Cathy Matson

Women's Economies in North America before 1820: Special Forum Introduction

This introduction places six articles in the context of three overlapping issues in the economic history of womens lives before 1820. Considered together, the authors have situated their case studies within the long-term development of a domestic North American and wider Atlantic world economy growing enormously during this era. Secondly, the introduction elaborates on how the six essays situate womens economic lives in the dramas of consumer, transportation, and market revolutions transforming the colonies and nation. Thirdly, the introduction reviews the wider historiographical insights that have governed our perspectives about womens economic lives and points to ways that these six case studies help extend and change long-standing views.

Accounting for War and Revolution

While commercial capitalism had become an adaptive way of life for trans-Atlantic merchants by the second half of the eighteenth century, individual success and even survival were never assured. The commercial lives of two North Americans illustrate the vicissitudes faced by most traders in a stormy period of war and revolution. In May 1785, Philadelphia merchant Andrew Clow received a letter from London that dashed his expectations for prosperous trade in the post-Revolutionary city. “Your partner Mr. [David] Cay was made Bankrupt,” wrote a friend, and he “hath quitted the Kingdom.” Clow would not “be made a Bankrupt with [Cay], unless you return to this Country,” but he would be liable on his own for all debts of the partnership, the letter advised. Two weeks later another London creditor informed Clow that his goods would be sold for whatever price they might bring, since Cay had absconded, “nor have we the least Idea where he can be gone.” A drawer in Cay’s office held far more bills for debts due “than will discharge yr. Debt of Clow & Cay,” though as “Men of Honour,” and “from the very respectable Character you bear, as an honest sober industrious Man,” the creditors were confident “that you may see your Partnership Debt discharged,” for “it Must Be for Material Advantage to Save all we Can.”