Sources of Investment Capital in the Colonial Philadelphia Shipping Industry

As economic historians delve more deeply into the economy of the Continental Colonies, they become increasingly aware of its sophistication. Good Englishmen in every way, the colonists' economic development closely paralleled that of a Mother Country which, of course, by the 1770's, was on the eve of an industrial revolution. The British themselves constantly complained of colonial competition in most every sphere of activity. Yet any claims for a highly developed colonial economy by historians, or complaints about competition by British merchants, have, until recently, sounded more like puffery or self-pity. Facts have been few. Even so major an element in the process of economic growth as the accumulation and productive mobilization of colonial domestic savings remains to be examined. It is now possible to say something about at least this topic for a significant colonial enterprise, the shipping industry.