Page 103 - American Stories, A History of the United States

parliamentarians—concluded that the colonists should be brought more tightly under
3.1 the control of the mother country. The regulatory policies that evolved during this
period formed a framework for an empire that survived with only minor adjustment
until 1765.
3.2
Response to economic competition

By the 1660s, the dominant commercial powers of Europe adopted economic prin-
3.3
mercantilism An economic ciples that later critics would term mercantilism. Mercantilists argued that since trad-
theory that shaped imperial ing nations were competing for the world’s resources—mostly for raw materials from
policy throughout the colonial dependent colonies—one nation’s commercial success translated directly into a loss
3.4 period, mercantilism assumed that for its rivals. It seemed logical, therefore, that England would want to protect its own
the supply of wealth was fixed.
to increase its wealth, a nation markets from France or Holland by passing mercantilist trade policies discouraging its
needed to export more goods colonies from trading with other European powers. For seventeenth-century planners,
3.5 than it imported. Favorable trade free markets made no sense. They argued that trade tightly regulated by the central
and protective economic policies government represented the only way to increase the nation’s wealth at the expense of
and colonial possessions rich in competitors.
raw materials were important in
achieving this balance. National interest alone, however, did not shape public policy. Instead, the needs of
powerful interest groups led to the rise of English commercial regulation. Each group
looked to colonial commerce to solve a different problem. The king wanted money.
English merchants were eager to exclude Dutch rivals from lucrative American mar-
kets and needed government assistance to compete with the Dutch, even in Virginia
or Massachusetts Bay. For the landed gentry who sat in Parliament, England needed
a stronger navy, and that in turn meant expanding the domestic shipbuilding indus-
try. And almost everyone agreed England should establish a more favorable balance
Quick Check of trade, that is, increase exports, decrease imports, and grow richer at the expense
Why did seventeenth-century English of other European states. None of these ideas was particularly innovative, but taken
rulers support mercantilism?
together they provided a blueprint for England’s first empire.

Regulating colonial trade

Parliament passed a Navigation Act in 1660. The statute was the most important piece
of imperial legislation drafted before the American Revolution. Colonists from New
Hampshire to South Carolina and the Caribbean islands paid close attention to this
statute, which stated (1) that no ship could trade in the colonies unless it had been
constructed in either England or America and carried a crew that was at least 75 per-
cent English (for these purposes, colonists counted as Englishmen), and (2) that cer-
enumerated goods Raw tain enumerated goods of great value that were not produced in England—tobacco,
materials, such as tobacco, sugar, sugar, cotton, indigo, etc.—could be transported from the colonies only to an English
and rice, that were produced in or another colonial port. In 1704, Parliament added rice and molasses to the enumer-
the british colonies and under the
Navigation Acts had to be shipped ated list; in 1705, rosins, tars, and turpentine for shipbuilding were included.
only to england or its colonies. The 1660 act was masterfully conceived. It encouraged the development of domes-
tic shipbuilding and prohibited European rivals from obtaining enumerated goods
anywhere except in England. Since the Americans had to pay import duties in England
(for this purpose colonists did not count as Englishmen) on such items as sugar and
tobacco, the legislation also gave the crown another source of income.
In 1663, Parliament passed a second Navigation Act known as the Staple Act,
which stated that, with a few exceptions, nothing could be imported into the colonies
unless it had first been transshipped through England, a process that greatly increased
the price colonial consumers ultimately paid.
navigation acts commercial The Navigation Acts attempted to eliminate the Dutch, against whom the
restrictions that regulated colonial English fought three wars in this period (1652–1654, 1664–1667, and 1672–1674), as
commerce to favor england’s the intermediaries of American commerce. Just as English merchants were celebrat-
accumulation of wealth (see
mercantilism). ing their victory, however, an unanticipated rival appeared: New England merchant
ships sailed out of Boston, Salem, and Newport to become formidable competitors in
maritime commerce.
70