An early modern economic theory that supported the creation of colonies that could produce raw materials for the mother country and reduce its dependence on foreign nations.
Late in the fifteenth century, Europe began the process that would lead it to dominate the rest of the world for 500 years. Kings consolidated their territory, forming the early nation-states. They overturned trade restrictions dating from the Middle Ages. Rulers repealed the tolls and tariffs levied at every city or river crossing and assisted nascent industry, realizing for themselves more taxes to finance better armies and a more effective central government. With internal reform under way, the rival nations turned their attention to the rest of the world.
Spain and Portugal excelled first in the race to the East Indies. Portugal explored the west coast of Africa and did not cease until it had gone around that continent and then on to India, founding a great empire in the East. Portugal’s conquests included Goa, India (1510); Melaka (Malacca), near Singapore (1511); Ormuz in the Persian Gulf (1515); and the Moluccas (1528). Also, the Portuguese established the first European presence in China and occupied Ceylon. Spain claimed the Philippines and tried for the Moluccas (already Portuguese), but its main empire remained in the Western Hemisphere, in the Americas from Mexico to Chile. Portugal controlled Brazil.
Spain had success in the East, but its glory radiated from the New World, whose silver financed the sixteenth-through eighteenth-century European competition for world economic advantage. Much New World treasure ended up in the coffers of the buccaneers of the Spanish Main and their backers in England and elsewhere. Nevertheless, more than enough reached Spain. Spanish wealth spread throughout the Hapsburg-ruled lands, paying off debts from the religious wars in Germany and the Spanish Netherlands. It bought ship stores from the Baltic. It circulated and entered Holland and Britain legally or otherwise. As European trade spread to Asia, silver purchased Asian spices, silk, calico, and tea. Asia desired few European goods until after the Industrial Revolution. In the meantime, silver remained the medium of exchange.
After the initial glut, the silver supply shrank—Spanish bullion imports dropped 40 percent between 1590 and 1640. Still, the demand for Asian products grew, and European nation-states accumulated large bills because of their frequent religious and commercial wars. Europe experienced a shortage of money and a recession. Commerce provided the solution. Buy little, sell much, and become a winner in a mercantilist world.
Adam Smith coined the term retrospectively: as he defined “mercantilism,” the home commercial sector used foreign trade to create a monopoly of the home market because a monopoly would generate a favorable balance of trade, all in the nation’s interest. Mercantilism remained the dominant economic theory. Applied mercantilism varied from state to state and over time. Despite variation, all mercantilists intended to bring prosperity through economic regulation and control. The idea persisted between 1600 and 1800 and influenced most west European states and their trading partners and colonies throughout the world. Mercantilists believed:
Although European explorers had penetrated Asia, Russia, and eastern Europe at the start of the seventeenth century, the prize possession was Spain’s New World. The royal monopoly, the Casa de Contratación, made Seville the sole entrepôt for trade with colonial Spain. Carrying goods to exchange for Bolivian and Mexican silver, Spanish ships to the New World rose from 10,000 tons in 1540 to more than 40,000 tons in the peak year of 1608. The amount of silver brought to Seville grew sevenfold during the same period. The silver paid for foreign manufactured goods that Spanish manufacturers lacked the capability and capacity to supply to the New World. It also bought Spain military might and an aggressive foreign policy. Silver flowed to Genoa, Italy, England, and the Netherlands, enabling merchants and bankers there to trade with the Baltic and Scandinavian regions, whose demand for Western goods was smaller than the Western demand for their raw materials. Silver also bought Asian goods: silver in Manila bought silk for Acapulco, then Vera Cruz, and finally Spain.
