Annotated Bibliography3A
Content
Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
Annotated Bibliography Primary Sources Colonial Government/Provincial Government Early Vital Records of Essex County, Massachusetts to about 1850. Vols. 1-3. Salem: Newcomb & Gauss. Discusses the hiring practices conducted by cod merchants and the contracts and payment methods agreed upon. Also covers the risky nature of cod fishing as schooners went out to deeper waters and further time was spent offshore than closer to land. The winter season was especially hard on cod merchants and the fisherman, since the chances of smaller profits and death went up dramatically due to winter storms and the inability to navigate as efficiently through icebergs and other impediments.
Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1762-1779. Vols. 38-55. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1968-1990. Entails the hiring practices of the cod merchants in New England and the working conditions. For instance, the majority of the fishermen went fishing to the offshore banks in spring, summer, and fall. In the winter, the fishermen usually worked for the same cod merchants but usually worked along constricted trade routes that entailed the West Indies and the southern U.S. mainland. Usually this happened because techniques for catching and curing cod resulted in disproportionately more refuse cod being processed in the winter period (hence the increase in traffic to slave markets since it was a cheap commodity), and a marked increase in traffic to Newfoundland and the Iberian Peninsula when it was not in the wintery season.
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
Lincoln, William, The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of Safety, ed. Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1838. Commodore Palliser saw the New England cod industry as an unmitigated threat to the interests of Royal Navy recruiting and the three fisheries in the West Country. To Palliser, he saw the American colonists not as British subjects with rights, but rather as an industry subverting the commercial rights and entitlements of the British entrepreneurs. He went as far as calling it “piracy” in Volume 43, Part II, page 257.
Marblehead Town Records. November 15, 1772. Abbott Hall, office of the town clerk, Marblehead, Massachusetts. Based on interactions among fish merchants, who held a town meeting after Parliament renewed the tea act. The Committee of Safety in Marblehead, which was the foremost commercial fishing port in New England, discussed the willingness of merchants to not supply the British with any cod as a source of food. Also, the fish merchants were part of a commercial consortium that agreed to boycott manufactured goods from Britain for two years. They were able to get other commercial ports to join in the boycott, and by 1769, they had formed an inspection committee in Boston that enforced the trade embargo.
U.S. Department of State. Report of the Secretary of State, on the Subject of the Cod and Whale Fisheries, Made Conformably to an Order of the House of Representatives of the United States, Referring to Him the Representation of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on Those Subjects. February 1, 1791, by Thomas Jefferson (Francis Childs and John Swaine, 1791), p.14. Hancock to Jefferson. October 25, 1790. “N.B. the
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
quantity of fish consumed in the United States being inconsiderable the Committee have made no allowance for that consumption, but have considered the whole quantity taken as Exported.” Boyd, Butterfield, et. al (1950 to date), volume 19, p. 223 n. Jefferson already had a report enclosed to him from Governor Hancock. Hancock had prepared a committee of the Massachusetts legislature chaired by Peleg Coffin Jr. Jefferson decided to have his own reports published covering 1765-1790. In his report he analyzes the export of cod to the West Indies and Europe. He also details the average annual number of vessels employed in the Massachusetts cod fishery, and their tonnage and their crews.
Letters Jefferson, Thomas, Secretary of State. “Report on the State of the Cod Fisheries, 1791.” American State Papers: Commerce and Navigation, Series I: General Correspondence, 1651-1827, Vols. 13-60, Manuscript Division, LC. As Secretary of State under Washington, Jefferson calculated that between the years 1765 to 1775, the New England cod industry was exporting equal amounts of cod between the West Indies and Southern Europe. However, recent scholarship has suggested a greater volume of exports went to the West Indies and Jefferson had overestimated the amount that went to Southern Europe.
Report enclosed in a letter from governor John Hancock, at Boston, to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, at Philadelphia, October 25, 1789, Massachusetts archives Collection, volume 289. Letters, 1786-1792, Massachusetts Archives, Boston, Massachusetts. A report was put together by a committee of the Massachusetts legislature chaired by Peleg Coffin Jr.,
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
at the request of Governor Hancock in response to a letter sent to him by Secretary of State Jefferson. In the report is detailed information covering 21 ports tied to the New England cod fisheries from 1765-1790. The average annual exports of codfish to the two major markets, Europe, and the West Indies, are analyzed and recorded.
Merchant Records American Archives, Series 4-5, Vols. 1-9, Washington, D.C.: M. St. Clair Clarke and Peter Force, 1837-1853. Entails further information regarding the cod industry from witnesses called forth to testify in Parliament. One witness, for instance, is called forth to enlighten Parliament on the state of the New England cod industry. The witness talked about Marblehead being the greatest exporter, followed by Salem and Gloucester. The market of the cod industry is explored, showing that the cod industry enjoyed a sizable share from Catholics (for dieting purposes due to Lent and other religiously observed days), and to slaves (because of how cheap refuse grade cod was). Also covered are the curing processes of the different grades (merchant or refuse) and that the fisherman were involved not merely with catching, but also processing and curing the fish as well.
