Editing Colonial Commerce (section)

== Trade Networks ==

Philadelphia merchants developed sophisticated commercial networks that connected the city to markets throughout the Atlantic world. The most important trade route linked Philadelphia to the British West Indies, where sugar plantations consumed enormous quantities of provisions that the islands could not produce themselves. Philadelphia ships carried flour, bread, beef, pork, lumber, and barrel staves to Jamaica, Barbados, and other Caribbean colonies, returning with sugar, molasses, rum, and bills of exchange that could be used to purchase British manufactured goods. This West Indies trade was the foundation of Philadelphia's prosperity, and the merchants who dominated it—including many prominent Quaker families—accumulated fortunes that made them among the wealthiest colonists in British America.<ref name="tolles">{{cite book |last=Tolles |first=Frederick B. |title=Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia |year=1948 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |location=Chapel Hill}}</ref>

Trade with Britain centered on the exchange of colonial raw materials for British manufactured goods. Philadelphia exported flaxseed (used in linen production), lumber, iron, furs, and some flour to British ports, while importing textiles, hardware, ceramics, and luxury goods that colonial manufacturers could not produce competitively. This trade was regulated by the Navigation Acts, which required most colonial commerce to flow through British ports, but Philadelphia merchants found the regulations generally tolerable until the 1760s, when new imperial policies provoked resistance. The British trade created cultural as well as commercial connections, as Philadelphia elites adopted British fashions, consumed British literature, and sent their sons to British universities.<ref name="doerflinger"/>