Exporting From The British Colonies example essay topic

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. 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 Act, which was a tax that required all paper goods to have a royal stamp on them if the tax had not been paid yet.

This Act affected things such as playing cards, stationery, books, and even marriage certificates. The colonists became even more enraged at the introduction of this tax. In 1764, the British legislation passed the Sugar Act that would raise money to support the army stationed in the colonies. The army had recently fought in the Seven Years War and they had spent a large amount of money sending supplies. All sugar and molasses coming to the colonies from non-British sources in the Caribbean were taxed heavily.

The custom officers could search any ships coming to the colonies and the cargo could be confiscated. This pretty much insured that the colonists would buy the English sugar over the other expensive sugars. In other words, England controlled what the colonists would buy. All of the taxes that the British imposed were external, or taxing something that was not theirs. Internal taxes are those that are imposed by the local government and represented the land that it is made by. The colonists, like the present-day residents of this country, greatly resented all taxes and blamed Britain for all of their taxes, including the internal taxes.

However, even though the colonists bickered and complained about the British system of mercantilism, the British government gave bounties and subsides to the colonists. This system consisted of England giving money to the colonists to produce certain crops. If demand for a certain product became overwhelming, the British government would give a group of farmers money and the means by which to grow that product, therefore satisfying the demand. The first direct tax to be forced onto the colonists, was the grand idea of George Grenville. Grenville was prime minister of England at the time.

Grenville seemed to have a certain like for taxing the colonists and, in 1764, he passed another Act called the Sugar Act. The Sugar Act was the first act passed by Parliament that was meant to collect revenue for the crown. This Act did many things, but the most outstanding was its increase on the tariff for Sugar coming into the colonies from the West Indies. The colonists did not like this at all and protested viciously. Eventually, Parliament lowered the tariff, in effect, lowering the unrest.

However, the colonists continued to resent their homeland when the Quartering Act of 1765 was passed. This Act required certain colonies to provide food and shelter for British troops. Grenville believed that all measures taken by him and Parliament were just and reasonable. He simply wanted the colonists to pay for what it cost Britain to keep the colonists from being killed. These taxes were not foreign in England. In fact, for two generations, England endured a stamp tax that was twice as bad as the one being forced on the colonists.

Angry citizens began to cry out, "no taxation without representation". However, the colonists did not shout this slogan so that they would have a voice in Parliament because, they knew that if they got representation in Parliament, they would be out-voted all the time. They shouted this because they wanted to seem like they had principles. They vividly recollected the theories of popular government developed during England's own puritan revolution a century earlier.

American firebrands hurled these doctrines back at the keenness of the colonial's historical memory. After a stormy debate, and as matter of expediency and not of right, Parliament in 1766 reluctantly repealed the Stamp Act. However, they did not let the colonists have a victory. By an overwhelming vote, they passed the Declaratory Act. This futile measure proclaimed that Parliament had the right "to bind" the colonies "in all cases whatsoever". This meant that Britain was able to tax the colonies under any circumstance.

It was a depressing attempt to save face, for now everyone knew that Britain could be brought to her knees through protest and boycotts. The colonies burst into rejoice. The citizens of New York created a leaden statue of King James, showing they were grateful to the king and that they thought he was a great guy again. However, when the American Revolution broke out, the statue was melted down to, ironically, make bullets that killed the kings men. In 1767, Charles Townshend created the Townshend Act. This act suspended the New York assembly and proposed taxes on colonial imports of glass, red and white lead, paints, paper, and tea.

This on top of all of the other acts completely infuriated the colonists because they did not like to think of themselves as controlled by Parliament. They responded with popular articles against the British. When the British saw what the colonists were writing, they shutdown the Massachusetts legislature which also led to the Boston Massacre on the March of 1770. In the colonies, tea had become a popular drink and was shipped to the colonists often. The British noticed this and in 1773 passed the Tea Act. This act taxed all of the tea shipped to the new colonies.

The British thought that it would not matter because the tea shipped through the British was still cheaper than the tea smuggled to the colonists from the Dutch. Sadly though, the British were wrong. American merchants lost out in this act because the British would only send the tea through their own people, which denied the merchants of profit. The colonists believed it to be unfair and fought out against this act. On December 16, 1773 a group of Boston villagers gathered on the decks of the British ships dressed up like Indians and tossed overboard all of the tea stored on the ships. When the colonists refused to buy the tea, British shut down the Boston port.

This resulted in greater taxation. The intolerable acts are also known as the coercive acts for obvious reasons. The intolerable acts were split into four different acts: The Boston Port Act, The Massachusetts Government Act, The Quartering Act, and The Imperial Administration Act. The Boston Port Act closed the port of Boston so they could not trade. The Massachusetts Government Act denied the people of Massachusetts the possibility of town meetings. The Quartering Act forced the colonists to provide living quarters to the British soldiers.

An amendment in the Bill of Rights was written because of this act. The Impartial Administration Act stated that the British officers were to be removed from the jurisdiction of Massachusetts's courts. All of the colonies suffered from these acts in many ways but basically the British would profit from these acts. The colonists believing that these acts were "intolerable" united with Massachusetts to rebel against these acts. Virginia proposed that the colonists meet and discuss what they should do.

A year later the colonists rebelled against the British to start the American Revolution. The repeal of the Townshend Acts in 1770 did no more than temporarily quiet the turmoil, for the tax on tea was kept as a sort of token of Parliament's supremacy. Indignation in New England at the monopoly granted to the East India Company led to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Despite the earnest pleas of Edmund Burke, Parliament replied with coercive measures.

The resistance was prompt to the Intolerable Acts. The Sons of Liberty and individual colonials were already distributing statements of the colonial cause to win over merchant and farmer, worker and sailor. Committees of correspondence had been formed to exchange information and ideas and to build colonial unity, and, in 1774, these committees prepared the way for the First Continental Congress. The representatives at this First Continental Congress, except for a few radicals, had not met to consider independence, but wished only to persuade the British government to recognize their rights. A plan of reconciliation offered by Joseph Galloway was rejected. It was agreed that the colonies would refuse to import British goods until colonial grievances were righted, those grievances were listed in petitions to the king, and the congress adjourned.

The British mercantile system was doomed for disaster from the moment that the colonists set foot on the new continent. At first the British gave the colonists a certain feeling of independence, then they put the collar on and expected the colonists to do everything that they asked them to. What happened in the American colonies is a great example of the line "Give them an inch, they " ll take a mile". The British set up the colonies in the idea of making money, which was the whole point behind mercantilism. However, you can't expect people to kneel down and obey forever.