A history of commerce

by Clive Day

253. Resources and industries of the colonies in America.—Though the personal qualities of the English were duplicated on the other side of the Atlantic, the physical environment was absolutely different. Products of the field, the forest, and the sea, which were eagerly desired and hard to get in England, were to be had in abundance in the New World. The conditions for manufacture, on the other hand, were unfavorable; capital and labor found such an attractive field in the extractive industries (the production of raw material), that there was little temptation for the colonies to engage in the finishing of goods. In the plantation colonies of the South and the islands almost nothing was manufactured. Even in the center and North, where the difficulties of life and the talents of the people made manufacture more practicable, most industries were of a household character, rough clothing and implements being made in the spare hours at home; or were ordinary village trades,—milling, tanning, etc. All the fine manufactures were bought from England with raw or semi-raw products.

254. Specialties of different colonies.—The island colonies (Jamaica, Barbadoes, etc.) sent plantation products. The sugar-cane supplied sugar and molasses and, by a simple process of manufacture, rum. American cotton until Whitney’s invention of the cotton-gin in 1793 came almost entirely from the islands, and indigo and various drugs were secured from the same source. The colonies on the mainland supplied a greater variety of products, by reason of their climatic differences. Nearly all of them contributed to the supply of skins and furs; and lumber and naval stores (pitch, tar, turpentine) were secured from the forests all the way from New England to Georgia. Different sections, however, had their specialties; the Carolinas sent rice, Virginia tobacco, New England codfish and whale-oil.

255. Commerce with Africa.—There was a marked peculiarity in the commerce with Africa. The exports to this country always exceeded the direct imports by a considerable sum. An English writer of the eighteenth century tells about the manufactures which were sent out, and continues: “we have, in return, gold, teeth (i.e., ivory), wax, and negroes; the last whereof is a very beneficial traffic to the kingdom, as it occasionally gives so prodigious an employment to our people both by sea and land.” His meaning is this: the slave trade was so “beneficial” because the slaves which were purchased with beads and rum were not brought to England but shipped to the American colonies where they were put to work. The English figured, therefore, that they got not only the price of the slaves in American products, but also had the business of carrying them to America, and could hope for a future return from their labor in the field. It is estimated that 20,000 slaves a year were sent out during the eighteenth century, and the chief port of the trade, Liverpool, employed 190 ships as slavers in 1771.

256. (6) Shipping and the carrying trade.—At the beginning of the period which we are studying (1500-1600) the English, as we have seen, where emancipating themselves from their former dependence on foreign ships. In the course of the period they learned to carry not only their own goods but those of other nations as well, and took from the Dutch the leadership in the carrying trade of the world. The reader will note, if he refers to the figures showing the trade of England about 1800, that the imports amounted to about 42 million pounds, while the exports of British merchandise were but 29 millions. England would seem to have been gaining a great amount of goods for nothing, or to have been going in debt for them. The difference is to be explained in part by the earnings of English freight, which other countries paid in wares, but in the larger part by the export of goods which were brought to England from other countries merely to be transshipped and exported again. At the close of the century foreign merchandise to the value of over 11 millions was exported, the wares being mainly those of colonial origin (coffee, sugar, Indian textiles, tobacco, tea, indigo, etc.).

257. Struggle of English seamen and government with the Dutch.—Two separate sets of forces were at work to raise the English merchant marine, those of individuals and those of the government. The English in the seventeenth century could not navigate as cheaply as the Dutch, since they required larger crews for the same work, but they seem in the eighteenth century to have been abreast or ahead of the general development of navigation; and unusual facilities for ship-building were offered to them in their American colonies. The government, on the other hand, was eager to foster every effort to extend English shipping, not only because of its economic advantage, but because of the addition to the naval resources of the kingdom in war with other powers. Until after 1650 the English merchant marine, in spite of individuals and government, was greatly inferior to the Dutch. Statements which are doubtless exaggerated give us still some measure of the difference; the Dutch were said to own four fifths of all the ships engaged in oceanic commerce, or as many as eleven kingdoms of Christendom; ten Dutch ships traded to Barbadoes for one English. The latter half of the seventeenth century is filled with a bitter struggle for supremacy between the English and the Dutch, waged with all the weapons both of peace and war.