“A Calculation of the State of the Cod and Whale Fishery, Belonging to Massachusetts in 1763: Copied from a Paper Published in 1764.” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Series 1, Vol. 3, 1802: 202-203. Primary documents entail a collection of cod merchant records from Marblehead, Boston, and Salem. These records show the different prices cod merchants were selling their cod at, which was based usually on the season and what type of cod (merchant or refuse grade).
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
Clark, William Bell, et al., eds. Naval Documents of the American Revolution. 11 vols. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964-Present. Discusses the inception of the American Navy, which was in part due to the valiant efforts of the New England cod industry. Also, Clark further shows that the West Indies and Newfoundland markets were of equal importance to New England cod industry. Clark points out that once the New England cod industry continued to recruit labor from Newfoundland, the Royal Navy grew concerned that their potential labor pools would suffer as a result. Thus, the British began to adopt a more hostile attitude towards the New England cod industry.
Rules and Regulations of the Committee for Encouraging Trade & Commerce. Ezekiel Price Papers, 1754-1785. Massachusetts Historical Society. Covers the average cost for outfitting a fishing vessel, the typical supplies brought on board (including rum and cider, i.e.). Also entails how much fish had been caught on an annual basis in Massachusetts, where the fish was sold, and the type of fish that was to be cured (whether merchant or refuse). Chronicles the anxieties of the cod merchants when it came to the mere threat of the Sugar Act being passed, which would have detrimental effect on the cost of curing cod.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Ed. Max Lerner. New York: the Modern Library, 1937; originally published in 1776. The scale of the New England cod industry made quite an impression on Adam Smith. He even took note of it
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
in his work before the Revolutionary War began (pages 544-545): “The New England fishery, in particular was, before the late disturbances, one of the most important, perhaps, in the world.”
Parliament 6 Anne c. 37, Great Britain. Statutes at Large from the Tenth Year of King William the Third to the End of the Reign of Queen Anne 4 (London, 1769): 336. The Sixth of Anne formally stated: “That no mariner, or other person, who shall serve on board, or be retained to serve on board, any privateer, or trading ship or vessel that shall be employed in any part of America, nor any mariner, or other person, being on shore in any part thereof, shall be liable to be impressed or taken away by any officer or officers of or belonging to any of her Majesty's ships of war, empowered by the Lord High Admiral, or any other person whatsoever, unless such mariner shall have before deserted from such ship of war belonging to her Majesty, at any time after the 14th day of February 1707, upon pain that any officer or officers so impressing or taking away, or causing to be impressed or taken away, any mariner or other person, contrary to the tenor and true meaning of this act, shall forfeit to the master, or owner or owners of any such ship or vessel, £20 for every man he or they shall so impress or take, to be recovered with full costs of suit, in any court within any part of her Majesty's dominions.”
An Act to Encourage the Trade to Newfoundland. London: Printed by Charles Bill, 1699. By law, migratory fishing vessels departing from England were supposed to carry at least one “Fresh Man that was never at Sea before.” This “Fresh Man” is further defined as
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
“not a Seaman, or having ever been at Sea before.” Thus, the law enabled a steady labor pool from which the Royal Navy could draw upon.
Lord Camden’s Speech on the New-England Fishing Bill. Newport, RI: S. Southwick, 1775. Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans #42788. Lord Camden was one of the few men in the House of Lords that dissented with the Restraining Act. His alarm can be easily discerned in his dissenting speech, in which he states, “[the bill] was at once declaring war [against the colonies], and beginning hostilities in Great Britain [i.e., the British Empire].”
Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, Secretary of the Commonwealth, comp. vols. 1-17. Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Co., 1896-1908. The Royal Navy actively went after fishermen that traded with the French (outside the bounds of British mercantilism) and punishment included confiscated property and sentences of banishment. Also, George III encouraged Commodore Hugh Palliser, a British naval officer who rule Newfoundland with an iron fist, to come up with methods for enacting mercantilist policies on Newfoundland and to ensure that the Newfoundland labor pool would not be encroached upon by the New England cod industry.
Simmons, R.C. and P.D.G. Thomas, eds. Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliaments Respecting North America, 1754-1783. Vols. 1-5. Millwood, NY: Kraus International Publications, 1982-1986. These records are eyewitness accounts narrated by those who have firsthand knowledge of the New England cod industry. For instance, several sailors
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
talk about how many ships and quintals of merchant and refuse grade cod New England ports bring in each year. It also entails colonial merchants differentiated between merchant and refuse grade cod and also about how much merchant and refuse grade cod being exported to the West Indies, Newfoundland, and the Iberian Peninsula.
