Right, another historical document in need of a rewrite. Let's see if we can make this marginally less dry than a legal textbook left out in the desert. You're welcome.
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The Navigation Acts, or, if you prefer the more grandiose title, the Acts of Trade and Navigation, were a long-running series of English laws designed to micromanage the empire's economy. Their purpose was to develop, promote, and regulate English ships, shipping, trade, and commerce with every other country and, most importantly, with its own colonies. These laws were less about fostering a happy, prosperous family of nations and more about ensuring the house always wins. They meticulously regulated England's fisheries and went to great lengths to restrict any foreign participation—especially from the perpetually inconvenient Scots and Irish—in its colonial trade.[1] The first of these legislative masterpieces were enacted in 1650 and 1651, products of the Commonwealth of England under the famously cheerful Oliver Cromwell.[2]
With the Restoration in 1660, the monarchy decided it rather liked the idea of absolute economic control and passed its own Navigation Act of 1660.[3] This was subsequently developed and tightened with the obsessive precision of a watchmaker through the Navigation Acts of 1663, 1673, and 1696.[4] This legislative framework became the bedrock for 18th-century trade policy, constantly being modified with amendments, changes, and the addition of ever more enforcement mechanisms and staff. A significant, and ultimately fatal, shift in the purpose of these acts began in the 1760s. The goal morphed from merely regulating trade to generating direct revenue—that is, taxes—from the colonies. Colonists in North America, having been raised on the quaint idea of their rights as Englishmen, viewed this new policy as tyrannical. They began to resist what they accurately identified as taxation without representation,[5] a resistance fueled by the increasingly stringent implementation of the acts themselves.[6]
At their core, the acts generally prohibited the use of foreign ships for trade within the empire. They demanded that English and colonial mariners make up 75% of the crews on most vessels, including the powerful East India Company ships. The acts forbade colonies from exporting certain valuable products, the "enumerated commodities," to any country other than Britain or other British colonies. To complete the chokehold, they mandated that most imports had to be sourced exclusively through Britain.
For nearly two centuries, these acts formed the basis for English, and later British, overseas trade. It was a system born from the economic theory of mercantilism, a particularly possessive worldview that sought to hoard all the benefits of trade within an empire and minimize any loss of gold, silver, or profit to foreigners. The colonies were cast in the role of dutiful children, supplying raw materials for British industry and, in return for this guaranteed market, purchasing manufactured goods from or through the mother country. Eventually, the world moved on. With the gradual, grudging acceptance of free trade, the acts were finally repealed in 1849, long after they had outlived their usefulness and caused a revolution.
The primary motivation for the very first Navigation Act was the catastrophic decline of English trade following the aftermath of the Eighty Years' War. The end of that conflict lifted the Spanish embargoes on trade between the Spanish Empire and the newly formidable Dutch Republic. The end of these restrictions in 1647 unleashed the full, terrifying power of the Amsterdam Entrepôt and other Dutch competitive advantages onto the world stage. Within a few short years, English merchants were being systematically wiped out in the Baltic and North Sea trade, not to mention their ventures with the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean, and the Levant. The situation was so dire that even trade with England's own colonies—some of which were still stubbornly royalist as the English Civil War sputtered to a close and the Commonwealth of England had yet to assert its authority everywhere (see English overseas possessions in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms)—was being "engrossed" by opportunistic Dutch merchants. English direct trade was being suffocated by a flood of commodities from the Levant, the Mediterranean, the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and the West Indies, all arriving conveniently via the Dutch entrepôt, carried in Dutch ships, and for Dutch profit.[7]
The solution, as the English saw it, was not to compete better but to legislate the competition out of existence. They decided to seal off English markets from these unwanted, efficiently delivered imports. A precedent had already been set in 1645 when the Greenland Company convinced Parliament to prohibit the import of whale products into England, except in ships owned by that company. This self-serving principle was now about to go mainstream. In 1648, the Levant Company petitioned Parliament, demanding a prohibition on imports of Turkish goods "...from Holland and other places but directly from the places of their growth."[8] Baltic traders soon joined the chorus of complaint. By 1650, the Standing Council for Trade and the Council of State of the Commonwealth were drafting a general policy with the explicit goal of impeding the flow of Mediterranean and colonial goods through Holland and Zeeland into England.[9]
Following the 1696 act, the web of Trade and Navigation acts was generally obeyed, with the glaring exception of the Molasses Act of 1733. That particular law was so profoundly impractical that it led to smuggling on an industrial scale, largely because no effective means of enforcement was provided until the 1760s. When stricter enforcement finally came under the Sugar Act of 1764, it became a significant source of resentment among merchants in the American colonies. This, in turn, helped shove the American colonies toward open rebellion in the late 18th century. It’s a historical irony, then, that the consensus view among modern economic historians and economists is that the "costs imposed on [American] colonists by the trade restrictions of the Navigation Acts were small."[10] Apparently, it’s not the cost; it’s the principle of being treated like a piggy bank.
