Colonial Industry and Gun Manufacturing

historix69

Emperor
Joined
Sep 30, 2008
Messages
1,402
1. Colonial Industry

In history the British Colonists in North America were not allowed to build up a manufacturing industry. Colonial Industry was forbidden by British Law which was another point to raise Rebel Sentiment in the colonies.

Main purpose of the british colonies in north-america was :
a) produce cheap raw materials for the motherlands growing industry and
b) provide an exclusive market for manufactured goods from the motherland.

So it was assured that the Profit from Manufacturing and Trading would exclusively go to the upper class of the motherland. The British fought the independence war to preserve this exclusive market of 2 million consumers.

Industry in North-America started after winning war of independence, not before.

-> Trade and Manufacturing as shown in Col1/Col2 are nice Game-Elements but are not historical accurate ...

(Problem with historical accuracy is that by restricting the player to the historic raw materials, Col would loose half of the goods to produce / trade ...)

2. Weapons-Industry

By purpose the British did not allow the colonists to build up any industry, so there also was no weapons-industry and no ammunitions-industry in the colonies when War-of-Independence started. In case of guns and ammo the British wanted to keep the colonists completely dependent from the mother country.

Weapons and Ammunition for the Rebel Armies during WoI instead had to be bought from European merchants. The merchants (including many british upper class people) delivered guns and ammo to neutral cities as dutch colony St. Eustatius in the Caribbean, where Rebel Ships and Smugglers could take over the stuff and transport it to american mainland ... The profit for the european merchants was around 2.000% ....

Supply of the Rebel Army with ammo was so bad that there is a note by George Washington where he states that there are only 9 shots per soldier left ... so they had to wait for the British to come very close since they could not afford to waste any shot on big distance.

-> Massive Manufacturing of Weapons in the Colonies as shown in Col1/Col2 is nice Game-Element but is not historical accurate ...

(Smuggling / Trade with other European Nations during WoI somehow is neglected in Col ... historically the other Nations should offer weapons in exchange of any goods they can sell in Europe with profit ... e.g. trade 100 cloth to 50 muskets. During my games I found that they unfortunately seem to NEVER trade guns.)
 
First of all, Colonization isn't focused on the United States (despite videos and such). And secondly, I doubt historical accuracy is a priority (same as the Civilization series). Most of the game's mechanics apply whether you're English, Spanish, Dutch or French, so there needs to be a compromise.

These points were brought up in your thread about the American Revolutionary War.
 
My thread about War of Independence was more focused on the war while this thread is more focused on industrial production in the colonies.

The British colonies in North America in 2nd half of 18th century had a population of about 2 million while the French before the French and Indian War had about 60.000 ... I suppose (but I don't have numbers) that the dutch and spanish colonies at that time had about the same number of european colonists as the French ... maybe even less, since most europeans (except the New England colonists) just came to the colonies to make a fortune and then return to europe ... so due to massive european population, the british colonies were the ones which were most likely to start manufacturing (if they were allowed to).
Another point is the climate ... New England climate is moderate like European Climate while climate in Middle America and North of South America is more tropical and therefore unhealthy for Europeans. (Between 1794 and 1796 the British lost about 40.000 seamen in the Caribbeans only by desease like cholera and typhus.) Building a manufacturing business in an unhealthy climate is not very profitable ...

So conclusion is that early industrialisation in the colonies is more a Game Feature to keep the Game Economy interesting and not a fact.

According to my history books, the tradegoods from America to Europe at that time were mostly :

- Fish,
- Fur,
- Corn, Rice,
- Lifestock (cattle) and hides,
- Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar, Cacao, Fruits, (Coffee)
- Copper, Silver, Gold, Gems
- Lumber, Shipbuilding materials, Tropical Wood,
- Drugs (Kokain?)
- Rum, Gin,
- Silk (?),

All of these goods are more or less raw materials for Europe ... to consum or process. The Rum probably was coming more from a Destillery than a Rum-Factory.

Historical Industrialisation in England slowly started around 1730 with first improvements for weavers, steam engine (1775) and continued into mid of 19th century ...

Industrialisation in Col1 was introduced by FF Adam Smith who allowed building of factories.

If Col2 would continue after gaining independence, it would be historically more accurate to split the economic part of the game into two parts :

1. Colonisation, Trade with natives, plantation-economy (slavery), trade raw materials to motherland for finished goods,
(You still could make a fortune e.g. by just growing cotton, trading it to homeland, importing cloth and sell it to your own and native population or by holding shares of homeland textile-manufactories.)

-> Revolution

2. Post-Revolution, start of industrialisation, building of first factories, railways, manufacturing goods for world-market, ...
Industrialisation would introduce new ressources and goods like iron, coal, steal, machines, etc. ... (See Imperialism-Series for example)

(3. Civil War between agricultural part and industrial part of United States of XY.)

Industrialisation in North America was a slow process which took from end of 18th century until mid of 20th century (WW2).

Around 1830, only 8% of the US-Americans lived in a City. (1870 : 27%, 1920 : 48%)
Ratio of Agricultural Production in US slowly changed from around 80% in 1830 to 55% in 1860.

As can be seen from the Wealth of the Confederete States (South of U.S.) before US Civil War, slavery and plantation economy in suitable climate was still very profitable (for the plantation owners in 19th century) ... [too bad for the south that guns and cannons only grow in factories and not on plantations.]

At the end there is the old Question how to end the game ... Winning the Revolution is fine ... but if you continue to play after reaching Independence, it is difficult to find some new interesting victory conditions except maybe the SCORE which would be based on Independence, total population, land-size, wealth, buildings, professions, industrial production, international relations, slavery, racism, etc.
 
Hmm... it would add an interesting twist to the game if you had to focus on just extracting resources at first, and actually needed a small amount of finished goods [cloth, coats, cigars, rum] to keep things running smoothly in the colonies which you could only get from Europe or other Europeans. Maybe if specialists were made prohibitively expensive early on, and factories couldn't be built before, say, 1650 or 1700?
I do remember trading a fair amount of raw goods in Col1, and I don't think I shipped a single ton of them in the game I just played.
 
Sounds like a very cool idea for a mod... perhaps you should have this thread moved over there. I'm just getting into modding so I would not be able to help much, but perhaps you could get a vetern mod to work this out.
 
Top Bottom