Treaties United States Department of State. “ 1763 Treaty of Paris.” Treaty document. 115-20. Washington, GPO, 2013. Print. Britain ratified the Treaty of Paris in 1763 for the following reasons: Parliament wanted to further constrict the available Atlantic markets that the French were able to compete in, and Parliament wanted to further expand Atlantic markets for Britain and New England. Thus, Parliament ratified the treaty as a mercantilist and protectionist measure against French competition and further expanded available fishing waters for British and New England fisheries to draw upon.
United States Department of State. “ 1783 Treaty of Paris.” Treaty document. 134-42. Washington, GPO, 2013. Print. Probably one of the greatest spoils of war that Continental Congress successfully negotiated is in Article III of the treaty. This is in regards to the fishing rights on the banks and coasts of Newfoundland. In particular, Continental Congress was able to negotiate the rights for access to the Grand Banks, the richest source of cod in the Atlantic Ocean.
Secondary Sources Books
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
Bailyn, Bernard. The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century, 3rd edition. New York: vintage books, 1968. Bailyn discusses the origins of the New England cod industry. The New England commercial fishery had several advantages over other regions. This includes its temperate climates and proximity to fertile lands, allowing it to be a mixed agricultural and maritime economy. Also, the warmer water temperatures yielded longer fishing seasons along the northern seaboard of North America compared to the same water around Newfoundland.
Cole, Arthur. Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1700-1861. Harvard University Press 2 (1938): 35-68. Covers the monthly observations of 46 commodities, including cod. The period of price indexes is from January 1700 to December 1861. The cities in the panel include Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, Cincinnati, and New Orleans. Many of these goods are further broken down into varieties, such as merchant or refuse grade cod, thus culminating into 549 varieties recorded.
Cutting, C. Fish Saving: A History of Fish Processing from Ancient to Modern Times. New York: Philosophical Society, 1956. Cutting creates the authoritative history of the different methods of preserving fish from the earliest of primary records up to the publication date. He also analyzes the evolution of preservation over the years. Preservation includes drying, salting, smoking, canning, chilling, and freezing is dealt with in historical and social context.
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
Hornsby, Stephen. British Atlantic, American Frontier: Space of Power in Early Modern British America. University Press of New England, 2005. The cod industry in New England had become the fourth most valuable export from the Western Hemisphere, right behind grain, tobacco, and sugar. He also observes the abysmal lack of money that colonial agents received to represent New England in comparison to the amounts of money that colonial agents received to represent the interest of the West Indies.
Magra, Christopher. The Fisherman’s Cause: Atlantic Commerce and Maritime Dimensions of the American Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Magra laments the lack of available historiographical research related to the New England cod industry. His book entails the science of cod and the importance of cod as a commodity in the New England region. His book successfully proves that by the 18th century, the New England cod industry had become independent from the West Country fisheries.
McCusker and Russell R. Menard. The Economy of British America, 1607-1789. University of North Carolina Press, 1985. The cod industry is considered by economic historians to be an extractive industry similar to lumber and mining. Entrepreneurs invested capital and hired workers in order to extract a resource from the ocean for processing and marketing. Out of the 581,000 people living in New England in 1770, about 10,000 were employed in the cod industry.
McCusker, John. How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Commodity Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States, 2nd edition.
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
Worcestor, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 2001. McCusker catalogues the commodity price indexes between the U.S. and Great Britain. He covers the years 16651860. From 1763-1789, the U.S. had a commodity price index between 75 and 100, while Great Britain experienced an index of between 50-70. In addition, Vickers describes the clothing the fishermen typically wore. On pages 35 and 35 he describes them wearing “heavy boots” and “woolen outerclothing.”
Purvis, Thomas. Revolutionary America, 1763-1800. New York: Facts on File, 1995. Purvis shows that the New England region supplied more men on average than either the Middle or Southern regions on a consistent yearly basis. In addition, three out of the four major generals under George Washington (at the start of the war) and seven out of eight brigadier generals came from New England.
Smith, Joshua. Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783-1820. University Press of Florida, 2006. Lines drawn in peace treaties were not so easy to see on the ocean, and when the Royal Navy tried to punish French colonists for encroaching on British held waters, the colonists did not commit the crime on purpose. The same issue came to light when the Royal Navy tried to inhibit the trade routes that were open, especially between New England and Newfoundland, since the British thought that New England was conducting business operations that were outside the bounds of the British Empire.
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
Sosin, Jack. Agents and Merchants: British colonial Policy and the Origins of the American Revolution, 1763-1775. University of Nebraska Press, 1965. Although there were five colonial agents representing North America colonial interests, Sosin maintains that two of these agents were more concerned with their positions as Members of Parliament rather than their position as lobbyists. Thus, in all likelihood, there were only three agents who acted as lobbyists trying to represent the New England cod industry. In addition, fish was not as valuable an export as sugar, which limited the amount of access the New England colonial agents had to lobby effectively.
