Peacetime Trade in Early Nineteenth-Century Halifax.
When war ended, Halifax experienced acute economic and social dislocation. Privateering and the sale of prize goods ceased, the garrison market shrank, the dockyard closed and American competition in both the fisheries and Caribbean trade revived in full force. Halifax acquired the look of a place "at the close of a fair." Shipping declined, real estate values slumped, bankruptcies spread and unemployment soared. Many despaired but the core of the local merchant community insisted that Halifax still had a future. Protection against American competition by means of mercantilist trade regulations, they argued, could provide a basis for economic recovery. The imperial government offered the merchants partial support and that, combined with a general recovery in trade, gradually drew Halifax out of its postwar commercial slump. By the mid 1820s a new boom was underway.
As this map indicates, Halifax's peacetime commerce was multi-lateral in structure. Fish, timber and agricultural produce gathered from numerous Maritime outports, manufactures from Britain, wine and salt from the Mediterranean, tea from China, flour, tar and salted provisions from the United States all passed through the hands of Halifax wholesalers. The British West Indies remained Halifax's most important market but gradually sales to foreign markets grew in importance, thereby reducing the dependence of local entrepreneurs on mercantilist trade regulations. The size of the arrows indicates the quantity of goods which moved between centres.
