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The history of agriculture in the United States covers the period from the first English settlers to the present day. In Colonial America, agriculture was the primary livelihood for 90% of the population, and most towns were shipping points for the export of agricultural products. Most farms were geared toward subsistence production for family use.
Rural American history is the history from colonial times to the present of rural ... Mechanization and new technologies transformed farming practices over time. By ...
Thus, by mid-century, most colonial farming was a commercial venture, although subsistence agriculture continued to exist in New England and the middle colonies. Some immigrants who just arrived purchased farms and shared in this export wealth, but many poor German and Irish immigrants were forced to work as agricultural wage laborers.
In the history of colonialism, a plantation was a form of colonization in which settlers would establish permanent or semi-permanent colonial settlements in a new region. The term first appeared in the 1580s in the English language to describe the process of colonization before being also used to refer to a colony by the 1610s.
The bedrock of the economy continued to be fishing and agriculture, especially dairy farming; lumber and shipbuilding also became major industries. The Rhode Island General Assembly legalized African and Native American slavery throughout the colony in 1703, and the slave trade fueled the growth of Providence and Newport into major ports.
In fact, Louisiana produced almost all of the sugar grown in the United States during the prewar period. From one-quarter to one-half of all sugar consumed in the United States came from Louisiana sugar plantations. Plantations grew sugarcane from Louisiana's colonial era onward, but large scale production did not begin until the 1810s and 1820s.
Up until the colonial time period, there was a significant amount of unused land that was characterized by undeveloped wilderness. The primary improvement that settlers brought about was thus the recreation of the English farming system that efficiently utilized the vast areas of untamed wilderness. [4]
In the period following Oliver Cromwell's fall in England, the colony grew and transitioned to a slave economy. It saw the beginnings of industry and urbanization. At the turn of the eighteenth century, King William's War (1689–1697) and Queen Anne's War (1702–1714) brought Maryland into depression again as European demand for tobacco decreased sharply.