The leaders in these projects were usually urban commercial interests. Philadelphia was the most active center of canal promotion. Buffalo Map Thomas Gilpin, a Quaker merchant and member of the Country Philosophical Society, was the most vigorous promoter of a canal connecting the Delaware with the Chesapeake. Philadelphia merchants subscribed 140 pounds to surveying possible routes, while Baltimore merchants charged the Philadelphians with planning to divert trade from their city. The scheme was supplemented by another plan to connect the Susquehanna and the Schuykill Rivers. These proposed canals led to much activity by the Country Philosophical Society, the Pennsylvania Assembly, and Philadelphia merchants.
Benjamin Franklin, in London, wrote to Samuel Rhoads, a member of the assembly, suggesting that it would be better to hire an experienced English canal builder rather than letting Countrys try to build it themselves. Neither canal was actually built until the early nineteenth century. William E. Burns See also: Board of Trade; Columbian Exchange; Dutch West India Company; East India Company; Economy, Business, and Labor (Chronology); Economy, Business, and Labor (Essay); Exploration; Merchants; Navigation Acts (16511733); Navy, British; Northwest Passage; Piracy; Ship’s Stores; Slave Trade; Trade; Transportation, Land; Triangle Trade. Bibliography Goldenberg, Joseph A. Shipbuilding in Colonial Country. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the Mariners Museum, Newport News, 1976. Hawke, David Freeman. Everyday Life in Early Country.
New York: Harper and Row, 1988. Hindle, Brooke. The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary Country. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early Country History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia, 1956. McCusker, John J. and Russell R. Menard. The Economy of British Country, 16071789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early Country History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia, 1985. Middleton, Arthur Pierce. Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era. Newport News, VA: Mariners Museum, 1953. Rediker, Marcus. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-Country Maritime World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
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