Page 104 - American Stories, A History of the United States

During the 1660s, the colonists showed little enthusiasm for the new imperial
regulations. Reaction to the Navigation Acts varied from region to region. Virginians 3.1
bitterly protested them. The collection of English customs on tobacco reduced the
planters’ profits. Moreover, excluding the Dutch from the trade reduced competition
and meant that growers often had to sell their crops at artificially low prices. The Navi- 3.2
gation Acts hit the small planters especially hard, for they were least able to absorb
increased production costs. Even though the governor of Virginia lobbied on the plant-
ers’ behalf, the crown turned a deaf ear. 3.3
At first, New Englanders simply ignored the commercial regulations. Indeed, one
Massachusetts merchant reported in 1664 that Boston entertained “near one hundred
sail of ships, this year, of ours and strangers.” The strangers, of course, were the Dutch, 3.4
who had no intention of obeying the Navigation Acts as long as they could reach
colonial ports. Some New England merchants found clever ways to circumvent the
Navigation Acts. These crafty traders picked up cargoes of enumerated goods such as
sugar or tobacco, sailed to another colonial port (thereby fulfilling the letter of the law), 3.5
and then made directly for Holland or France. Along the way they paid no customs.
To plug the loophole, Parliament passed the Navigation Act of 1673. This statute
established a plantation duty, a sum of money equal to normal English customs duties
to be collected on enumerated products at the various colonial ports. New England-
ers could now sail wherever they pleased within the empire, but they could not escape
paying customs.
Parliament passed the last major piece of imperial legislation in 1696. It tight-
ened enforcement procedures, putting pressure on the colonial governors to exclude
England’s competitors from American ports. It also expanded the American customs
service and set up vice-admiralty courts in the colonies. Established to settle disputes
that occurred at sea, vice-admiralty courts required neither juries nor oral cross-
examination, both traditional elements of the common law. But they were effective
and even popular for resolving maritime questions quickly enough to send ships to sea
again with little delay. One other significant change in the imperial system occurred in
1696. King William III replaced the ineffective Lords of Trade with a body of advisers
that came to be known as the Board of Trade. This group was expected to monitor
colonial affairs closely and give government officials the best advice on commercial and
other problems. For decades, it energetically carried out its responsibilities.
The members of Parliament believed these reforms would compel the colonists to
accept the Navigation Acts, and they were largely correct. By 1700, American goods
transshipped through the mother country accounted for a quarter of all English exports, Quick Check
an indication that the colonists found it profitable to obey the commercial regulations. How did the Navigation Acts
In fact, during the eighteenth century, smuggling from Europe to America dried up establish the foundation for a
almost completely. commercial empire?

colonial Political Revolts

3.5 How did colonial revolts affect the political culture of virginia and New england?
t he Navigation Acts created an illusion of unity. English administrators super-

imposed a system of commercial regulation on different, often unstable
American colonies and called it an empire. But these statutes did not remove
long-standing differences. Within each colony’s society, men and women
struggled to bring order out of disorder, establish stable ruling elites, defuse ethnic and
racial tensions, and cope with population pressures that imperial planners only dimly
understood. During the late seventeenth century, these efforts sometimes sparked revolt.
First, the Virginians rebelled, and then a few years later, political violence swept
through Maryland, New York, and Massachusetts Bay, England’s most populous
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