New York

New York occupies an important place in the history of trade, especially for North America. The economic history of New York City has much to do with domestic and international trade. Before the age of air travel, about a third of international passengers and trade to and from the United States passed through New York harbor. For more than a century the port of New York ranked as the largest port in the United States. This is partly a result of geography and partly of weather: the New York harbor lies somewhat inland, protected from storms by the New Jersey shore and Long Island; it experiences very little fog and ice; its size affords ample space for hundreds of ships; and by pre-twentieth-century shipping standards, it is a deep port.

Prior to European settlement, various Indian bands called Lenapes, who belonged to the Algonquian-speaking Delaware Indians, lived in what today constitutes New York City. They lived a communal way of life and had little interest in economic specialization or trade. Some historians believe, nevertheless, that New York was a center for trade among different Indian tribes.

The first documentation of a European individual in New York is that of the Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano (1485?–1528?) in 1524. Other Europeans followed, some of whom were interested in the fur trade. The Dutch West India Company established a settlement on the present-day site of Manhattan in 1624 called New Amsterdam. They were interested solely in trade, especially fur pelts, which could be sold to Europeans at attractive prices. The Dutch settlement prospered after 1647 under the leadership of Peter Stuyvesant (c. 1610–1672), and exported tobacco and timber in addition to furs.

In 1664 British forces took over New Amsterdam and renamed it New York. By the time of the American Revolution, the city's commerce had greatly expanded, and New York merchants were heavily involved in trade between Great Britain and its colonies in the Western Hemisphere. With American independence, however, New York lost trade access to other British territories such as the West Indies and Canada. In the short run, New Yorkers learned to trade in agricultural products with other parts of the United States. In the long run, once relations had improved with Britain, and after the War of 1812, New York merchants were ready to play a dominant role in the shipping of raw cotton, the chief export of the United States, to the cotton textile factories of Britain. Foreign merchants preferred to dock in New York because it afforded the largest United States market for consumer and commercial goods.

The Erie Canal opened up a waterway between the upper Midwest, Canada, and New York, guaranteeing that a vast proportion of the agricultural produce of Midwest farms would be exported by way of New York instead of New Orleans. The new canal also ensured the city's dominance over Philadelphia, making New York the preeminent commercial city and harbor in North America until the middle of the twentieth century. By the mid 1800s the port of New York had grown to encompass numerous piers along the East River and the Hudson River as well as extensive space along the Brooklyn shoreline. On the eve of the Civil War, it handled more than half of the country's exports, imports, and domestic trade. Although much trade was with European merchants, significant amounts were with Central and South America as well as with Asia. New York was also the chief port of entry for millions of immigrants arriving in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The dominance of the New York City harbor provided a boost to other commercial interests such as banking, finance, insurance, and manufacturing. Early in the nineteenth century New York had risen to become the premier banking and finance center of the United States, a position it has not since ceded. As the Industrial Revolution brought new sources of power, inventions, and ideas for organizing manufacturing, growing firms needed capital to expand. Much of the existing capital was available from wealthy New York businesses and individuals, who often preferred their investments to be close by so they could monitor them. The nature of nineteenth-century financing, the many attractive features of the New York harbor, and the huge regional retail and commercial markets of the New York area supported an expanding manufacturing sector. Manufacturing included iron production, shipbuilding, sugar refining, pharmaceuticals, textiles, furniture, and glassware.

At the start of the twentieth century the New York metropolitan area boasted the largest number of factories in the United States and was home to the headquarters of most of the nation's biggest corporations. New York also remained a vital port for the United States and was usually the busiest port in the world until 1960, when Rotterdam exceeded it in activity. In the United States other ports, such as Houston and Long Beach, eventually surpassed New York in terms of total cargo shipped. Increasingly, harbors needed more space for larger ships and their cargo. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a regional institution created in 1921 to handle transportation matters, eventually transferred most port activities from Manhattan and Brooklyn to the Newark area of New Jersey.

Other trends of the twentieth century are also worth noting. The population of the United States shifted towards the west and the south, and while goods from Europe were still important, a much larger percentage of U.S. imports arrived from Asia. Today transportation of many products within the United States occurs by way of truck or rail at rates that are often proportional to distance traveled. This means that businesses try to minimize ground-transport expenses and use ports closest to eventual destinations. As such, although the New York port is still integral to the United States economy as well as to the New York region, it is no longer the premier seaport of North America. Still, in terms of international passenger travel, New York's John F. Kennedy Airport is one of the busiest airports in the nation.

SEE ALSO Agriculture; Baltimore; Banking; Boston; Cargoes, Freight; Cargoes, Passenger; Chambers of Commerce; Charleston; Coffee; Containerization; Cotton; Drugs, Illicit; Empire, British; Empire, Dutch; Ethnic Groups, Africans; Ethnic Groups, Cantonese; Ethnic Groups, Fujianese; Ethnic Groups, Gujarati; Ethnic Groups, Irish; Ethnic Groups, Jews; Finance, Credit and Money Lending; Finance, Insurance; Free Ports; Harbors;Los Angeles–Long Beach;Markets, Stock;Morgan, J. P.;New Orleans;Newport;Packet Boats;Petroleum;Philadelphia;Port Cities;Salem;San Francisco–Oakland;Shipbuilding;Shipping, Inland Waterways, North America;Textiles;United States;West India Company, Dutch.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Simone A. Wegge