What were NY and the New England areas exploitable resources in 1524?
That early the main resource was definitely fish. The British and French fishermen would sail to the American coast, set up temporary camps, fish and then smoke and salt the fish before sailing home with their boats filled with preserved fish. A little later there were some plants that were considered medicinal and so those were sometimes harvested. And when the colonies were established after 1600 timber became more important. Pretty soon as the northern colonies were settled with farms, they started exporting a lot of sheep to the West Indies for meat, and then they started distilling a lot of Rum from sugar that they got from the West Indies. When the Rum industry got started, then they started the “triangle trade” – rum to Africa, get slaves, slaves to West Indies, get sugar, sugar to New England, distill rum. That whole development took until the early 1700s.
