IN their recent study of colonial British America, McCusker and Menard bemoan the fact that, despite considerable research over the last two decades on colonial New England's demography and society, “[e]conomic issues have seldom commanded center stage in New England studies.” As a result, they claim, “recent work has as yet failed to yield much insight into the operation of the economy.” Nevertheless, noting that New England “lacked a major staple commodity to export to the metropolis” but needed under the pressure of rapid population growth “to import countless things from abroad,” they argue that New Englanders became “the Dutch of England's empire,” creating “a well-integrated commercial economy based on the carrying trade.” It is, they conclude, “in the interactions between the push of population growth and the pull of market opportunities that answers to the central questions in New England social and economic history are likely to be found.”

Seeking to integrate research on New England demography with that on the region's economy, the approach advocated by McCusker and Menard requires, as they themselves admit, a fuller understanding of both the pattern of growth in the export sector and the relationship between trade and economic development in the region. A comprehensive treatment of these issues cannot be attempted in this chapter, not least because much of the detailed work required to trace the patterns and levels of New England trade throughout the colonial period remains to be done.