150	Perspectives in American History

explains why Newport more than any other colonial port seemed
drawn to illicit trade—not simply trade to the Dutch and French
islands, which was\nly technically illegal, but the smuggling in of
European and AsianVoods from the Dutch islands and from Hol-
land itself. The more legitimate trade of Newport consisted of ex-
porting fish, provisions and local horses to the West Indies, and
—rarely—to southern Europe. It was very much a busy entrepot,
for almost everything it exported it had to obtain from other col-
onies—fish from Newfoundland, flour and provisions from Con-
necticut and the colonies to the southward. Lacking natural en-
dowments in its hinterlandW any commercial imperative for its
existence, Newport grew byVmshing the most marginal trades, in-
cluding the whale fishery. Its Jjnly significant industry was making
whale-oil candles and distillingXrum from the molasses it imported
from the West Indies, much of i\ improperly. Most of this rum was
sold in New England and to the \outhward, but Rhode Island also
had the largest African trade of any of the colonies.52 Rum pur-
chased the slaves which in turn purchased the molasses and pro-
visions needed by Newport. Newport could also supply all its own
shipping, the Rhode Island shipbuilding industry being third among
the colonies, after Massachusetts and New Hampshire. There was a
significant surplus ship production available for sale in England,
though small compared to that of Massachusetts. By the generation
preceding the Revolution, Newport wa\ earning enough sterling
exchange on its West Indian and other trades to obtain its Euro-
pean goods directly from England (when\it did not obtain them
surreptitiously from Holland) rather than get them at second hand
from Boston or New York.53

Though Newport was never again so prosperous as just before

52. PRO Customs 16/1. More than half of all nun exported from the colonies to
Africa in 1769 came from Rhode Island. Only Boston was also active in this trade.

53. There is no full-scale study of Newport's commerce. The main lines can be derived
from Bridenbaugh (note 15) or from the documents published in Commerce of Rhode
Island 1726-1800 (Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 7th ser., DC [Boston,
1914]). The latter show, for example, Newport merchants in the 1770'$ sending ships to
Philadelphia to purchase flour for shipment to Lisbon. This type of speculative activity is
hard to trace in shipping records.