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Perspectives in American History

wider geographic area and greatly encouraged the settlement of
the Pennsylvania frontier, made safe by the defeat of the French
and their Indian allies.

At

_

and stylejor the mercantile community. The profits (often wind
all profits) of the flour trade greatly facilitated the accumulation
of capital. By the early 1770*5 Philadelphians were investing eleven
times as much per annum in new shipping as they had in the 1720'$
and supplied almost all their shipping needs. The town's mercan-
tile fleet was now worth about ^500,000 sterling. The average
ship sent to Britain or southern Europe in die 1770*5 was consider-
ably larger than the average of those sent as recently as the I75o's.60
Widi these developments went a change in scale of mercantile op-
erations at Philadelphia and an articulation within the mercantile
community. Larger firms emerged (of whom perhaps the best
known is Willing and Morris) with correspondents in every major
port between Barcelona and Amsterdam. In order to undertake
very risky operations, these firms had to know the credit of great
speculators in London who might send diem purchase orders to-
taling tens of thousands of pounds sterling, as well as the credit-
wordiiness of the houses at Lisbon, Barcelona, and Leghorn who
would handle their flour sales and remit the proceeds to London.
In many senses, the establishment of such liaisons by great mer-
chants like Robert Morris was a commercial prerequisite of die
American Revolution.

With such vastly increased earnings from military supplying and
die flour trade, Philadelphia was able to multiply its imports from
Britain and more than free itself from any dependence on New
England. While die combined population of Pennsylvania and its
dependency, Delaware, increased about 160 percent between 1740
and 1770, English exports to die same areas increased by more than
a diousand percent. (In the same period, English exports to all the
colonies increased by only 360 percent.) Philadelphia had by diis

60. John J. McCusker, "Sources of Investment Capital in the Colonial Philadelphia
Shipping Industry," Journal of Economic History, 32 (1973). 151-152. See also Jensen,
Commerce of Philadelphia, p. 290.