Penguin History of the United States of America (16 page)

The Navigation Acts were many, and the system they established was never wholly symmetrical or thoroughly efficient. But their principal provisions, as set out in the Acts of 1660 and 1696, were clear and practical enough. Their purpose was to restrict the colonies to the functions listed in the last paragraph and to monopolize the profits of the carrying trade, indeed of all forms of economic activity, so far as was possible: no foreigner should grow rich as a result of activities carried on within the English realm or colonies. Under penalty of forfeiture of ships and goods it was laid down that all vessels importing or exporting goods to or from any English ‘lands, islands, plantations or territories’ in Asia, Africa or America, or carrying goods from such possessions to the English realm, or carrying exports out of the realm, must be ‘truly and without fraud’ English, with English masters, and crews three-quarters English. Foreign goods might come to the realm in such vessels only, or in vessels of their countries of origin (a blow against Dutch middlemen, this). Any ling, stock-fish, pilchard, cod-fish, herring, whale-oil, whale-fin, whale-bone, whale-blubber, etc., imported in foreign bottoms ‘shall pay double aliens custom’. The American colonies might export certain specified, or ‘enumerated’, products (sugar, tobacco, cotton,
indigo and other dyes, specklewood)
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only to each other or to England; customs officers in the plantations were to have the same powers as those in the realm, and plantation laws which clashed with the Navigation Acts were declared to be ‘illegal, null and void, to all intents and purposes whatever’. The system was rounded off by some lesser provisions, and in 1696 the Board of Trade was set up to administer it.
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It is impossible to decide exactly how successful the system was. According to British merchants, times were always bad, foreign competition was always dangerous, even under the Navigation Acts (and since those acts were defied by vast numbers of smugglers, the merchants may not have been entirely wrong). However, some observations may be ventured.

The mercantile system was selfish and nationalistic – arising from a condition of conflict, no doubt, but making that condition worse. According to C. M. Andrews, the greatest historian of colonial America, ‘It fomented war in provoking an economic struggle among the commercial and industrial nations for place, power, and wealth.’
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It sacrificed the Empire’s periphery to its centre, and all loftier considerations to those of commerce and power. Against this it can only be urged that rulers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had to deal with the world as they found it, and mercantilism was at least a rational and in many ways a beneficial response to trying circumstances.

More particularly, the British system turned, as we have seen, on tropical and sub-tropical staple products. They were raised by plantation owners in the mainland colonies south of Pennsylvania and in the British West Indies, whose prosperity was made possible by the importation of vast numbers of African slaves, in itself a lucrative staple trade.
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There were some crucial differences between the mainland and island planters. The mainland planters, whose crops were less profitable, bought fewer slaves, a much higher proportion of them women, and treated them better (since replacements for the dead or incapacitated were expensive). The proportion of black slaves to free whites was far, far greater on the island plantations, and so was discontent. The planters were to a great extent absentees. Consequently imperial protection, against rebellion as well as invasion, was much more important to the islands than to the mainland. Secondly, sugar was so incomparably the most valuable colonial crop that the absentee planters were able to buy themselves into Parliament and the ruling class of landed gentlemen, to form, in alliance with the sugar merchants,

a powerful lobby known as the West India interest. By contrast, tobacco planters were content to be colonists. They regularly exceeded their incomes in the attempt to live magnificently at home. Their credit was good, but they over-strained it: by the outbreak of the Revolution, it is estimated, they owed more than £4 million sterling to London.

