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Sorry to write yet another one on this topic, but I did want to 
respond to this -- Mary Schweitzer <[log in to unmask]> 
 
Anthony Brewer wrote: 
 
> I do disagree with the idea that the market was consciously constructed 
> and imposed (unless that is meant to mean the-market-as-a-concept). The 
> market was consciously opposed and obstructed by feudal institutions but 
> (fortunately) they lost. 
 
Let me direct you to my article, "Economic Regulation and the Colonial 
Economy: The Maryland Tobacco Regulation Acts of 1747," Journal of 
Economic History, September 1980; and Chapter Six of my monograph, 
_Custom and Contract: Household, Government, and the Economy in 
Colonial Pennsylvania_ (NY: Columbia University Press, 1987), 
regarding the flour inspection laws of mid-18th century Pennsylvania. 
 
The point of both works was that the provincial governments of British 
America "learned" that the staple export market, under certain situations, 
worked more efficiently when an inspection system could be used to 
guarantee the quality of the product. 
 
More germaine to this discussion, the pro-inspection discourse in 
New York State and Virginia had strong mercantilist tones, in the one 
case intended to promote the city of New York as opposed to the 
city of Albany; in the other to reduce the quantity of exported 
tobacco so as to increase the price.  In contrast, theorists in 
Pennsylvania and Maryland "learned" from observation that inspection 
laws could be used to increase demand for their product -- permitting 
both quantity exported and price to rise at the same time. 
 
Reducing information costs could have the same effect on a market 
as reducing transportation costs. 
 
The debates in Maryland and Pennsylvania were very explicitly 
free-trade oriented.  I found it interesting as well that the 
Tuesday Club in Maryland, where the debates there originated, was 
founded by an apothecary who had just returned from study in 
Scotland in the 1740s where he was a frequenter of the coffee 
houses (where, one presumes, the theories of the Scottish Enlightenment 
in general and those of young Adam Smith in particular were being 
developed and articulated). 
 
The Pennsylvanians set up a remarkable inspection system, beginning 
in the 1720s, that by the Revolution recognized several grades of 
flour -- the highest grade, Pennsylvania Super Fine, made using 
imported French-milled stones, sold for high prices abroad.  Note: 
Pennsylvanians were not in the habit of obeying any laws that they 
found disagreeable -- the commonwealth was unable to collect 
state-wide taxes well into the Confederation period.  But the 
records of merchants show that they made use of the inspection 
system (instead of paying someone off).  Along with the land 
bank and paper money, the inspection system was an apple pie and 
motherhood issue in elections through the 1700s. 
 
In both cases, the Marylanders and Pennsylvanians discussed the 
problem of communicating the quality of a shipment of bulk 
export products -- the need for accurate information for a 
market to survive. 
 
A market cannot exist without structure.  I found fascinating 
the process by which British American colonials "learned" this. 
 
Government was used to make the market for tobacco and flour 
exports work more efficiently, not less so.  It was a conscious 
construction, involved a learning process, and there was disagreement 
among different polities as to whether or not this would work. 
There was explicit articulation of the difference between 
government regulation for mercantilist purposes and government 
regulation for free trade purposes -- though they tended to use 
the term commerce instead of free trade. 
 
Land distribution policies, monetary policies, trade policies, 
developmental policies, urban policies -- all had to be determined 
by different governments operating within different contexts 
in early British America -- the results were neither inevitable 
nor always predictable.  And certainly not homogeneous. 
 
And some policies didn't work!  But Rhode Island was a very 
different place in which to conduct business or be a farmer, than 
eastern Massachusetts, which was quite different from Western 
Massachusetts, in turn different from New York, different from 
New Jersey and Connecticut, different from Pennsylvania, different 
from Maryland, different from Virginia, different from North Carolina 
and different from South Carolina.  And all different from the 
backcountry.  And all different from the Iroquois, the Cherokee, 
the Susquehannocks, the Creek and Choctaw, the Seneca -- and 
they were in turn different from each other.  And they all watched 
each other, and they learned from each other.  But sometimes raw 
power just won out. 
 
Land distribution in Massachusetts was at first communal, centered 
on the Puritan Congregation.  Then there was a speculative spree 
for western Mass.  Penn tried to impose land ownership restrictions 
but was unsuccessful; individual fee simple farm ownership held 
in Pennsylvania from the beginning in most areas.  Tenants in New 
York State and in Pennsylvania could sell the improvements upon 
their land -- it belonged to them -- but tenants in Maryland could 
not.  African-Americans could legally be bought and sold in perpetuity, but 
European-Americans could only be sold within long-term labor contracts. 
The definition of a person vulnerable to bondage was set by the legal 
status of the mother -- as opposed to the law in other places.  One 
half-brother could be bought and sold on the market, the other 
half-brother could not.  This was a legal distinction, one created 
over the course of the 1600s in Virginia -- in the first decades of 
settlement, African-Americans were treated as other indentured servants 
and freed after seven years; it took over two generations to develop 
the laws that we all "know" governed slavery in British America. 
 
And slavery was illegal in Britain, yet legal in her colonies. 
Certainly this was a legal construct -- and certainly a legal 
construct dependent upon cultural constructs. 
 
Economic theories were used to justify all of these legal differences 
-- it is not merely the economic theories of the experts that matter, 
but also those of practitioners. 
 
Cultural and legal structure defined the possible within which the 
market functioned. 
 
Mary Schweitzer, <[log in to unmask]> 
 
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