This volume surveys the economic history of British North America and of the early United States to the end of the 18th century.

Preface; 1. The history of Native Americans from before the arrival of the Europeans and Africans until the American Civil War; 2. The African background to American colonization; 3. The European background; 4. The settlement and growth of the colonies: population, labor, and economic development; 5. The Northern Colonies: economy and society, 1600-1775; 6. Economic and social development of the South; 7. Economic and social development of the British West Indies, from settlement to c. 1850; 8. British mercantilist policies and the American colonies; 9. The revolution, the constitution, and the new nation.