Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Land-grabbing and Indian conflicts were vital and intermingled aspects of the
Western frontier in the eighteenth century. Two indispensable works on the
Western land-grabs are Clarence W. Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British
Politics (2 vols., 1917), and Thomas Perkins Abernathy, The Western Lands
and the American Revolution (1937), the early chapters of which are relevant
to this volume. Nicholas B. Wainright's masterful biography of George Croghan`
Wilderness Diplomat (1959) is a vivid study of this adventurer and swindler
so vital to frontier and Indian relations during midcentury. Bernhard Knollenberg's
George Washington: The Virginia Period, 1132-115S (1964) is a much
needed revisionist essay by a superb historian. Verner W. Crane, The Southern
Frontier, 1670-1732 (1928), is excellent and indispensable on Indian fighting
and other events on the Southern frontier during this period. See also John R.
Alden, John Stuart and the Southern Colonial Frontier, 1154-1! (1944), and
John A. Caruso, The Appalachian Frontier: America's First Surge Westward
(1959). Caruso's The Southern Frontier (1963) is particularly good on Florida
and Louisiana. Dale Van Every, Forth to the Wilderness: The First American
Frontier, 1754-1774 (1961), is vivid and valuable.
Marshall Harris's Origin of the Land Tenure System in the United States (1953)
is definitive, as is Beverly W. Bond, The Quitrent System in the American
Colonies (1919), on the unsuccessful attempts to collect quitrent from the
recalcitrant American colonists. The best overall economic history of the colonial
period is Edward C. Kirkland, A History of American Economic Life (4th ed.,
1969).
The classic work on colonial agriculture has not been superseded: Percy W.
Bidwell and John I. Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United
States, vol. 1 (1933). The same is true of the works on colonial industry by
Victor S. Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, vol. 1 (1929); and
Rolla M. Tryon, Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640-1860
(1917). Valuable on colonial manufacturing as a threat to British industry is
Curtis P. Nettels, "Menace of Colonial Manufacturing, 1690-1720," New
England Quarterly (1931). Specific industries are treated in Arthur Cecil Bining,
British Regulation of the Colonial Iron Industry (1938); Bining, Pennsylvania
Iron Manufacture in the Eighteenth Century (1938); and Arthur Harrison Cole,
The American Wool Manufacture, vol. 1 (1926"). Also valuable is Carl Bridenbaugh,
The Colonial Craftsman (1950). On various aspects of colonial commerce,
see the useful works of Harold A. Innis, Fur Trade in Canada (rev. ed.,
1956); and Richard Pares, Yankees and Creoles: Trade Between North America
and the West Indies Before the American Revolution (1956). Arthur Pierce
Middleton, Tobacco Coast: Maritime History of the Chesapeake Bay in the
Colonial Era (1953), is an invaluable history. Howard M. Chapin, Privateering
in King George's War, 1139-1148 (1928), concentrates on an important topic,
concerning which see also, in particular, Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt:
Urban Life in America, 1143-1116 (1955).
Indispensable—and virtually alone—on the history of the post office is Wesley
Everett Rich, The History of the United States Post Office to the Year 1829
(1924), which needs to be supplemented by the excellent study of the history
of the British postal service by Ronald H. Coase, "The Postal Monopoly in Great
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