Essay writing, free sample essay topics, research papers

You are welcome to search the collection of free essays and term papers. Thousands of essay topics are available. Order unique, original custom papers from our essay writing service.

Sample essay topic, essay writing: British Mercantilism - 1452 words

NOTE: Essay you see on this page is free essay, available to anyone. We strongly do not recommend using any direct quotes from these essays for credit - you will most probably be caught for copying/pasting off the Internet, as it is very easy to trace where the essay has been taken from by a plagiarism detection program. You are welcome to use these samples for your research, but if you want to be sure that your essay is 100% original and one of a kind, we highly recommend to order a custom essay from us.

Economic ideas and systems come and go. Many systems have failed and many have succeeded. The British system of mercantilism was actually quite a good system for England. They raked in profits from their colonies. The only problem was that they did not give enough economic freedom to their colonies.

At almost every turn, the British tried to restrict what their colonies could do and whom they could trade with. In hindsight, I believe that the British may have been a bit more lenient on their restrictions because the constant prohibitions eventually lead to revolution..England did not directly control its colonies. Instead, they let joint-stock companies control and provide funds and foodstuffs for the colonies. Modern day corporations find their roots in these Joint-stock companies. The joint-stock companies were comprised of a group of entrepreneurs who provided the funds for all the voyages and supplies

Order custom essays brand-new and 100% original, tailored to your needs, price quote

The people funding the company usually controlled the colony as well. The Dominion of New England was set up by English officials to unite the colonies into one defense against the Native Americans. It was run by a man named Andros, who began to levy taxes on all the colonists without first getting input from the various assemblies from the colonies. The Dominion of New England was eventually overrun. Andros was being searched for because of the failings of this Dominion, so he took cover and tried to escape the colonies by dressing like a woman.

However, his boots gave him away. The colonists were growing more and more displeased by the economic system the British were forcing on them, and then the Molasses Act came. This Act placed high tariffs on sugar, molasses and rum imported into New England in a effort to prevent colonial trade with the French West Indies sugar islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. British sugar merchants on the islands of Barbados, Antigua and Jamaica had complained to Parliament. The law was enacted to restrict non-British trade and to further enforce the concept that trade was to be done only on British owned ships.

In response to this Act, the colonists began to smuggle goods into the colonies. Parliament also passed a series of Navigation Laws, which further restricted trade from the colonies. Cromwell passed the original Navigation Law in 1651. The law stated that no goods grown or manufactured in Asia, Africa, or America should be transported to England except in English vessels, and that the goods of any European country imported into England must be brought in British vessels, or in vessels of the country producing them. The law was directed against the Dutch maritime trade, which was very great at that time.

But it was nowhere strictly enforced, and in New England scarcely at all. In 1660 the second of these laws was passed, greatly resembling first and adding much to it. This act forbade the importing into or the exporting from the British colonies of any goods except in English or colonial ships and it forbade certain enumerated articles--tobacco, sugar, cotton, wool, dyeing woods, et cetera--to he shipped to any country, except to England or some English plantations. However, this was also not as strictly enforced. If it would have been, however, the colonies that produced the "enumerated" products would have certainly went belly up.The third act, The Navigation Act of 1663, enforced the laws of trade even more.

The colonists had not been so closely governed since they had settled in the New World and were not used to the idea. Many people became even more disgusted with the passing of this new act. This act had even more restrictions. Now products that were coming from Europe had to stop in Great Britain and then transferred to English ships. Then finally the ships would bring the goods to the colonies. Through all these exchanges, the prices of the European goods become very expensive.

Colonists could scarcely find European products probably because the Europeans did not want to hassle with stopping at England. England was a land that was fairly barren of raw materials and saw that the colonies had lots of raw materials. Why wouldn't they exploit this? The British decided to make an act against manufacturing. One of these acts, the Hat Act, prohibited Americans from manufacturing hats from the various pelts and furs they collected. They had to sell the pelts to England for about a dollar, and then the English would manufacture a hat, and sell it back to the colonies for about one hundred dollars.

Adam Smith is a very key figure in the development of our current economic system. He was educated in Oxford and wrote a book entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith believed in laissez-faire. This meant that the government should have absolutely no effect on the economics of its people. No laws should be passed regarding the economy and no regulations should be put on trade and other economic endeavors.

He was completely against monopolies because they did not allow for competition. Adam Smith was completely against the system of British mercantilism because it was a form of monopoly. They charged what they wanted to the colonies and forced the colonies to do everything under their watchful eye. Interestingly enough, his book was published the same year that the colonies declared their independence from the British, 1776.The colonies mainly depended on crops and foodstuffs to gain money. The southern colonies, such as Virginia and North Carolina, grew rice and tobacco to sell in Europe. The middle colonies, such as New York and Pennsylvania, exported lots of grain to both the West Indies and England.

In the far southern colonies, namely South Carolina, there were many sugar plantations. In New England, they could not depend on a staple crop because of the complete lack of good soil, so they turned to the ocean and into the woods. New England exported many things used in shipbuilding such as timber, turpentine, tar, pitch, and rosin. These things were used to build more ships for the British Royal Navy and, in effect, restricted the colonists again. The extra ships were used to watch for smugglers to and from the colonies.

New England was not the only colony to product these materials, but they produced more than all the other colonies. These materials were greatly needed in Britain because there were very, very few trees left on their little island. The British did allow the colonies to levy taxes and make restrictions, but if these taxes and laws conflicted with the British mercantile system, a group called the Privy Council nullified the colonial taxes or laws. Even though the Privy Council very rarely used this veto, the colonists still resented it. They felt aggrieved when, in the interests of England, they were forbidden to make reforms that they deemed desirable, such as curbing the degrading trade in African slaves. Parliament never slept on the job and from time to time enacted additional laws that were favorable to England.

European goods consigned to the colonies had to be landed first in England, where customs duties could be collected and where the British merchants would get their cut of the profit. Still other curbs required certain enumerated products, notably tobacco, to be shipped to England and not to a foreign market, even though prices in Europe might be higher. For quite a while, the colonists and their descendants have believed that the mercantile system being forced against them was not only selfish on behalf of the British, but also intentionally oppressive. The truth is that, until 1763, the Navigation Laws imposed no intolerable burden, mainly because the British did not enforce them very harshly due to the fact that, for the first decades of these laws were in effect, Britain practiced salutary neglect. This meant that the British didn't monitor who went over to the colonies. The more intelligent colonial merchants early learned to disregard or evade restrictions that they found irritating and crippling to their trade.

In fact, some of our founding fathers found their fortunes in wholesale smuggling. John Hancock, the first person to sign our Declaration of Independence, was known as the 'King of Smugglers", though his activities were greatly exaggerated. In the early stages, the British only taxed the colonists with indirect taxes. These taxes were taken from the merchants and sailors who brought in goods and were paid when they reached the shores, and were also reflected in the price of the goods. After the Sever Years War, however, the British started to directly collect taxes from the citizens through taxes on goods bought by the people.

The first one of these was the Stamp ...

Research paper and essay writing, free essay topics, sample works British Mercantilism

Top

Essay help, free essay samples:

Human Genome Project, The Work Of Cindy Sherman, Computers In Education, Depression, A Mans Vendetta, The Fires Of Jubilee, The Importance Of Physical Fitness During Pregnancy, Fhhdhhdh, The History Of The Periodic Table Of Elements, Beloved, That Time Of The Month, Tim To Decriminalize, How The Web, Things Fall Apart Cuture, Poetry Comparison, and much more...