What were the differences between American and Canadian trade during the 1700s?
American trade, due to the variety of climates, was far more diverse. The southern American colonies (including, for the purposes of this question, the West Indian colonies) supplied English markets with staple crops including tobacco, sugar, and rice, while the middle and New England colonies supplied large amounts of timber, cod, and other goods. By contrast, Canada mainly exported furs and timber, first to the French and then the English, and even the fur trade had begun to weaken over the eighteenth century. The American colonies were also much more densely populated, which made them much larger consumers of European manufactures. Overall, the British government invested much more in the defense and the settlement of their colonies than the French did in Canada, which was both a result and a cause of their greater profitability.