Historical precedents
The English impulse to legislate control over the seas did not spring fully formed from the mind of Cromwell. The core principles of this mercantile legislation predate both the Navigation Act of 1651 and the settlement of England's first foreign possessions. As far back as 1381, an act[11] passed under King Richard II declared "that, to increase the navy of England, no goods or merchandises shall be either exported or imported, but only in ships belonging to the King's subjects." The seed of protectionism was planted early. The letters patent granted to the Cabots by Henry VII in 1498 were even more explicit, stipulating that any commerce resulting from their discoveries must be conducted with England, specifically the port of Bristol.[12]
Henry VIII added a second layer to this policy, establishing by statute that any such vessel must be English-built and that a majority of its crew must be English-born. Legislation during the reign of Elizabeth I continued to build on these questions, resulting in a significant increase in English merchant shipping.[13] These early regulations demonstrate that long before England had a sprawling empire to manage, it had a very clear theory about how maritime commerce ought to be controlled for its own benefit.[14]
With the establishment of overseas colonies, a more distinct colonial policy began to take shape. The principles that would be enshrined in the Navigation and Trade Acts had more immediate precedents in the charters granted to the London and Plymouth Companies, in the various royal patents later bestowed by Charles I and Charles II, and in the early, frantic regulations concerning the tobacco trade—the first truly profitable colonial export. An Order in Council dated 24 October 1621 explicitly prohibited the Colony of Virginia from exporting tobacco and other commodities to foreign countries.[15]
When the London Company lost its charter in 1624, the Crown wasted no time. A proclamation, quickly followed by Orders in Council, prohibited the use of foreign ships for the Virginia tobacco trade.[13] These early companies held a monopoly on trade with their plantations, which meant, by design, that the commerce they developed was England's alone. The Crown's intent was to chain all future commerce with America to England. This is starkly illustrated in the patent granted by Charles I to Sir William Berkeley in 1639. The patentee was "to oblige the masters of vessels, freighted with productions of the colony, to give bond before their departure to bring same into England ... and to forbid all trade with foreign vessels, except upon necessity."[14]
As early as 1641, English merchants were pushing for these rules to be formalized in an act of Parliament. During the Long Parliament, the movement gained momentum. The Ordinance for Free Trade with the plantations in New England was passed in November 1644. In 1645, in a move to both appease the colonies and bolster English shipping, the Long Parliament banned the shipment of whalebone, except in English-built ships,[16] and later prohibited the importation of French wine, wool, and silk from France.[17] More significantly, on 23 January 1647, they passed the Ordinance granting privileges for the encouragement of Adventurers to plantations in Virginia, Bermudas, Barbados, and other places of America. This act decreed that for three years, no export duty would be levied on goods intended for the colonies, on the condition that they were transported in English vessels.[13] The economist Adam Anderson noted that this law also included a crucial detail: "security being given here, and certificates from thence, that the said goods be really exported thither, and for the only use of the said plantations". He concluded, with some fanfare, "Hereby the foundation was laid for the navigation acts afterward, which may be justly termed the Commercial Palladium of Britain."[18]
The English were painfully aware of their inferior trading position. Three acts passed by the Rump Parliament in 1650 and 1651 stand out in the development of England's commercial and colonial strategy. These include the establishment of the first Commission of Trade by an Act of Parliament on 1 August 1650, tasked with advancing and regulating the nation's trade.[19] The instructions given to the commissioners were sweeping: they were to consider domestic and foreign trade, trading companies, manufacturing, free ports, customs, excise, statistics, coinage, and fisheries. Crucially, they were also to consider the plantations and the best ways to promote their welfare while ensuring they remained useful to England. This act's comprehensive instructions were followed by an act in October prohibiting trade with pro-royalist colonies and then the first true Navigation Act the following year. These acts represent the first definitive expression of England's commercial policy—a calculated attempt to establish legitimate, centralized control over commercial and colonial affairs, with the prosperity and wealth of England as its one and only goal.[20]
The 1650 Act prohibiting trade with royalist colonies was, however, broader in scope. It stipulated that all foreign ships were barred from trading with any English plantations without a license, and made it lawful to seize any ships found violating the act. This law, sometimes referred to as the Navigation Act of 1650, was passed hastily as a war measure during the English Civil Wars, but it was soon followed by the more carefully and deliberately constructed Navigation Act of 1651.[14]
Navigation Act 1651
Further information: First Anglo-Dutch War
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The Navigation Act 1651, with the optimistic long title An Act for increase of Shipping, and Encouragement of the Navigation of this Nation, was passed on 9 October 1651[21] by the Rump Parliament led by Oliver Cromwell. It was a blunt instrument, authorizing the Commonwealth to regulate England's international trade and its trade with the colonies with an iron fist.[22] It reinforced the long-standing principle that English trade and fisheries should, by right, be carried in English vessels.