Britain throve on the system as she was meant to. She had become the staple for her colonies: all colonial produce passed through her ports in its quest for European customers, and she reaped the middleman’s reward. She enjoyed a monopoly of the colonial market for manufactures, which stimulated her industries, and was independent of potentially hostile sources for supplies of such essential commodities as naval stores: tar, pitch, rosin, turpentine, hemp, masts, yards, bowsprits. The slave-trade was a risky and often unprofitable business to individuals, but it helped to make the fortune of Bristol and Liverpool. The merchant marine benefited from the Navigation Acts, as planned, and thus furnished a reserve of trained seamen and seaworthy vessels, most useful to the Royal Navy in time of war. The various customs duties brought in handsome revenue returns for the government, and places in the customs service were useful additions to patronage. The trade and tax structure meant that there was a constant drain of bullion from the colonies to the realm, which appeased the constant mercantilist anxiety about a shortage of precious metals. Finally, the fences which Britain erected round her Empire denied its products to her rivals. Decidedly the mother country seemed to have little reason to complain of mercantilism.
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Nor was it so oppressive to the colonies as it may seem. Great Britain wanted her plantations to be contented and prosperous, and took steps to make them so. The tobacco colonies of the south mainland – Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina – were allowed to trade only with Britain; but they were given a monopoly of the British market, heavy duties being placed on foreign leaf and British farmers being forbidden to grow any.
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Similar advantages were given to South Carolina, which grew rice and indigo; and of course to the sugar islands (which otherwise would have suffered from the competition of cheap French sugar). The colonies of the north mainland – Pennsylvania to New Hampshire – had their own profitable place in the system. The British West Indies became dependent on them for provisions. New Englanders were encouraged by the imperial government to build and sail ships, and eventually supplied nearly a third of all British

bottoms, owning half of the 3,000 vessels involved in the colonial trade. Perhaps the colonies’ chief gain was in the political and military sphere. Britain, a careless mother, expected her children to be self-supporting; they were to be a source of profit, not expense; but, with some consistency, and whether the Navigation Acts were obeyed or not – they often were not, for an illicit trade with the French and Spanish colonies became a valuable source of income to the North Americans – she did not interfere with their internal government, beyond occasionally disallowing a colonial law; and she protected them against France and Spain. The colonies were well aware of political and military problems, and that islands and plantations could change hands at peace conferences. To them therefore it mattered little that no large British force was sent to America until the Seven Years War: they were protected equally, or better, by the mother country’s victories on European battlefields, or at sea. For the rest, they were sure of some assistance and support in their perennial struggle against the French- and Spanish-supported Indians. The Board of Trade could plan intelligently, and sometimes rescue a desperate situation. For example, the incompetent heirs of the founders and proprietors of South Carolina, declared under Queen Anne to be ‘the frontier colony of all Her Majesty’s plantations on the Main in America’, might have been left to ruin their province and enjoy their charter in peace for far longer, had not the Yamasee Indians in 1715, in a war arising out of the misdeeds of the Indian traders, shown vividly how a weak government in one colony could injure the whole British position in North America. The war wiped out the Indian trade of the Carolinas for a time and revived French and Spanish strength in the area. The southern flank of the British might be turned, or their traders and settlers confined to the coastal plains. The colony survived – just – but its defence had clearly become too important to be left to incapable private management, so the Board of Trade endorsed a revolt of the settlers in 1719, and in 1729 the proprietors were bought out, South Carolina being ‘taken into the King’s hand’ – that is, becoming a crown colony of the usual type, with a Crown-appointed governor.

On the whole, then, the mercantilist system must be reckoned to have fulfilled the purposes of its makers: it made the prosperity of all parts of the Empire possible. Its drawbacks were its inefficiency and incompleteness – the Board of Trade could never induce Parliament to make it watertight, and the customs officers were too few, too ill-paid, too corrupt to plug the gaps. It was, economically, increasingly obsolescent. But its destruction was to come from quite different causes.

