I. The trade to Africa.--The first notice of any trade between England and Africa occurs in the year 1526, when some merchants of Bristol, which, at this period, was undoubtedly one of our most enterprising cities, traded by means of Spanish ships to the Canaries. Their exports were cloth, soap, for the manufacture of which, even at this early period, Bristol was celebrated, and some other articles. They imported drugs for dyeing, sugar, and kid skins. This branch of commerce answering, the Bristol merchants sent their factors thither from Spain. The coast of Africa was, at this period, monopolized by the Portuguese. In 1530, however, an English ship made a voyage to Guinea for elephants' teeth: the voyage was repeated; and in 1536, above one hundred pounds weight of gold dust, besides elephants' teeth, was imported in one ship. A few years afterwards, a trade was opened with the Mediterranean coast of Africa, three ships sailing from Bristol to Barbary with linens, woollen cloth, coral, amber, and jet; and bringing back sugar, dates, almonds, and molasses. The voyages to Guinea from the ports of the south and southwest of England, particularly Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Bristol, were frequently repeated: the returns were uniformly gold dust and elephants' teeth. But it does not appear that other ports followed the example of these, that these sent many ships, or that the commerce became very regular and lucrative, till the west coast of Africa was resorted to for slaves.
This infamous trade was first entered upon by the English in the year 1562. Mr. John Hawkins, with several other merchants, having learnt that negroes were a good commodity in Hispaniola, fitted out three ships, the largest 120, the smallest forty tons, for the coast of Guinea. Here they bought slaves, which they sold in Hispaniola for hides, sugar, ginger, and pearls. The other branches of the African trade continued to flourish. In 1577, English merchants were settled in Morocco; Spanish, Portuguese, and French merchants had been settled there before. In this year, Elizabeth, always attentive to whatever would benefit commerce, sent an ambassador to the Emperor of Morocco, who obtained some commercial privileges for the English. In 1588, the first voyage to Benin was made from London, by a ship and a pinnace: in 1590, a second voyage was made from the same port with the same vessels. Their exports were linen, woollen cloths, iron manufactures, bracelets of copper, glass beads, coral, hawks' bells, horses' tails, hats, &c. They imported Guinea pepper, elephants' teeth, palm oil, cotton cloth, and cloth made of the bark of trees.
An African Company had been formed in Elizabeth's reign; but neither this, nor two others succeeded; their ruin was occasioned by war, misconduct, and the interference of what were called interlopers. In 1672, a fourth company was established, whose efforts at first seem to have been great and successful. They bought the forts the former companies had erected on the west coast: instead of making up their assortments of goods for export in Holland, as the former companies had been obliged to do, they introduced into England the making of sundry kinds of woollen goods not previously manufactured. They imported large quantities of gold dust, out of which 50,000 guineas were first coined in one year, 1673. Their other imports were red wood for dyes, elephants' teeth, wax, honey, &c. The value of the English goods exported to them averaged annually 70,000 l. This company was broken up at the Revolution.
II. Though the Portuguese and Spaniards were very jealous of the interference of any nation with their East India commerce; yet they were comparatively easy and relaxed with regard to their American possessions. Accordingly, we find that, in 1530, there was some little trade between England and Brazil: this is the first notice we can trace of any commercial intercourse between this country and the New World. The first voyage was from Plymouth: in 1540 and 1542 the merchants of Southampton and London also traded to Brazil. We are not informed what were the goods imported; but most probably they were Brazil wood, sugar, and cotton. The trade continued till 1580, when Spain, getting possession of Portugal, put a stop to it.
The next notice of any trading voyage to America occurs in 1593, when some English ships sailed to the entrance of the St. Lawrence for morse and whale fishing. This is the first mention of the latter fishery, or of whale fins, or whale bones by the English. They could not find any whales; but on an island they met with 800 whale fins, the remains of a cargo of a Biscay ship which had been wrecked here.
In 1602, the English had suspended all intercourse with America for sixteen years, in consequence of the unsuccessful attempts of Raleigh. But, at this time, the intercourse was renewed: a ship sailed to Virginia, the name then given to the greater part of the east coast of North America; and a traffic was carried on with the Indians for peltry, sassafras, cedar wood, &c. Captain Gosnol, who commanded this vessel, was a man of considerable skill in his profession, and he is said to have been the first Englishman who sailed directly to North America, and not, as before, by the circuitous course of the West Indies and the Gulf of Florida. In the subsequent year there was some traffic carried on with the Indians of the continent, and some of the uncolonized West India islands.
Prior to the year 1606 several attempts had been made to colonize different parts of the new world by the English, but they all proved abortive. In this year, however, a permanent settlement was established near James River, within the Chesapeake. It is not our plan to detail all the particular settlements, or their progress to maturity; but merely to point out the beginnings of them, as evidence of our extending commerce, and to state such proofs as most strikingly display their improvement and the advantages the mother country derived from them. In conformity with this plan, we may mention that sugar plantations were first formed in Barbadoes in 1641: this, as Mr. Anderson, in his History of Commerce, justly observes, "greatly hastened the improvement of our other islands, which soon afterwards followed it in planting sugar to very great advantage. And, as it was impossible to manage the planting of that commodity by white people in so hot a climate, so neither could sufficient numbers of such be had at any rate. Necessity, therefore, and the example of Portugal gave birth to the negro slave trade to the coast of Guinea and it is almost needless to add, that such great numbers of slaves, and also the increase of white people in those islands, soon created a vast demand for all necessaries from England, and also a new and considerable trade to Madeira for wines to supply those islands." The immediate consequence of the spread of the sugar culture in our West India islands was, that the ports of London and Bristol became the great magazines for this commodity, and supplied all the north and middle parts of Europe; and the price of the Portuguese-Brazil sugars was reduced from 8 l. to 2 l. 10s. per cwt.
The rapid growth of the English colonies on the continent and in the islands of America, during the seventeenth century, is justly ascribed by Sir Josiah Child, to the emigration thither, occasioned by the persecution of the Puritans by James I. and Charles I.; to the defeat of the Royalists and Scotch by Cromwell; and, lastly, to the Restoration, and the consequent disbanding of the army, and fears of the partizans of Cromwell. It may be added, that most of the men who were driven to America from these causes, were admirably fitted to form new settlements, being of industrious habits, and accustomed to plain fare and hard work.
The American plantations, as they were called, increased so rapidly in commerce that, according to the last author referred to, they did, even in the year 1670, employ nearly two-thirds of all our English shipping, "and therefore gave constant sustenance, it may be, to 200,000 persons here at home." At this period New England seems to have directed its chief attention and industry to the cod and mackerel fisheries, which had increased their ships and seamen so much as to excite the jealousy of Sir Josiah Child, who, however, admits that what that colony took from England amounted to ten times more than what England took from it. The Newfoundland fishery, he says, had declined from 250 ships in 1605, to eighty in 1670: this he ascribes to the practice of eating fish alone on fast days, not being so strictly kept by the Catholics as formerly. From Carolina, during the seventeenth century, England obtained vast quantities of naval stores, staves, lumber, hemp, flax, and Indian corn. About the end of this century, or at the very commencement of the next, the culture of rice was introduced by the accident of a vessel from Madagascar happening to put into Carolina, which had a little rice left; this the captain gave to a gentleman, who sowed it.
The colony of Virginia seems to have flourished at an earlier period than any of the other English colonies. In the year 1618, considerable quantities of tobacco were raised there; and it appears, by proclamations of James I. and Charles I., that no tobacco was allowed to be imported into England, but what came from Virginia or the Bermudas.