The act banned foreign ships from transporting goods from Asia, Africa, or America to England or its colonies; only ships with an English owner, master, and a majority English crew were deemed acceptable. It magnanimously allowed European ships to import their own national products, but banned them from transporting goods to England from a third country within the European sphere. The act also prohibited the import and export of salted fish in foreign ships and penalized foreign vessels caught carrying fish and wares between English ports. To break the terms of the act was to risk the forfeiture of the ship and its entire cargo.[23] These rules were a poorly disguised attack on the Dutch Republic, whose merchants and fleets controlled a vast portion of Europe's international trade and even a significant chunk of England's coastal shipping. The act effectively excluded the Dutch from almost all direct trade with England, as the Dutch and English economies were competitive rather than complementary, meaning they exchanged few of their own commodities. This direct Anglo-Dutch trade, however, was only a minor fraction of the total Dutch trade flows, a fact the English seemed to overlook.
The passage of the act was a direct, petulant reaction to the failure of an English diplomatic mission to The Hague. The mission, led by Oliver St John and Walter Strickland, had sought a political union of the Commonwealth with the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. This came after the States of Holland had made some tentative overtures to Cromwell, hoping to counter the monarchical ambitions of their stadtholder, William II of Orange.[24] Then the stadtholder inconveniently died, and the States were suddenly embarrassed by Cromwell taking their proposal far too seriously. The English proposed a grandiose scheme for the joint conquest of all remaining Spanish and Portuguese possessions: England would take America, and the Dutch would get Africa and Asia. The Dutch, having just ended a long and bloody war with Spain and already having seized most of the Portuguese colonies in Asia, saw little advantage in this plan. They countered with a proposal for a free trade agreement as an alternative to a full political union. This was utterly unacceptable to the English, who knew they could not compete on a level playing field, and they interpreted the offer as a deliberate insult.
While the act is often cited as a major cause of the First Anglo-Dutch War—and it certainly didn't help—it was just one piece of a broader English policy to provoke a war after negotiations had collapsed.[25] The English naval victories of 1653 (the Battles of Portland, the Gabbard, and Scheveningen) demonstrated the supremacy of the Commonwealth navy in its home waters. But further afield, the Dutch reigned supreme, shutting down English commerce in the Baltic and the Mediterranean. The two nations held each other in a stifling, mutually destructive embrace.[26]
The Treaty of Westminster (1654) brought the stalemate to an end. The Dutch failed to get the act repealed or amended, but in practice, it seems to have had a relatively minor influence on their vast trading network. The act offered England only limited comfort. It could not halt the deterioration of England's overseas trading position, except in niche markets where England herself was the primary consumer, such as the Canaries wine trade and the trade in Puglian olive oil. In the Americas and the West Indies, the Dutch maintained a flourishing "smuggling" trade, thanks to English planters who preferred Dutch import goods and the better prices the Dutch offered for sugar. The Dutch colony of New Netherlands provided a loophole, through intercolonial trade, wide enough to drive a fleet of ships laden with Virginian tobacco through.[27]
Post-Restoration Navigation Acts to 1696
Like all legislation from the Commonwealth period, the 1651 act was declared void upon the Restoration of Charles II, having been passed by what was now deemed a "usurping power." However, the benefits of the act were widely recognized, and Parliament soon passed new legislation that not only revived its spirit but also enlarged its scope. While the 1651 act focused primarily on shipping, the 1660 act was a far more comprehensive piece of commercial legislation, touching upon shipbuilding, navigation, trade,[14] and the enrichment of the merchant class.[28] The 1660 act is generally considered the true foundation of the "Navigation Acts," which, with a host of later amendments, additions, and exceptions, would remain in force for nearly two centuries.
