Price : American Port Towns

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means decided despite all to go into the tobacco trade, more often
than not he moved to London or sent a partner there. The trade
could obviously be carried out much more efficiently from there.

Nevertheless, there were changes underway in the Chesapeake
in the years from 1750 to 1775. The corps of indigenous traders
was growing in both Virginia and Maryland. Some of them were
not satisfied with the limited and highly competitive trade to the
West Indies and sought entry to the vaster trade to Britain. Many
were able to do so through the "cargo system" that flourished in
the decade preceding the Revolution. Rich merchants in London,
acting as factors (or agents on commission) for these smaller houses
in the Chesapeake would buy "cargoes" of assorted goods for them
from London middlemen on one year's credit and ship those goods
out with the understanding that remittances would be made in
tobacco or bills of exchange before the year's credit was up. These
new indigenous houses were now indeed trading to Britain, but
they were trading on other people's capital and credit and often in
other people's ships. They were thus still closer to being "second-
ary traders" than real merchants. Nevertheless, much of the life in
the new little towns of the interior of Virginia (Petersburg, Rich-
mond, and the like) came from these new native firms trading pre-
cariously under the "cargo system." That those towns were not
larger says something about the scale and nature of their operations.

Much more innovative in these years was the growth of Norfolk
and Baltimore from mere hamlets to loWll^uf abuut cix thousand
inhabitants and active commercial centers—larger than anything
else in the Chesapeake. The important thing; about them is that
neither had very much to do with tobacco, that staple so little con-
ducive to town growth^Norfolk. near the mouth of Chesapeake
"Bay, was in the soudieastern corner of Virginia; its hinterland there
and in the adjacent parts of North Carolina was a land of forest and
swamp and marginal agriculture. It produced a limited amount of
tobacco of no very great repute and abundant forest products
(pitch, tar, and lumber) plus some Indian corn, pork, and beef suit-
able for the West Indies. With these endowments, Norfolk came
to specialize in the West Indian trade. Because ot the volume ot