Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T18:54:26.740Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Total Product of Barbados, 1664–1701

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

David Elitis
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6, Canada and Research Fellow at the Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Abstract

Estimates of total and per capita product for Barbados are derived for 1665 and 1666 and 1699 to 1701 from trade statistics and new data on the distribution and composition of produce entered into the customs books of the island. The share of exports in total product–central to the estimate of total product–is linked to the share of the labor force in the export sector. Per capita Barbados product is estimated to have been one- to two-thirds higher than in England and Wales, and per capita exports are estimated well above those of their Chesapeake counterparts.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bean, Richard N., “Food Imports into the British West Indies: 1680–1845,” in Rubin, Vera and Tuden, Arthur, eds., Comparative Perspectives on Slavery in New World Plantation Societies (New York, 1977), pp. 581–90.Google Scholar
Beer, G. L., The Old Colonial System, 1669–1754 (New York, 1913).Google Scholar
Bennett, J. Harry, Bondsmen and Bishops: Slavery and Apprenticeship on the Codrington Plantations of Barbados, 1710–1838 (Berkeley, 1958).Google Scholar
Bodleian Library [BL], Oxford, England.Google Scholar
Bridenbaugh, Carl and Bridenbaugh, Roberta, No Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean, 1624–1690 (New York, 1972).Google Scholar
British Library, London.Google Scholar
Calendar of State Papers: Colonial Series, America and the West Indies (London, 18801889), vols. 7 and 8.Google Scholar
Coldham, Peter Wilson, The Complete Book of Emigrants, 1607–1660 (Baltimore, 1988).Google Scholar
Coldham, Peter Wilson, The Complete Book of Emigrants, 1661–1699 (Baltimore, 1990).Google Scholar
Curtin, Philip D., The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969).Google Scholar
David, Paul, “The Growth of Real Product in the United States Before 1840: New Evidence, Controlled Conjectures,” this Journal, 27 (06. 1967), pp. 151–97.Google Scholar
Deane, Phyllis and Cole, W. A., British Economic Growth, 1688–1959 (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1969).Google Scholar
Dunn, Richard S., “The Barbados Census of 1680,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 26 (Winter, 1969), pp. 330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, Richard S., Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (New York, 1972).Google Scholar
Eisner, Gisela, Jamaica, 1830–1930: A Study in Economic Growth (Manchester, 1961).Google Scholar
Eltis, David, “New Estimates of Exports from Barbados and Jamaica, 1665–1701,” William and Mary Quarterly (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Eltis, David, “The British Transatlantic Slave Trade Before 1714: Annual Estimates of Volume and Direction,” in Paquette, Robert L. and Engerman, Stanley L., eds., The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European Expansion (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Engerman, Stanley L., “Notes on the Pattern of Economic Growth in the British North American Colonies in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Bairoch, Paul and Levy-Leboyer, Maurice, eds., Disparities in Economic Develop-ment since the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1981), pp. 4657.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fogel, Robert and Engerman, Stanley L., Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods: ASupplement (Boston, 1974).Google Scholar
Handler, Jerome S., “A Historical Sketch of Pottery Manufacture in Barbados,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 30 (02. 1963), pp.130–35.Google Scholar
Handler, Jerome S., “Small-Scale Sugar Cane Farming in Barbados,” Ethnology, 5 (Winter, 1966), pp. 1638.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Handler, Jerome S., “Amerindians and their Contributions to Barbadian Life in the Seventeenth Century,“ Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 35 (11. 1977), pp. 189210.Google Scholar
Handler, Jerome S. and Lange, Frederick W., Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archeological and Historical Investigation (Cambridge, MA, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harlow, Vincent T., History of Barbados, 1625–1685 (Oxford, 1926).Google Scholar
Higman, Barry W., Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807–1834 (Cambridge, 1976).Google Scholar
Higman, Barry W., Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807–1834 (Baltimore, 1984).Google Scholar
Hispanic Society of America [HSA], New York, NY.Google Scholar
Jones, Alice Hanson, Wealth of a Nation to Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution (New York, 1980).Google Scholar
Ligon, Richard, A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbados (London, 1672).Google Scholar
Lindert, Peter H. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “Revising England’s Social Tables, 1688–1812,” Explorations in Economic History, 19 (10. 1982), pp. 385408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandle, Jay, The Plantation Economy (Philadelphia, 1973).Google Scholar
McCusker, John J., Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1650–1775, (New York, 1989), 2 vols.Google Scholar
McCusker, John J., “How Much is that in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 101 (1991), pp. 297349.Google Scholar
McCusker, John J., and Menard, Russell R., The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill, 1985).Google Scholar
Menard, Russell R., “The Tobacco Industry in the Chesapeake Colonies, 1617–1730: An Interpretation,” Research in Economic History, 5 (1980), pp. 109–77.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney W., “Slavery and the Rise of Peasantries,” Historical Reflections, 6 (Summer, 1979), pp. 213–42.Google Scholar
Moohr, Michael, “The Economic Impact of Slave Emancipation in British Guiana,” Economic History Review, 25 (11. 1972), pp. 588607.Google Scholar
Pares, Richard, “Merchants and Planters,” Economic History Review Supplement, 4 (1960).Google Scholar
Price, Jacob and Clemens, Paul, “A Revolution of Scale in Overseas Trade: British Firms in the Chesapeake Trade, 1675–1775,” this Journal, 47 (03. 1987), pp. 143.Google Scholar
Puckrein, Gary, Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627–1700 (New York, 1984).Google Scholar
Records of the Vestry of St. Michael,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 15 (02. 1948), pp. 98104, 119–27.Google Scholar
Joan, Thirsk and Cooper, J. P., eds., Seventeenth-Century Economic Documents (Oxford, 1972).Google Scholar
Thornton, A. P., West India Policy Under the Restoration (Oxford, 1954).Google Scholar
United Kingdom, Public Record Office (PRO), London.Google Scholar
Walton, Gary M. and Shepherd, James F., The Economic Rise of Early America (Cambridge, 1979).Google Scholar
Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, MA, 1981).Google Scholar