From the 1650s onward Europeans expanded their activities in all fields and in all directions. By that time Europeans had already discovered the New World, and had seized or bullied most of the Old. European trade and industry increased, and as these grew so also did population and urbanization. People multiplied, and an increasingly greater proportion of them began to live in towns and cities. Simultaneously, the Europeans increased in wealth; indeed, most of their activities created more wealth. The ever-increasing number of people called for more food, and for changes in European farming. The Europeans' growing wealth also allowed them to buy luxury items from around the world: silk and spice and everything nice. The goods came not only from the Far East and Africa but also from the New World. When Europeans began to settle America, they almost at once had the advantages of a large and growing metropolitan market in western Europe. This market provided opportunities for wealth, but only if the American farmers developed appropriate commodities and produced them at reasonable prices.
The English, Dutch, Swedes, French, and Spanish settled in North America at trading and exploring stations. So located, they could direct the flow of products to Europe. The English chiefly sought rare products such as gold and spices, and they sent back furs. The Dutch concentrated on furs. All European pioneers, however, had to feed themselves. This took a bit of doing, which at first involved a merging of European technology with Indian crops and methods. Later, the settlers adapted European crops and animals. In spite of starving times in almost every colony from Virginia to New England, the new Americans at least mastered the art of feeding themselves.
European technology used animals for draft and employed plows, harrows, and similar implements. This technology fit European crops better than it fit American crops. Thus, European implements and draft animals did not appear until comparatively late. As long as they depended chiefly on Indian crops, Europeans simply substituted iron hoes for stone hoes, and iron axes for stone axes. But methods such as girdling, slash and burn, and the rest, came almost directly from Indian technology. The Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation went 12 years without a plow; Virginians went almost as long. The hoe of corn culture served well enough to keep men alive. Hunting and fishing, of course, supplemented the food supply, as it did for the Indians.
From north to south the story was largely the same in the 17th century. Everywhere the new Americans pursued a subsistence agriculture which supported some other major economic activity. Pennsylvania developed possibly the most flourishing subsistence farming. The commercial production of tobacco, an American crop with American methods and uses, began early in Virginia and Maryland. This specialty developed commercially almost exclusively in the upper South. Farmers and planters of the lower South had hesitantly begun rice culture, but as the 17th century ended men in the Carolinas still found hides and furs the most rewarding commodities. Meanwhile, rapid changes took place in the European metropolitan centers, and in the West Indian islands. The growth of population in both places created consumers for more and cheaper food. Markets for American foods definitely began to increase as the 18th century got under way.
Europeans, of course, primarily wanted European foods rather than exotic Indian crops. The foods also had to be comparatively nonperishable and easily transported. Grains, particularly wheat, and processed meat (hams, salt pork, and such) especially met European preferences. Commercial production of these commodities compelled American farmers to embrace the best European technology insofar as that technology fit the American scene. The plants, animals, methods, and tools all derived from Europe. Contrary to a common European view at the time, the immigrants did not bring the worst available methods to the New World. Nor did the Americans allow any deterioration of stock or plants without good economic reasons.
Most European criticism about American farming centered on things of no consequence to American farmers, who were selling in a world market. True, Americans tended toward slovenly cultivation, but niceness of method mattered little if the land yielded an abundant exportable surplus. Americans paid less attention than Europeans to fertilizer, but Americans at first had less need for it. Livestock, in spite of nearly continual importations from Europe, tended to decline from a European standpoint. Still, the animals yielded meat of a quality suitable for export. The hardy American animals could survive in spite of casual care. Americans had few barns and sheds, but the world market for meat did not demand barns, stalls, and fancy feeding. American dairy cows yielded ridiculously low volumes of milk, butter, and cheese, but dairy products, after all, served only the resident Americans. The corn- and mast-fed hogs of America provided ham that was equal to any in Europe. If the European consumer bought American food, the American farmer thought it pointless to consider the comfort and emotional well-being of his animals.
New Englanders tended to concentrate on animals, the middle Atlantic on grains, the upper South on tobacco, and the lower South on rice and indigo. The Revolutionary War disrupted the marketing from the farmer's view, but the major commercial commodities remained largely unchanged in the years immediately after the war. Indigo declined and then disappeared as a major export commodity, but cotton almost at once replaced it.
In the 19th century men everywhere made great technological advances. In America, the advances took place in a sort of reciprocal action with three major historical series and events dominating the story: the westward movement, urbanization, and industrialization.
The greatest westward expansion in American history took place during the 19th century. American farmers and stockmen conquered, and almost entirely settled, a continent. They did this in a single century, 1801-1900. Nothing quite like it had ever happened before. Starting from a thin line of people on the eastern seaboard (with a few incursions across the mountains as of 1800), farmers and herders pushed into a nearly empty land, dispossessed the Indians, and exploited the country. And in course of time the American pioneers wanted and received political organization. California entered the Union in 1850, the Plains states mostly in the 1880s, and more states, such as Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, came into the Union in the 20th century.
At the same time, a nation that was weak and underdeveloped in 1801, had, by 1900, become the world's leading industrial nation. From virtually no industry in 1801, America rose to leading industrial power in 1900, with more railroads and more manufactured goods per capita than any other nation. Involved in the industrialization, and importantly so, was the farm implement and machinery industry. Factories everywhere supplied farmers with the sophisticated tools and machines of the new agriculture.