Warren, George, Frank Pearson, and Herman Stoker. Wholesale Prices for 213 Years, 1720 to 1932. Cornell University, Agricultural Experiment Station, Memoir 412, 1932. The primary aim of Warren and Pearson was to present monthly comprehensive index numbers of the 19th century corresponding to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is a monograph researching the determinants in commodity price trends, including the price of merchant and refuse grade cod in the American Revolutionary Era.
Journals Bell, Herbert. “The West India Trade Before the American Revolution.” The American Historical Review 22 (1917): 272-287. Accessed February 8, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1834961. Professor Bell discusses the trade between the North America colonies and the West Indies before the American Revolution. He notes the regional specialization that occurred, as certain colonies were dominant in specific resources, such as New England with merchant and refuse cod. Every continental colony
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
had something of value to export to the West Indies, and Bell is showing the importance of trade and the commercial ties fostered between the two markets.
Carrington, Selwyn. “The American Revolution and the British West Indies’ Economy.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17 (1987): 823-850. Accessed February 8, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/204655. Selwyn analyzes the adverse impact the American Revolution had on the trade routes between New England and the West Indies. Despite the inflated prices of cod due to shortage, the New England merchants were able to use it to their advantage to trade the cod for weapons and gunpowder in exchange. Thus, the cod industry helped provide the weapons and part of the 1.5 million pounds of gunpowder that was provided for the Continental Army.
Cole, Arthur, and Ruth Crandall. “The International Scientific Committee on Price History.” Journal of Economic History 24 (September 1964): 381-388. The International Scientific Committee on Price History sponsored the project that studied Massachusetts prices. The results of several of these studies were drawn together and showed that different hundredweights employed by the U.S. and Britain confused researchers and historians. Also, past historians had incorrectly adjusted the different weights employed, and the project was able to make the appropriate adjustments for the price indexes.
Egnal, Marc, and Joseph Ernst. “An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution.” William & Mary Quarterly 29 (January 1972): 21-23. Marc and Ernst cover the economic and political purposes of colonial non-importation. They also cover the list of Boston
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
merchants in violation of the non-importation agreement, and detail some of the agreements that were signed by Boston and Gloucester fish merchants. In particular, the non-importation agreements were aimed at the Townshend Revenue Act, passed in 1768. The effect of an earlier non-importation agreement led to the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1765. The whole point of these agreements was to deny the customs offices in the colonies from collecting goods that either were denied access to shore or that were never sold at all.
McCusker, John. “Colonial Statistics” in chapter EG of Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present: Millennial Edition, edited by Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Accessed January 22, 2013. doi: 10.1017/9780511132971.
McCusker, John. “Weight and Measures in the Colonial Sugar Trade: The Gallon and the Pound and Their International Equivalents,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 30 (October 1973): 15. The wholesale price of codfish in the New England market was customarily quoted in terms of shillings Massachusetts currency per hundredweight (or quintal) of 100 pounds. Others have been misled by the complexities of European and North American weights and assumed that the hundredweight for fish could be used interchangeably with the long hundredweight (112 pounds) employed in Great Britain.
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
Crandall, Ruth. “Wholesale Commodity Prices in Boston During the Eighteenth Century.” Review of Economic Statistics 16 (June, September 1934): 182. Ruth culled data for the wholesale price of codfish by grade between 1750-1775. Her index is concerned only with what Jamaica was paying for refuse grade cod. On average, Jamaica was paying a slightly higher than average price for refuse at the time.
Vickers, Daniel. “’A Knowen and Staple Commoditie’: Codfish Prices in Essex Country, Massachusetts, 1640-1775.” Essex Institute Historical Collections 124 (July 1988): 186203. The price of cod, in relation to other commodities, can be quite tricky to gauge at times. Although Vickers has done quite an excellent job indexing merchant and refuse grade prices, it should be approached with some degree of caution. For instance, measurements were not standardized in the Atlantic world, and there were variations in coinage that was used throughout the early modern era.
Vickers, Daniel. “The Price of Fish: A Price Index for Cod, 1505-1892.” Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region/Rerevue d’Histoir e de la Région Atlantique 25 (Spring 1996): 92-104. Usually merchant grade cod sold at higher prices than refuse. Especially spring merchant grade cod, which was the best grade that applied to fish landed in season before July 1. Merchant grade cod was of better quality than refuse because of curing and processing techniques that enabled merchant grade to command a higher price. Vickers demonstrates that the pricing of codfish became more complex over time as the market matured. What once was two grades of cod fish grew into six grades or more, with the distinctions among them becoming less clear.
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
Trelawny Papers, edited by James Phinney Baxter, Collections of the Maine Historical Society, 2nd Series, Documentary History of the State of Maine 3 (Hoyt, Fogg, and Donham, 1844): 43, 135, 162, 195, 199, 259, 321, 335, 349. Contains data on the wholesale price of codfish in New England by grade. Covering a period from 1634 to 1775, the shillings per hundredweight demonstrates that merchant grade was always superior in price to refuse grade cod.
