Illicit Trade and the Rise of a Capitalistic Culture in the 17th-century Potomac River Valley: An Analysis of Imported Clay Tobacco Pipes.

Summary

Scholars disagree about the impact of English mercantilist and Dutch free trade policies on the development of the 17th-century British colonies in the mid-Atlantic region and many argue that because the Dutch were rarely mentioned in the records of Virginia or Maryland after 1660 and the passage of the Navigation Acts, Dutch merchants were absence from the colonies. However, my research, which draws on a close reading of the archaeological and historic record focusing on trade patterns, indicates that colonists in the Chesapeake adopted Dutch ideas about free trade and individualism, and continued to purchase goods from the Netherlands illicitly into the early 18th century. Specifically, I examine the presence and frequency of English and Dutch tobacco pipes on sites in the Potomac River Valley from 1630 to 1730 and trace the persistence of trade relations between English settlers and Dutch merchants over the course of the long 17th century.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Material Worlds: Archaeology, Consumption, and the Road to Modernity   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 285