Crucially, these acts entitled colonial shipping and seamen to enjoy the full benefits of the otherwise exclusively English provisions. "English bottoms" were defined to include vessels built in English plantations, particularly in America. There were no restrictions placed on English colonists who wished to build their own ships or trade in them to foreign plantations or other European countries, provided they did not violate the "enumerated commodity" clause.[29] It's worth noting that some of the most important products of colonial America, including all sorts of grain and the fisheries of New England, were never enumerated.
Navigation Act 1660
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The Navigation Act 1660 (12 Cha. 2. c. 18), long-titled An Act for the Encourageing and increasing of Shipping and Navigation, was passed on 13 September by the Convention Parliament and confirmed by the Cavalier Parliament on 27 July 1661.[30] This act broadened and strengthened the restrictions from Cromwell's earlier version. Colonial imports and exports were now restricted to ships "as doe truly and without fraud belong onely to the people of England ... or are of the built of and belonging to" any of the English possessions.[31] Furthermore, ships' crews were now required to be 75% English, a significant increase from the previous majority requirement, and ship captains had to post a bond to ensure compliance, which they could recoup upon successful, legal arrival.[4] The penalty for non-compliance was the forfeiture of both the ship and its cargo. The act also specified that violations were to be tried in "any court of record," and authorized commanders of warships to seize non-compliant ships and deliver them to the Court of Admiralty.
The act identified seven colonial products, known as "enumerated" commodities, that could only be shipped from the colonies to England or to other English colonies. These were typically tropical or semi-tropical products that couldn't be grown in England but were highly valuable and essential for English manufacturing. The initial list included sugar, tobacco, cotton wool, indigo, ginger, fustic, and other dyeing woods. Previously, only tobacco exports had been so restricted. The list would grow over time; for example, the cocoa bean was added in 1672, after drinking chocolate became fashionable.[citation needed]
In a significant gesture to English merchants—and to the detriment of foreign colonists—section two of the act declared that "no alien or person not born within the allegiance of our sovereign lord the King, his heirs and successors, or naturalized or made a free denizen, shall... exercise the trade or occupation of a merchant or factor in any of the said places" (i.e., lands, islands, or territories belonging to the King in Asia, Africa, or America), upon pain of forfeiting all their goods and chattels.[citation needed]
| • Customs Act 1660 |
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The passage of the Navigation Act 1660 was immediately followed by the Customs Act 1660 (12 Cha. 2. c. 19),[32] which laid out how customs duties would be collected, along with subsidies like tunnage and poundage for royal expenses. The 1660 customs act was later tightened by the Customs Act 1662 (14 Cha. 2. c. 11), which emphatically defined who counted as "Englishmen" under the Navigation Acts: "Whereas it is required by the [Navigation Act 1660] that in sundry cases the Master and three-fourths of the Mariners are to be English, it is to be understood that any of His Majesty's Subjects of England, Ireland, and His Plantations are to be accounted English and no others."[33]
| • Exportation Act 1660 |
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| • Tobacco Planting and Sowing Act 1660 |
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Other trade-related acts were passed in the same session, including the Exportation Act 1660 (12 Cha. 2. c. 32), which banned the export of wool and wool-processing materials,[34] and the Tobacco Planting and Sowing Act 1660 (12 Cha. 2. c. 34), which prohibited growing tobacco in England and Ireland.[35] The former was intended to protect domestic woolen manufacturing by ensuring a cheap supply of raw materials; the latter was passed to eliminate competition for the colonies' main cash crop and protect the regulated royal revenue stream it generated. As the kingdoms of England and Scotland were still separate entities, the English act prompted the Parliament of Scotland to pass a similar navigation act.[36] After the Act of Union 1707, Scottish ships, merchants, and mariners were granted the same privileges.