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“The Lifeline of New England”
Annotated Bibliography Primary Sources Colonial Government/Provincial Government Early Vital Records of Essex County, Massachusetts to about 1850. Vols. 1-3. Salem: Newcomb & Gauss. Discusses the hiring practices conducted by cod merchants and the contracts and payment methods agreed upon. Also covers the risky nature of cod fishing as schooners went out to deeper waters and further time was spent offshore than closer to land. The winter season was especially hard on cod merchants and the fisherman, since the chances of smaller profits and death went up dramatically due to winter storms and the inability to navigate as efficiently through icebergs and other impediments.
Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1762-1779. Vols. 38-55. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1968-1990. Entails the hiring practices of the cod merchants in New England and the working conditions. For instance, the majority of the fishermen went fishing to the offshore banks in spring, summer, and fall. In the winter, the fishermen usually worked for the same cod merchants but usually worked along constricted trade routes that entailed the West Indies and the southern U.S. mainland. Usually this happened because techniques for catching and curing cod resulted in disproportionately more refuse cod being processed in the winter period (hence the increase in traffic to slave markets since it was a cheap commodity), and a marked increase in traffic to Newfoundland and the Iberian Peninsula when it was not in the wintery season.
1
Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
Lincoln, William, The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of Safety, ed. Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1838. Commodore Palliser saw the New England cod industry as an unmitigated threat to the interests of Royal Navy recruiting and the three fisheries in the West Country. To Palliser, he saw the American colonists not as British subjects with rights, but rather as an industry subverting the commercial rights and entitlements of the British entrepreneurs. He went as far as calling it “piracy” in Volume 43, Part II, page 257.
Marblehead Town Records. November 15, 1772. Abbott Hall, office of the town clerk, Marblehead, Massachusetts. Based on interactions among fish merchants, who held a town meeting after Parliament renewed the tea act. The Committee of Safety in Marblehead, which was the foremost commercial fishing port in New England, discussed the willingness of merchants to not supply the British with any cod as a source of food. Also, the fish merchants were part of a commercial consortium that agreed to boycott manufactured goods from Britain for two years. They were able to get other commercial ports to join in the boycott, and by 1769, they had formed an inspection committee in Boston that enforced the trade embargo.
U.S. Department of State. Report of the Secretary of State, on the Subject of the Cod and Whale Fisheries, Made Conformably to an Order of the House of Representatives of the United States, Referring to Him the Representation of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on Those Subjects. February 1, 1791, by Thomas Jefferson (Francis Childs and John Swaine, 1791), p.14. Hancock to Jefferson. October 25, 1790. “N.B. the
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
quantity of fish consumed in the United States being inconsiderable the Committee have made no allowance for that consumption, but have considered the whole quantity taken as Exported.” Boyd, Butterfield, et. al (1950 to date), volume 19, p. 223 n. Jefferson already had a report enclosed to him from Governor Hancock. Hancock had prepared a committee of the Massachusetts legislature chaired by Peleg Coffin Jr. Jefferson decided to have his own reports published covering 1765-1790. In his report he analyzes the export of cod to the West Indies and Europe. He also details the average annual number of vessels employed in the Massachusetts cod fishery, and their tonnage and their crews.
Letters Jefferson, Thomas, Secretary of State. “Report on the State of the Cod Fisheries, 1791.” American State Papers: Commerce and Navigation, Series I: General Correspondence, 1651-1827, Vols. 13-60, Manuscript Division, LC. As Secretary of State under Washington, Jefferson calculated that between the years 1765 to 1775, the New England cod industry was exporting equal amounts of cod between the West Indies and Southern Europe. However, recent scholarship has suggested a greater volume of exports went to the West Indies and Jefferson had overestimated the amount that went to Southern Europe.
Report enclosed in a letter from governor John Hancock, at Boston, to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, at Philadelphia, October 25, 1789, Massachusetts archives Collection, volume 289. Letters, 1786-1792, Massachusetts Archives, Boston, Massachusetts. A report was put together by a committee of the Massachusetts legislature chaired by Peleg Coffin Jr.,
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
at the request of Governor Hancock in response to a letter sent to him by Secretary of State Jefferson. In the report is detailed information covering 21 ports tied to the New England cod fisheries from 1765-1790. The average annual exports of codfish to the two major markets, Europe, and the West Indies, are analyzed and recorded.
Merchant Records American Archives, Series 4-5, Vols. 1-9, Washington, D.C.: M. St. Clair Clarke and Peter Force, 1837-1853. Entails further information regarding the cod industry from witnesses called forth to testify in Parliament. One witness, for instance, is called forth to enlighten Parliament on the state of the New England cod industry. The witness talked about Marblehead being the greatest exporter, followed by Salem and Gloucester. The market of the cod industry is explored, showing that the cod industry enjoyed a sizable share from Catholics (for dieting purposes due to Lent and other religiously observed days), and to slaves (because of how cheap refuse grade cod was). Also covered are the curing processes of the different grades (merchant or refuse) and that the fisherman were involved not merely with catching, but also processing and curing the fish as well.