258. The Navigation Acts; victory of English over Dutch shipping.—“The first nail in the coffin of Dutch greatness,” says an English historian, was the Navigation Act passed under Cromwell in 1651. This was but one of a series of measures extending before and afterward, designed to further the English carrying trade at the expense of rivals. Briefly, goods from a European country could be brought to England only in English ships or in ships of the country, so that, for instance, the Dutch could not carry Baltic wares to England; while the products of other continents could be imported or exported only in English ships; and some wares that were enumerated (sugar, tobacco, etc.) must be brought to England before they could be exported to any other European country. To maintain this policy the English engaged in a long contest with smugglers in America, and fought several great naval wars with the Dutch. The result was, as we have seen, a victory for English commerce over the Dutch, though it is hard to say how much credit should be given the government policy, and how much was due to the energy of the individuals who were building up English business at this period.

The effect of the new oceanic trade was to build up the ports in the West; Liverpool came into prominence in the eighteenth century, and Bristol also grew. The distribution of trade among the ports did not, however, change greatly. An estimate of the eighteenth century gave to London still two thirds of the total, while the remaining third was divided in equal parts among the ports of the east, the south, and the west coasts.

259. (7) Government policy. Commerce and war.—Just as in shipping, so in other commercial interests, the efforts of individuals to make money for themselves were restrained or furthered by government regulations aiming to advance the English people as a whole. Every matter of commerce was at the same time a matter of politics. Mention was made in an introductory chapter of the part played by England in the great wars of the period. It will be remembered that English policy in general was characterized by a shrewd recognition of the commercial advantages to be gained in war, either by territorial acquisitions or by trading privileges, and every war in which England engaged ended, as a rule, with a treaty that gave her some new colonial market or some advantages in trade with a European country. England fought France consistently, not because of old traditions of enmity, but because France was a commercial rival, refusing English manufactures and attempting to market her own in England, and because France had possessions in America and India that England desired. England allied herself with Portugal, on the other hand, because the trade of the two countries was complementary rather than competitive.

260. Customs policy.—The customs policy of the period was governed by mercantilist ideas, described in an earlier chapter. The government drew a considerable portion of its revenue from the customs duties, but nevertheless subordinated the collection of revenue to other considerations in framing the tariff, and regarded it chiefly as a means of building up national power in contest with other states. To further this end the importation of manufactured wares was in many cases taxed or prohibited, that foreigners might not draw money for work which Englishmen were thought competent to do. Raw materials, like wool, which could be used as the basis of English industries, were kept in the country by duties or prohibitions on export; while the export of other wares, which put foreigners in debt to England, was encouraged. Other measures, now inconceivable, were designed to stimulate certain industries; an Englishman could be buried only in a woolen shroud; a Scotchman only in Scotch linen; buttons and button-holes were regulated by legislation; English ships must carry English sails.

261. Burden of the tariff.—In a sense it is wrong to speak of any “system” of customs policy at this time, for the tariff, by constant changes, had become extraordinarily confused, and included many inconsistencies. “The collection and administration of such a complicated system was most wasteful; while the taxes, when taken together, were so high as to interfere seriously with the consumption of the article and to offer a great temptation to the smuggler.” The most rigorous measures failed to stop the smuggling which brought into England a large proportion of the goods on which duties or prohibitions were imposed. Reforms attempted by different statesmen alleviated to some extent the burden of the tariff on merchants, but left it still so heavy and cumbrous that with the advances of the nineteenth century it was felt to be intolerable. In this period almost no one thought of free trade. The tariff undoubtedly stimulated the growth of certain industries (silk, for example), but it is noteworthy that the cotton industry, which was destined to become the most important of any in England, grew up not only without any favor but under actual discouragements.