Price : American Port Towns	159

mahogany, and Carolina rice and naval stores.68 In other words,
flnnr and provisions, "natural" endowments, were not
in sufficient quantities, even under the high prices ore-

"*•	*~~—————                                                  ^^———•*———————*•   _._^^_

vailing ca. 1768-1774, New York was forced, much as was Boston^
into a complex entrepot trade. Its merchants were probably as
adept as those of Boston: like those in Boston and Philadelphia,
.they had mastered, for example, the intricacies of underwriting
marine insurance.69 They enjoyed one marked advantage in having I
^their port as the American terminus of the official British trans-|
atlantic packet boat. Getting mail early was no small commercial
advantage. Although there was no Robert Morris in New York
then, when the French government was forced—in the pacte de
famine crisis of 1770—to purchase wheat and flour in North Amer-
ica, the French agents in London (Bourdieu & Chollet) chose to
work through Wallace & Company of New York rather than
through a Philadelphia house.

New York was significantly behind Boston .ind Philadelphia in
one further respect; the shipbuilding of the province (essentially
the town's) as of 1769-1771 was less than one-fifth that of Massa-
.chusetts and only 70 percent of Pennsylvania's, essentially Philadel-
phia j> (Appendix F). New York's shipbuilding fell below that of
less urban colonies such as New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Con-
necticut, Maryland, and Virginia. This is probably a significant ex-
planation of why, as noted earlier (Appendix D), the manufactur-
ing sector in the population of New York City, even if measured
in 1795, was significantly below that of Boston and Philadelphia.

Before closing our discussion nf the three great commercial cen-
tpr^nfrnlnni.il Amerir.-i—TWt-nn M^v Vork. ant^ Philadelphia—
something ought to be said about the alleged independent^ character
of tKeirmercantile communities. Most people who write about

68. Harrington, New York Merchant, pp. 165-172. A more recent work confirming
die "entrepot" version of New York trade is William I. Davisson and Lawrence ].
Bradley, "New York Maritime Trade: Ship Voyage Patterns, 1715-1765," \ew York
Historical Society Quarterly, 55 (1971), 309-317.

69. It is noteworthy that ports as ""all as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia de-
veloped maritime insurance from the I74.o's. Cf. Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, pp. 93,
287. Even Charleston obtained an insurance office in 1761, though most of its insurance
was made in London.