“A Calculation of the State of the Cod and Whale Fishery, Belonging to Massachusetts in 1763: Copied from a Paper Published in 1764.” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Series 1, Vol. 3, 1802: 202-203. Primary documents entail a collection of cod merchant records from Marblehead, Boston, and Salem. These records show the different prices cod merchants were selling their cod at, which was based usually on the season and what type of cod (merchant or refuse grade).
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Walter Bauer
March 1, 2013
“The Lifeline of New England”
Clark, William Bell, et al., eds. Naval Documents of the American Revolution. 11 vols. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964-Present. Discusses the inception of the American Navy, which was in part due to the valiant efforts of the New England cod industry. Also, Clark further shows that the West Indies and Newfoundland markets were of equal importance to New England cod industry. Clark points out that once the New England cod industry continued to recruit labor from Newfoundland, the Royal Navy grew concerned that their potential labor pools would suffer as a result. Thus, the British began to adopt a more hostile attitude towards the New England cod industry.
Rules and Regulations of the Committee for Encouraging Trade & Commerce. Ezekiel Price Papers, 1754-1785. Massachusetts Historical Society. Covers the average cost for outfitting a fishing vessel, the typical supplies brought on board (including rum and cider, i.e.). Also entails how much fish had been caught on an annual basis in Massachusetts, where the fish was sold, and the type of fish that was to be cured (whether merchant or refuse). Chronicles the anxieties of the cod merchants when it came to the mere threat of the Sugar Act being passed, which would have detrimental effect on the cost of curing cod.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Ed. Max Lerner. New York: the Modern Library, 1937; originally published in 1776. The scale of the New England cod industry made quite an impression on Adam Smith. He even took note of it
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Walter Bauer
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“The Lifeline of New England”
in his work before the Revolutionary War began (pages 544-545): “The New England fishery, in particular was, before the late disturbances, one of the most important, perhaps, in the world.”
Parliament 6 Anne c. 37, Great Britain. Statutes at Large from the Tenth Year of King William the Third to the End of the Reign of Queen Anne 4 (London, 1769): 336. The Sixth of Anne formally stated: “That no mariner, or other person, who shall serve on board, or be retained to serve on board, any privateer, or trading ship or vessel that shall be employed in any part of America, nor any mariner, or other person, being on shore in any part thereof, shall be liable to be impressed or taken away by any officer or officers of or belonging to any of her Majesty's ships of war, empowered by the Lord High Admiral, or any other person whatsoever, unless such mariner shall have before deserted from such ship of war belonging to her Majesty, at any time after the 14th day of February 1707, upon pain that any officer or officers so impressing or taking away, or causing to be impressed or taken away, any mariner or other person, contrary to the tenor and true meaning of this act, shall forfeit to the master, or owner or owners of any such ship or vessel, £20 for every man he or they shall so impress or take, to be recovered with full costs of suit, in any court within any part of her Majesty's dominions.”
An Act to Encourage the Trade to Newfoundland. London: Printed by Charles Bill, 1699. By law, migratory fishing vessels departing from England were supposed to carry at least one “Fresh Man that was never at Sea before.” This “Fresh Man” is further defined as
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Walter Bauer
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“The Lifeline of New England”
“not a Seaman, or having ever been at Sea before.” Thus, the law enabled a steady labor pool from which the Royal Navy could draw upon.
Lord Camden’s Speech on the New-England Fishing Bill. Newport, RI: S. Southwick, 1775. Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans #42788. Lord Camden was one of the few men in the House of Lords that dissented with the Restraining Act. His alarm can be easily discerned in his dissenting speech, in which he states, “[the bill] was at once declaring war [against the colonies], and beginning hostilities in Great Britain [i.e., the British Empire].”
Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, Secretary of the Commonwealth, comp. vols. 1-17. Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Co., 1896-1908. The Royal Navy actively went after fishermen that traded with the French (outside the bounds of British mercantilism) and punishment included confiscated property and sentences of banishment. Also, George III encouraged Commodore Hugh Palliser, a British naval officer who rule Newfoundland with an iron fist, to come up with methods for enacting mercantilist policies on Newfoundland and to ensure that the Newfoundland labor pool would not be encroached upon by the New England cod industry.
Simmons, R.C. and P.D.G. Thomas, eds. Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliaments Respecting North America, 1754-1783. Vols. 1-5. Millwood, NY: Kraus International Publications, 1982-1986. These records are eyewitness accounts narrated by those who have firsthand knowledge of the New England cod industry. For instance, several sailors
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talk about how many ships and quintals of merchant and refuse grade cod New England ports bring in each year. It also entails colonial merchants differentiated between merchant and refuse grade cod and also about how much merchant and refuse grade cod being exported to the West Indies, Newfoundland, and the Iberian Peninsula.