Navigation Act 1663
| • Navigation Act 1663 |
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The Navigation Act 1663 (15 Cha. 2. c. 7), also known as the Encouragement of Trade Act 1663 or the Staple Act, was passed on 27 July. This act tightened the system further, now requiring that all European goods bound for America and other colonies had to be trans-shipped through England first.[4] In England, the goods would be unloaded, inspected, approved, have duties paid, and then be reloaded for their final destination. This entire trade had to be carried in English vessels ("bottoms") or those of its colonies. Furthermore, imports of 'enumerated' commodities had to be landed and taxes paid in England before they could continue to other countries. "England," in this context, included Wales and Berwick-upon-Tweed, though neither was a major player in colonial trade. The act's purpose was brutally simple: to make England the mandatory tollbooth for all European products heading to the colonies, thereby preventing the colonies from developing any sort of independent import trade.[37] This mandated detour increased shipping times and costs, which, in turn, inflated the prices paid by colonists. Some exemptions were permitted out of sheer necessity, including salt for the New England and Newfoundland fisheries, wine from Madeira and the Azores, and provisions, servants, and horses from Scotland and Ireland.
The most important new legislation embedded in this Act, particularly from the perspective of the East India Company,[citation needed] was the repeal of laws prohibiting the export of coin and bullion from England.[38] This export was the real engine behind the act,[citation needed] as silver was the primary commodity the East India Company used to trade in India, exchanging it for cheap Indian gold. This change had massive implications for the Company, for England, and for India. A significant portion of England's silver was now exported to India, generating enormous profits for Company shareholders but depriving the Crown of silver and tax revenue. Much of this exported silver was procured through English piracy targeting Spanish and Portuguese ships hauling silver from their American colonies to Europe. It was later revealed that the act passed Parliament thanks to enormous bribes paid by the East India Company to influential members of Parliament.[39]
| • Tobacco Planting and Plantation Trade Act 1670 |
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An act that further tightened colonial trade legislation, sometimes referred to as the Navigation Act of 1670, is the Tobacco Planting and Plantation Trade Act 1670 (22 & 23 Cha. 2. c. 26).[40] This act imposed forfeiture penalties on any ship and cargo if enumerated commodities were shipped without a bond or customs certificate, shipped to countries other than England, or if ships unloaded sugar or other enumerated products in any port other than England. It required colonial governors to report annually to customs in London a list of all ships loading commodities and a list of all bonds taken. The act stated that prosecutions for breaches should be tried in the court of the high admiral of England, in any vice-admiralty courts, or in any court of record in England. In another move against Ireland, the act repealed the ability of Ireland (granted in the 1660 act) to obtain the necessary bond for products shipped to overseas colonies.[41][42]
The specifically anti-Dutch elements of these early acts were only fully enforced for a relatively short period. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the English were forced to abandon the Baltic trade and had to allow foreign ships to participate in their coasting and plantation trade.[43] After the war, which ended disastrously for England, the Dutch secured the right to ship commodities produced in their German hinterland to England as if they were Dutch goods. More importantly, as England accepted the concept of neutrality, it conceded the principle of "free ships make free goods," which protected Dutch shipping from harassment by the Royal Navy during wars in which the Dutch Republic was neutral. This effectively gave the Dutch the freedom to conduct their "smuggling" unhindered, as long as they weren't caught red-handed in English territorial waters. These provisions were reconfirmed in the Treaty of Westminster (1674) after the Third Anglo-Dutch War.[44]
Navigation Act 1673
| • Navigation Act 1673 |
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The so-called Navigation Act 1673 (25 Cha. 2. c. 7), long-titled An Act for the incouragement of the Greeneland and Eastland Trades, and for the better secureing the Plantation Trade and short-titled the Trade Act 1672, became enforceable in that year. The act aimed to bolster English capability in the northern whale fishery (specifically around Spitsbergen) and in the eastern Baltic and North Sea trade, where the Dutch and the Hanseatic League dominated. It also closed a significant loophole that colonists were exploiting in the enumerated goods trade through active inter-colonial commerce.[citation needed]
To promote whaling and the production of whale oil and whalebone, the act relaxed the 1660 restrictions on foreigners, allowing up to half the crew on English ships to be foreign and dropping all duties on these products for ten years. To promote the eastern trade, then monopolized by the chartered and underperforming Eastland Company, the act opened their trade with Sweden, Denmark, and Norway to foreigners and English alike, and allowed any Englishman to join the Company for a small fee. This was a death blow to the Eastland Company's royal charter.[45]
Most importantly, to secure the plantation trade from the considerable illegal trade in enumerated products to Europe, which was being laundered through legal inter-colonial trade, the act instituted a new rule. Customs duties now had to be paid upon departure from the colonies if the ship's captain had not first obtained the bond required to carry the goods directly to England. This was a significant step toward the systematic enforcement of the previous acts and, conveniently, increased royal revenue[14] at a time when the Crown was reeling from the recent Stop of the Exchequer. To better collect this revenue, the act established that the duties were now to be levied and collected by the Commissioners of Customs in England.
