What types of businesses would do best in the colony of Rhode Island?

Answer 1

There were plantations in colonial Rhode Island that raised sheep, cows and produce. Life on the plantations was very luxurious, with the work being done by slave labor. Plantation house would most likely be in the Georgian Style. In the towns and villages, the houses were very varied. There was an abundance of timber available from the forests, so a house could be a simple two-room structure made of wood to a palatial mansion, some of which still exist today. Colonial Rhode Island was lucky. There was almost unlimited game, fertile land for agriculture and seafood--everything from cod to lobster to clams. On the plantations, there would be separate cook houses, but on the farms in the villages, food would be cooked over an open hearth. Most meals would be cooked in one pot, suspended by a hook on a swing arm. The girls of the house would help with the meals. Girls did not go on to higher education or apprenticeships except for seamstresses.

Farming and commerce were the largest occupations in colonial Rhode Island. With so many of the villages being on the ocean, ships set out from colonial Rhode Island to ports up and down the coast of the New World as well as Europe and Africa. Each village would have a barber, blacksmith, cabinet maker, printer, silversmith, ship builder, candle maker and most probably an acater--a person who supplied foods. Today they would be called a caterer. All of the professions took on apprentices, young teenagers who worked just to learn the profession.

Answer 2

An importer/exporter trading with England (see mercantilism) or a shipbuilder (30% of ships in Britain where built in the Northeast of the North American colonies at the time) would do very well.