What effects did the Navigation Acts have on both Britain and its colonies

The Navigation Acts were a series of laws enacted by the English government from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century. In the early modern period nation-states in Europe were influenced by a set of ideas subsequently known as mercantilism. According to mercantilist theory, the amount of wealth available for each nation was fixed, and so one nation's gain meant another nation's loss. In fact, European nations competed with each other to acquire "fixed wealth." To win, each nation developed a series of policies of establishing a trading system within its empire. The Navigation Acts were the set of rules that the English devised. Their framework included three pillars: regulation of vessels engaging in trade, regulation of colonial exports, and regulation of colonial imports. Some of the most important laws pursuing these goals were passed in 1651, 1660, 1663, and 1673.

WARS OVER THE NAVIGATION ACTS

Englands first Navigation Acts were partly responsible for two naval wars with the Netherlands. The Dutch considered the Commonwealths 1650 and 1651 Navigation Acts to be a serious threat to their trade, and the two nations went to war in 1652. Oliver Cromwell had reformed the English navy, employing good commanders such as Robert Blake and George Monck, and this paid dividends in the first war fought entirely at sea. In 1663 Dutch Admiral Maarten Tromp was killed, and peace was made in 1654. The two nations remained commercial rivals. In 1660 Englands Parliament, under King Charles II s restored monarchy, enacted a new Navigation Act, contributing to another war in 1664. The English captured New Amsterdam (New York), and won naval victories off Lowestoft and Orfordness, but in 1667 Admiral Michiel De Ruyters fleet sailed up the Medway, capturing and burning sixteen vessels. The Treaty of Breda (1667) left the Dutch the masters of the seas. A third Anglo-Dutch war (1672—1674) was due not to the Navigation Acts, but to an unlikely Anglo-French alliance. De Ruyter foiled allied invasion attempts, forcing Charles to sign the Treaty of Westminster.

David J. Clarke

BACKGROUND TO THE 1651 ACT

The first half of the seventeenth century was the golden age of the Netherlands in the commerce of the Western world. American colonists were willing to trade with Dutch merchants because they offered the colonists higher prices for their exports and lower prices for European imports. This practice negatively affected the English mother country. In addition, during the English Civil War, the Dutch made deep inroads into North American trade. In the face of such encroachment, Parliament passed the first of the Navigation Acts in 1651. Though the act was meant to regulate the entire English shipping and trade, as were the acts that followed, it primarily aimed to prohibit the use of Dutch vessels in the colonial (and English) trade, and to help English merchants to take control of trade from the Dutch. For example, this act stipulated that European goods imported to the colonies could only be carried by English ships. The act of 1651 was the first step in regulation but it had its shortcomings and it was thought important to take another step to complete the framework of trade.

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TRADING FRAMEWORK

Towards this end, two more acts were passed in 1660 and 1663. These two acts established the commercial system of the "First British Empire." Under the 1660 act, both colonial imports and colonial exports would be carried by only English ships. This act also stipulated that certain colonial products could only be exported to Europe as long as they passed through England. These so-called "enumerated commodities" originally were sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and some dyewoods. The list was subsequently expanded to include rice and molasses in 1704, and tar, pitch, hemp, and masts in 1705; the list continued to be expanded from then on. The act of 1663 required that European goods be sent to the colonies only from England. This regulation of colonial imports was a final step towards building the mercantilist trading framework. The English government also enacted acts in 1673 and 1696 to boost the 1660 and 1663 acts. Specifically, the 1673 act established a system of duties and a more effective customs service in the colonies in order to enforce the shipment of enumerated commodities only to imperial ports. The 1696 act set up a system of admiralty courts to reinforce shipping and commercial regulations.

Generally, the Navigation Acts controlled colonial trade and benefited the mother country by increasing the "wealth of the nation." Increasing wealth was not an end but a strategy, however. The main purpose behind their promulgation was the acquisition of national strength. In order to attain this purpose, mercantilists insisted that the financial stability of the state, achieved with a trading framework, was a necessity. Moreover, there was a system of bounties built into the acts. Some bounties from the English government were given for colonial exports such as naval stores and hemp. Finally, the Parliament passed laws to prevent England's colonies from producing certain goods in competition with British producers, including the Hat Act of 1732 and the Iron Act of 1750. These, too, were designed to help the financial strength of the state.

COMPETING PERSPECTIVES ON THE EFFECTS OF THE ACTS

One historical school saw in the commercial regulations of the First British Empire the main cause of the discontents that erupted in the American Revolution. In this view the economic effects of the Navigation Acts on the American colonies were a critical issue for the colonists; the negative effects of the enumeration constraint on colonial exports were pronounced. Historians have long debated whether their burdens were heavy enough to trigger the revolution. Recently, most scholars have come to regard these burdens as slight, with some pointing to countervailing positive effects. For instance, colonial merchants could engage in international trade, including the trade to the colonies of other countries, and could carry unenumerated products to European and Western Hemisphere ports. Moreover, all these trades were carried on under the protection as well as the regulation of the Navigation Acts.

Similarly, discussion of the effects of the acts has been inconclusive. The acts did not disrupt Dutch trade, but they helped the British to win a series of wars against France. The key to the final victory over France was the fact that, under the commercial regulations embodied in the Navigation Acts, the English government acquired its revenue for waging war. However, the acts should be evaluated, above all, as laws to define British shipping and trade, and to hold together the "commercial empire."

THE ACTS AFTER THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

The First British Empire was basically an Atlantic construct. After the American Revolution Great Britain lost the largest part of its possessions in the West, but it began to expand its territorial possessions in the East. At the same time, commercial regulations, the feature of the first empire, were loosened, and replaced by free-trade principles, which stood as a hallmark of the Second British Empire. Nonetheless, the first empire did not give way to the second; they coexisted well into the nineteenth century. The British Parliament continued to pass navigation laws until 1845.

Although ministers had no intention of destroying the traditional regulatory scheme, they introduced many modifications to it in the 1820s in order to allow it to more efficiently respond to new conditions. Under these new laws the principle of enumeration was abandoned in 1822, and international reciprocity was established in 1825, although the rule that imperial trade should be conducted only by imperial ships with imperial crews persisted. Despite such a situation, however, by the mid-nineteenth century, especially after the repeal of the Corn Laws, removal of protective policies advanced in Britain. The Navigation Acts were repealed in 1849, and foreign ships were allowed to participate in Britain's coastwise trade in 1854.

SEE ALSO Empire, British;Mercantilism;Ships and Shipping;United States.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrews, Charles M. The Colonial Period of American History, Vol. 4: England's Commercial and Colonial Policy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1938.

Cain, P. J. "Economics and Empire: The Metropolitan Context." In The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 3, ed. Andrew Porter. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Dickerson, Oliver M. The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951.

Engerman, Stanley L. "Mercantilism and Overseas Trade, 1700–1800." In The Economic History of Britain Since 1700: 1700–1860, vol.1, 2nd edition, ed. Roderick Floud and D. N. McCloskey. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Harper, Lawrence A. The English Navigation Laws: A Seventeenth-Century Experiment in Social Engineering. New York: Colombia University Press, 1939.

Marshall P. J. "Britain Without America: A Second Empire?" In The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 2, ed. P. J. Marshall. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1998.

McCusker, John J. "British Mercantilist Policies and American Colonies." In The Cambridge Economic History of the United States: The Colonial Era, vol. 1, ed. Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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