of other specie limited the ability of planters to purchase local goods and made them even more dependent on credit.
In Virginia where the slave society had inhibited the development of independent tradesmen and local manufacturing, British-made goods remained less expensive than locally produced goods, and, more important, they could be purchased on credit instead of cash. By the 1760s the more restrictive demands of British commerce coinciding with the reorganization of imperial administration prompted Virginia’s leading planters to reevaluate the benefits of British commerce. The large planters bemoaned their absolute dependence on tobacco and British merchants and sought to diversify their crops using grain, hemp, and corn. Deprived of the means of organizing a formal colony-wide association, many Virginians privately responded to the Stamp Act by initiating domestic manufacturing and reducing their consumption of British goods, especially luxury items. Their goal was to reduce debt and dependency on British manufacturing.
By 1760 the importation of slaves had been effectively banned by high importation taxes. The elite planters worried that the slave/tobacco economy inhibited the development of local industry and craftsmen. This tied the colonist ever more tightly into the mercantile web of a single export, high priced imported goods, credit, and a gradual increase in the arbitrary demands of the centralist government of the empire. The British government and royal governors felt that the established planters along the Chesapeake Coast who had a surplus of slaves attempted to monopolize the trade with high prices for their excess slaves. Under pressure from British merchants who did not want to loose a lucrative source of income, the imperial government denied renewal of the taxes and importation of slaves was not outlawed in Virginia until 1778.
The non-importation movement went through two unsuccessful attempts before becoming effective. In 1769 after the Stamp Act, associations or committees formed throughout the state in every county and district to boycott English goods, especially luxury items. The effort failed—although endorsed and supported by the elite planters and many of the British merchants—because the yeoman farmers, who could not afford the cost of home manufacturing did not participate. While the rich landowners had their slaves manufacture and wear homespun, the small farmer had no other source for his cloth except imported goods. The second association formed in response to the Townsend acts and did not obtain merchants support. Local merchants—particularly the Scottish tobacco factors—did not participate, and the large number of small ports in Virginia allowed smuggling of proscribed goods. Local wrangling made the actual dates of enforcement confusing. The last association developed in 1774 and was more successful. Formed in response to the Coercive Acts following the Boston Tea party, the committees attracted popular support and forced merchants and small planters to participate. Later, non-importation expanded to include non-exportation.
The Revolutionary War resulted, in part, from the British government’s unsuccessful attempts to force the American colonists to buy only English goods at artificially high prices and to impose taxes to pay for the expense of defending the colonies, ignoring the value of the profits the empire received from American commerce. Just before and after the War a large number of Virginia debtors used the closing of the county courts to repudiate their English debts. The problem of diversification continued to plague the Southern states into the twentieth century.
Ragsdale, the chief historian for the federal judicial system, has presented a unified thesis documenting the effect of a single export on the economy of colonial Virginia and the struggles of the Virginians free themselves from the constrains of parliament and British merchants. The book suffers from a good deal of repetition. The number of slaves in Virginia in 1770 is quoted four or five times. Ragsdale demonstrates that the American Revolution developed, in part, from the determination of the Virginia planters to free themselves from the demands of the British merchants and the restrictions of the tobacco trade while maintaining the viability of their plantation system. Because of the additional restraints of the slave economy they were only partially successful.
Watson Arnold