Navigation Act 1696
| • Plantation Trade Act 1695 |
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The so-called Navigation Act 1696 (7 & 8 Will. 3. c. 22), long-titled An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade and short-titled the Plantation Trade Act 1695, was the bureaucratic capstone of the 17th-century system. Its far-reaching provisions took several years to become fully effective and represented a massive consolidation and strengthening of all previous acts.[46]
Noting that daily "great abuses [are] committed ... by the artifice and cunning of ill disposed persons," the act tightened the wording of the 1660 act. It now required that no goods could be imported, exported, or carried between English possessions in Africa, Asia, and America, or shipped to England, except in ships "of the Built of England or of the Built of Ireland or the said Colonies or Plantations and wholly owned by the People thereof ... and navigated with the Masters and Three-Fourths of the Mariners of the said Places onely". To enforce this, the act mandated the registration of all ships and owners, including an oath that there were no foreign owners, before a ship could be considered English-built. Exceptions were made for foreign-built ships captured as prizes or those employed by the navy for importing naval stores. The deadline for registration was later extended by the Registering of Ships Act 1697.[47] In a significant expansion of enforcement power, section 6 established that violations were to be tried in any of His Majesty's Courts at Westminster, in Ireland, or "in the Court of Admiralty held in His Majesties Plantations respectively where such Offence shall bee committed att the Pleasure of the Officer or Informer".[48] Any revenue from fines was to be split three ways: between the King, the Governor, and the informant who brought the suit.
Previously, customs collection and enforcement in the colonies had been left to the governor or his appointees, but evasion, corruption, and indifference were rampant. The 1696 act now required all governors and officers to take an oath that every clause of the act would be "punctually and bona fide observed". To ensure compliance, all customs officers had to give a security bond to the Commissioners of the Customs in England. These officers were also given the same powers as their counterparts in England, including the ability to board and search ships and warehouses. The Commissioners of the Treasury and Customs in England would now appoint all colonial customs officials. The act also clarified that no enumerated goods could be loaded until the required bond was obtained.[49] This was followed by special instructions on 26 May 1697, targeting proprietary governors not under direct royal control and requiring them to post a bond to ensure their compliance.[50]
The act also included several sections designed to tighten English control over the colonies in general. It mandated that all colonial positions of trust in the courts or treasury must be held by native-born subjects of England, Ireland, or the colonies. It also enacted that any colonial laws, bylaws, or customs found to be repugnant to the Navigation Acts were to be declared "illegal, null and void." John Reeves, who wrote the handbook for the Board of Trade,[51] considered the 1696 act to be the last major navigation act, with subsequent acts being relatively minor. The system established by this act was largely how the Navigation Acts still stood in 1792.[52]
Navigation Acts 1696–1760
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Molasses Act 1733
The 1733 Molasses Act levied prohibitively high duties on the trade of sugar and molasses from the French West Indies to the American colonies. The goal was to force the colonists to buy more expensive sugar from the British West Indies instead, a blatant piece of protectionism for the powerful sugar lobby. The law was so impractical and so universally despised that it was widely flouted. Smuggling became a cornerstone of the New England economy. British efforts to stamp out this smuggling created decades of hostility and contributed directly to the coming of the American Revolution. The Molasses Act was the first of the Sugar Acts. It was set to expire in 1763 but was renewed in 1764 as the Sugar Act, which only caused further unrest among the colonists.