In 1756 the war that had been threatening between France and Great Britain since their last peace (1748) burst into life; and before long the helm of British government had been seized by the man of genius, Pitt the Elder, vaingloriously but truly saying, ‘I know that I can save the country and that I alone can.’ For the war had not been going well; and Pitt incarnated the logic of mercantilism – logic which, ruthlessly pursued, would bring victory.
Pitt was not afraid of the harsh international conflict, the scramble for power and profit, from which mercantilism sprang. On the contrary, he rejoiced in it. Faith in Britain’s divine mission inspired him, as it had inspired those earlier pirates, the Elizabethan sea-dogs. He had long correctly identified France as Britain’s last rival, and now he fell upon her with wild ferocity. Her capacity for sea trade and sea warfare must be destroyed. Britain must be aggrandized with France’s spoils. As to the cost of such an onslaught, of such a daring bid for pre-eminence, it could (Pitt thought) be met, ultimately, from the proceeds of war; until they were realized, his colleague, Newcastle, might usefully struggle to raise money by loans and taxes. Meanwhile the French sugar islands, Canada, India and the Floridas were seized, and the French navy was destroyed at Quiberon Bay. Overnight, it seemed, Pitt had doubled the extent of the British Empire with one hand, while sustaining with his other Frederick of Prussia’s struggle in Europe against hopeless odds. Frederick’s role was to keep the French too busy to defend their Empire. ‘I have conquered Canada in Germany,’ Pitt boasted.

Then victory showed its disappointing side. The mercantile system touched the summit of its glory, and glory proved too much for it. First, George II died, and the new King, longing for peace, like most of his people, got rid of the great war minister. In 1763 George III and Bute signed the first Treaty of Paris. Next, the government began to face the problem that Pitt had so airily dismissed. The war had run up the National Debt to £129,586,789, carrying an interest charge of £4,688,177 per annum. The land-tax stood at four shillings in the pound. Glory and power now had to be paid for. How was it to be done? And how was an empire grown suddenly so large, so heterogeneous, to be harmoniously governed?

England already possesses an uninterrupted line of well-peopled provinces on the coast successively begun within less than 150 years. She sees them every year augmented by an accession of subjects excited by the desire of living under governments and laws formed on the most excellent model upon earth. In vain do we look for an equal prosperity among the plantations of other European Nations… This surprising increase of people is a foundation that will bear a mighty superstructure.

John Bartram of Philadelphia, 1751

’Tis here Apollo does erect his throne;
This his Parnassus, this his Helicon.
Here solid sense does every bosom warm;
Here noise and nonsense have forgot to charm,
Thy seers how cautious, and how gravely wise!
Thy hopeful youth in emulation rise;
Who, if the wishing muse inspired does sing,
Shall liberal art to such perfection bring,
Europe shall mourn her ancient fame declined,
And Philadelphia be the Athens of mankind.

Anon,
Titan’s Almanac
, 1730

I do not see how we can thrive until we get into a stock of slaves sufficient to do all our business, for our children’s children will hardly see this great Continent filled with people, so that our servants will still desire freedom, to plant for themselves, and not stay but for very good wages.

Emanuel Downing to John Winthrop,
c
. 1645

At the centre of the Empire and the Empire’s problems lay the mainland colonies of British North America.

In 1763 there were eighteen of them. Thirteen were later to turn rebel
and claim the lion’s share of attention. But it is important to remember that, feeble, underpopulated and insignificant though Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, East and West Florida were, Georgia was scarcely any better. Only the newly won Quebec and the seventeenth-century English foundations could claim to be mature societies. Nor were even the twelve senior English plantations uniform or united. Economic, religious, political and cultural differences cut them off from each other. Massachusetts was apparently loyal to the Crown; neighbouring New York simmered with agrarian revolt. The pattern of coming events cast no shadow before it.

So long as settlers moved west into the wilderness the agonies of Jamestown and Plymouth would be repeated, but in the mid-eighteenth century the westward movement was only just beginning to cross the Appalachian mountains. In the coastal towns the first feeble settlements and their sufferings were only memories. Even the site of Jamestown had been abandoned after a disastrous fire in 1699, and Massachusetts had swallowed up the Pilgrim colony in 1691 when, in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, it acquired its second charter (the famous first having been overthrown in 1684, when the English government at last gave way to its mounting irritation at the Puritans’ obstinate refusal to conform to royal policies).