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Exports And Slow Economic Growth In The Lower South Region, 1720–1800, Peter C. Mancall, Joshua L. Rosenbloom, Thomas Weiss

Joshua L. Rosenbloom

For the past generation scholars have emphasized that the Lower South was one of the most economically successful regions of British mainland North America, and perhaps the most successful. Planters, the primary economic actors, made extensive use of slave labor and created a successful staple-export sector, which by 1774 produced the highest levels of private wealth per capita in the colonies. Focusing on the rapid growth of the primary exports of the Lower South in the colonial period – rice and indigo – most scholars have concluded that standards of living for colonists in the region must have been rising …