Treaties United States Department of State. “ 1763 Treaty of Paris.” Treaty document. 115-20. Washington, GPO, 2013. Print. Britain ratified the Treaty of Paris in 1763 for the following reasons: Parliament wanted to further constrict the available Atlantic markets that the French were able to compete in, and Parliament wanted to further expand Atlantic markets for Britain and New England. Thus, Parliament ratified the treaty as a mercantilist and protectionist measure against French competition and further expanded available fishing waters for British and New England fisheries to draw upon.
United States Department of State. “ 1783 Treaty of Paris.” Treaty document. 134-42. Washington, GPO, 2013. Print. Probably one of the greatest spoils of war that Continental Congress successfully negotiated is in Article III of the treaty. This is in regards to the fishing rights on the banks and coasts of Newfoundland. In particular, Continental Congress was able to negotiate the rights for access to the Grand Banks, the richest source of cod in the Atlantic Ocean.
Secondary Sources Books
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Bailyn, Bernard. The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century, 3rd edition. New York: vintage books, 1968. Bailyn discusses the origins of the New England cod industry. The New England commercial fishery had several advantages over other regions. This includes its temperate climates and proximity to fertile lands, allowing it to be a mixed agricultural and maritime economy. Also, the warmer water temperatures yielded longer fishing seasons along the northern seaboard of North America compared to the same water around Newfoundland.
Cole, Arthur. Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1700-1861. Harvard University Press 2 (1938): 35-68. Covers the monthly observations of 46 commodities, including cod. The period of price indexes is from January 1700 to December 1861. The cities in the panel include Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, Cincinnati, and New Orleans. Many of these goods are further broken down into varieties, such as merchant or refuse grade cod, thus culminating into 549 varieties recorded.
Cutting, C. Fish Saving: A History of Fish Processing from Ancient to Modern Times. New York: Philosophical Society, 1956. Cutting creates the authoritative history of the different methods of preserving fish from the earliest of primary records up to the publication date. He also analyzes the evolution of preservation over the years. Preservation includes drying, salting, smoking, canning, chilling, and freezing is dealt with in historical and social context.
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Hornsby, Stephen. British Atlantic, American Frontier: Space of Power in Early Modern British America. University Press of New England, 2005. The cod industry in New England had become the fourth most valuable export from the Western Hemisphere, right behind grain, tobacco, and sugar. He also observes the abysmal lack of money that colonial agents received to represent New England in comparison to the amounts of money that colonial agents received to represent the interest of the West Indies.
Magra, Christopher. The Fisherman’s Cause: Atlantic Commerce and Maritime Dimensions of the American Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Magra laments the lack of available historiographical research related to the New England cod industry. His book entails the science of cod and the importance of cod as a commodity in the New England region. His book successfully proves that by the 18th century, the New England cod industry had become independent from the West Country fisheries.
McCusker and Russell R. Menard. The Economy of British America, 1607-1789. University of North Carolina Press, 1985. The cod industry is considered by economic historians to be an extractive industry similar to lumber and mining. Entrepreneurs invested capital and hired workers in order to extract a resource from the ocean for processing and marketing. Out of the 581,000 people living in New England in 1770, about 10,000 were employed in the cod industry.
McCusker, John. How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Commodity Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States, 2nd edition.
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Worcestor, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 2001. McCusker catalogues the commodity price indexes between the U.S. and Great Britain. He covers the years 16651860. From 1763-1789, the U.S. had a commodity price index between 75 and 100, while Great Britain experienced an index of between 50-70. In addition, Vickers describes the clothing the fishermen typically wore. On pages 35 and 35 he describes them wearing “heavy boots” and “woolen outerclothing.”
Purvis, Thomas. Revolutionary America, 1763-1800. New York: Facts on File, 1995. Purvis shows that the New England region supplied more men on average than either the Middle or Southern regions on a consistent yearly basis. In addition, three out of the four major generals under George Washington (at the start of the war) and seven out of eight brigadier generals came from New England.
Smith, Joshua. Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783-1820. University Press of Florida, 2006. Lines drawn in peace treaties were not so easy to see on the ocean, and when the Royal Navy tried to punish French colonists for encroaching on British held waters, the colonists did not commit the crime on purpose. The same issue came to light when the Royal Navy tried to inhibit the trade routes that were open, especially between New England and Newfoundland, since the British thought that New England was conducting business operations that were outside the bounds of the British Empire.
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“The Lifeline of New England”
Sosin, Jack. Agents and Merchants: British colonial Policy and the Origins of the American Revolution, 1763-1775. University of Nebraska Press, 1965. Although there were five colonial agents representing North America colonial interests, Sosin maintains that two of these agents were more concerned with their positions as Members of Parliament rather than their position as lobbyists. Thus, in all likelihood, there were only three agents who acted as lobbyists trying to represent the New England cod industry. In addition, fish was not as valuable an export as sugar, which limited the amount of access the New England colonial agents had to lobby effectively.