Repeal
| • Navigation Act 1849 |
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The Navigation Acts were finally dismantled in 1849, swept away by the rising tide of laissez-faire philosophy. They were a product of mercantilism, an economic theory under which a nation's wealth was thought to be increased by restricting colonial trade to the mother country rather than through free and open trade. By 1849, this worldview was archaic. The new strategy was to reduce the cost of food through cheap foreign imports, thereby reducing the cost of maintaining the domestic labor force. Repealing the Navigation Acts, along with the infamous Corn Laws, served this new purpose.[citation needed] The nearly 200-year-long experiment in protectionism was over.
Effects on Britain
The acts created a closed system, causing Britain's (or, before 1707, England's) shipping industry to develop in a state of artificial isolation. The primary advantage was that it severely limited the ability of Dutch ships to participate in trade with Britain. By reserving all British colonial trade for British shipping, the acts were instrumental in the rise of London as the principal entry port for American colonial goods, a status that might otherwise have belonged to Dutch cities. The maintenance of a large merchant fleet and a steady volume of trade also facilitated a rapid increase in the size and quality of the Royal Navy. This naval power, especially after the Anglo-Dutch Alliance of 1689 limited the Dutch navy's size relative to the English one, was the foundation of Britain's status as a global superpower, a position it would hold until the mid-20th century. That naval might, however, never entirely crushed Dutch trading power. The Dutch retained enough leverage over overseas markets and shipping, combined with a financial power that Britain only overtook in the 18th century, to prevent England from ever fully achieving its mercantilist dream.[53]
Effects on American colonies
The Navigation Acts, while enriching certain sectors in Britain, cultivated deep resentment in the colonies and were a significant contributing factor to the American Revolution.[citation needed] The acts required that all of a colony's imports be either bought from Britain or resold by British merchants in Britain, regardless of the price or quality obtainable elsewhere. The 1772 Gaspee affair, in which Rhode Island colonists attacked and burned a Royal Navy schooner that was enforcing these acts, was a dramatic expression of this long-simmering anger.
Historian Robert Thomas argued in 1965 that the direct economic impact of the acts on the economies of the Thirteen Colonies was minimal, calculating the cost at about £4 per £1,000 of income per year, at a time when average personal income was about £100 per year.[54] However, Roger Ransom countered in 1968 that while the net burden may have been small, the acts' overall impact on the shape and growth rate of the colonial economy was significant, as they created winners and losers, differentially affecting various groups.[55]
Gary Walton concluded that the political friction caused by the acts was far more serious than their negative economic impact, especially since the merchants who were most affected were also the most politically active and vocal.[56] The acts also had the unintended consequence of fueling piracy during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. With legal trade so restricted, merchants and even colonial officials were happy to buy goods from pirates at below-market value. Some colonial governors, like New York's Benjamin Fletcher, would even commission privateers who openly admitted they intended to turn pirate.[57]
Larry Sawers pointed out in 1992 that the real political issue was the future impact of the acts after 1776. As the colonial economy matured, it would have been permanently blocked by the acts from ever seriously competing with British manufacturers.[58] In 1995, a random survey of 178 members of the Economic History Association found that 89 percent of economists and historians generally agreed that the "costs imposed on [American] colonists by the trade restrictions of the Navigation Acts were small."[10] This consensus, however, does little to explain a revolution. People rarely go to war over accounting ledgers; they go to war over the feeling of a boot on their neck.
Eric Rutkow notes that timber was not one of the "enumerated commodities," which allowed New Englanders to continue their lucrative timber trade with the wine islands, namely [Madeira](/Madeira], a commerce that had begun around 1642.[59]
Effect on Ireland
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The acts were deeply resented in Ireland and systematically damaged its economy. They created a one-way street, permitting the importation of English goods into Ireland tariff-free while simultaneously imposing tariffs on Irish exports traveling in the opposite direction. Other clauses completely prohibited the exportation of certain Irish goods to Britain or anywhere else, leading to the total collapse of those industries. The Wool Act 1699, for instance, forbade any exports of wool from Ireland (and from the American colonies) to protect the English wool trade from any and all competition. This was not merely regulation; it was economic warfare waged against a subject kingdom.
The slogan of the Irish Volunteers in the late 18th century, "Free trade or a Speedy Revolution," captured the depth of this bitterness perfectly.