Warren, George, Frank Pearson, and Herman Stoker. Wholesale Prices for 213 Years, 1720 to 1932. Cornell University, Agricultural Experiment Station, Memoir 412, 1932. The primary aim of Warren and Pearson was to present monthly comprehensive index numbers of the 19th century corresponding to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is a monograph researching the determinants in commodity price trends, including the price of merchant and refuse grade cod in the American Revolutionary Era.
Journals Bell, Herbert. “The West India Trade Before the American Revolution.” The American Historical Review 22 (1917): 272-287. Accessed February 8, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1834961. Professor Bell discusses the trade between the North America colonies and the West Indies before the American Revolution. He notes the regional specialization that occurred, as certain colonies were dominant in specific resources, such as New England with merchant and refuse cod. Every continental colony
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had something of value to export to the West Indies, and Bell is showing the importance of trade and the commercial ties fostered between the two markets.
Carrington, Selwyn. “The American Revolution and the British West Indies’ Economy.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17 (1987): 823-850. Accessed February 8, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/204655. Selwyn analyzes the adverse impact the American Revolution had on the trade routes between New England and the West Indies. Despite the inflated prices of cod due to shortage, the New England merchants were able to use it to their advantage to trade the cod for weapons and gunpowder in exchange. Thus, the cod industry helped provide the weapons and part of the 1.5 million pounds of gunpowder that was provided for the Continental Army.
Cole, Arthur, and Ruth Crandall. “The International Scientific Committee on Price History.” Journal of Economic History 24 (September 1964): 381-388. The International Scientific Committee on Price History sponsored the project that studied Massachusetts prices. The results of several of these studies were drawn together and showed that different hundredweights employed by the U.S. and Britain confused researchers and historians. Also, past historians had incorrectly adjusted the different weights employed, and the project was able to make the appropriate adjustments for the price indexes.
Egnal, Marc, and Joseph Ernst. “An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution.” William & Mary Quarterly 29 (January 1972): 21-23. Marc and Ernst cover the economic and political purposes of colonial non-importation. They also cover the list of Boston
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merchants in violation of the non-importation agreement, and detail some of the agreements that were signed by Boston and Gloucester fish merchants. In particular, the non-importation agreements were aimed at the Townshend Revenue Act, passed in 1768. The effect of an earlier non-importation agreement led to the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1765. The whole point of these agreements was to deny the customs offices in the colonies from collecting goods that either were denied access to shore or that were never sold at all.
McCusker, John. “Colonial Statistics” in chapter EG of Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present: Millennial Edition, edited by Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Accessed January 22, 2013. doi: 10.1017/9780511132971.
McCusker, John. “Weight and Measures in the Colonial Sugar Trade: The Gallon and the Pound and Their International Equivalents,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 30 (October 1973): 15. The wholesale price of codfish in the New England market was customarily quoted in terms of shillings Massachusetts currency per hundredweight (or quintal) of 100 pounds. Others have been misled by the complexities of European and North American weights and assumed that the hundredweight for fish could be used interchangeably with the long hundredweight (112 pounds) employed in Great Britain.
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Crandall, Ruth. “Wholesale Commodity Prices in Boston During the Eighteenth Century.” Review of Economic Statistics 16 (June, September 1934): 182. Ruth culled data for the wholesale price of codfish by grade between 1750-1775. Her index is concerned only with what Jamaica was paying for refuse grade cod. On average, Jamaica was paying a slightly higher than average price for refuse at the time.
Vickers, Daniel. “’A Knowen and Staple Commoditie’: Codfish Prices in Essex Country, Massachusetts, 1640-1775.” Essex Institute Historical Collections 124 (July 1988): 186203. The price of cod, in relation to other commodities, can be quite tricky to gauge at times. Although Vickers has done quite an excellent job indexing merchant and refuse grade prices, it should be approached with some degree of caution. For instance, measurements were not standardized in the Atlantic world, and there were variations in coinage that was used throughout the early modern era.
Vickers, Daniel. “The Price of Fish: A Price Index for Cod, 1505-1892.” Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region/Rerevue d’Histoir e de la Région Atlantique 25 (Spring 1996): 92-104. Usually merchant grade cod sold at higher prices than refuse. Especially spring merchant grade cod, which was the best grade that applied to fish landed in season before July 1. Merchant grade cod was of better quality than refuse because of curing and processing techniques that enabled merchant grade to command a higher price. Vickers demonstrates that the pricing of codfish became more complex over time as the market matured. What once was two grades of cod fish grew into six grades or more, with the distinctions among them becoming less clear.
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Trelawny Papers, edited by James Phinney Baxter, Collections of the Maine Historical Society, 2nd Series, Documentary History of the State of Maine 3 (Hoyt, Fogg, and Donham, 1844): 43, 135, 162, 195, 199, 259, 321, 335, 349. Contains data on the wholesale price of codfish in New England by grade. Covering a period from 1634 to 1775, the shillings per hundredweight demonstrates that merchant grade was always superior in price to refuse grade cod.
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