Spain and England had a long history of animosity dating back to the time of Henry VIII (1509–1547), Spain’s attempt to subvert Elizabeth’s claim to the British Crown (1558–1603), the Spanish Armada (1588), and the reversal of Henry VIII’s taking over of the Roman Catholic Church in England (1553–1558). Spain wanted to kill English trade, to monopolize the trade of its colonies, and to keep the English away from Spanish territory. As early as the 1530s, English seamen went after Spanish vessels. By 1560, Sir John Hawkins, who ranked among the most famous of the “sea dogs,” sailed from Plymouth and brought England precious metal seized from Spanish galleons from the New World. Francis Drake followed in Hawkins’s footsteps with Elizabeth’s backing. His 1577–1578 path of plunder took him through the Strait of Magellan, up the west coast of America, and by the Spice Islands through the Cape of Good Hope, then back to England. His success brought the queen 264,000 pounds, a 4,000 percent profit to other investors, and a knighthood for him. But the Spanish system held together for centuries.
Ambitious Spaniards saw in the New World an opportunity to be the equal to Castilian nobles. The land proved suitable for agriculture and the raising of livestock, and an indigenous peasant class remained available. A colonial society came into being with Spanish overlords working native workers.
The encomienda system gave large grants and labor rights to the recipient, which led not only to virtual serfdom and the working to death of the peasants, but also to a prosperous agriculture. Efforts to improve the near-slavery system came to nothing—reformers lived in Europe and exploiters resided on site. Regardless, the large plantations prospered. European plants and animals flourished, but there was a ban on Spanish crops such as olives, grapes, and hemp.
The Spanish empire in America in 1600 was divided into the governing units of New Spain and Peru. New Spain included the mainland north of the Isthmus of Panama, the West Indies, and present-day Venezuela. The viceroyalty of Peru included all territory south of New Spain except Brazil and the Venezuela area. A viceroy, responsible only to the Crown, governed each colony. The Council of the Indies handled colonial correspondence, advised the Crown on colonial legislation, and served as the court of appeals for the Casa de Contratación. The system was bureaucratic, and generally each new situation was resolved by the creation of a new regulation.
Slavery supplemented the rapidly shrinking indigenous population as early as 1503. In that year, African slaves first arrived in the Caribbean. They reached the mainland by 1510. African slaves survived malaria and forced labor better than natives. Although blacks proved ineffective in the highlands, they provided extensive labor in Span ish Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. The Spanish king contracted the slave trade out, giving monopolies to private traders for seven to ten years (the asiento). Slaves were transported on Spanish as well as Flemish, Genoese, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English ships. Controls limited the volume of imports, kept prices high, and promoted smuggling.
Spain also controlled an Asian empire. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese circumnavigating the globe in the employ of Spain, landed in the Philippines in 1521, where he died the same year. His crew completed the circumnavigation in 1522. Spaniards returned in 1565, establishing permanent settlements from which to expand Christianity into Asia and to take over the spice trade. Damaged by the defeat of the Spanish Armada by England in 1588, Spain turned its effort to its American colonies. Still, it controlled the Philippines for three centuries. It imposed the encomienda system, under which Spanish owners exacted forced payment of money and labor from the indigenous population. Manila served as a stopover for the trade between Mexico and China that lasted from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. Spanish galleons brought Mexican silver to Manila and carried back Chinese silk and porcelain. To limit losses of silver and protect Spanish markets from a flood of Chinese goods, Spain allowed only one galleon per year. Eventually, with the demise of Spanish mercantile controls, the galleon trade gave way to direct trade between the Philippines and Europe and the United States.
Spanish mercantilism rested on three rules
There was a fourth rule—extreme controls led to extreme smuggling. Too many people on both sides of the ocean had interests in trade. In the eighteenth century, Spain finally realized the rules had become outmoded and unenforceable. By 1789, ships could sail directly to most Spanish ports. By the end of the eighteenth century, the asiento had disappeared and slave imports became uncontrolled.
Part of the Spanish system from 1580 to 1640, Portugal’s power and prestige peaked before the mercantilist era. Despite having only 1.25 million people at the beginning of the fifteenth century, Portugal flourished because of maritime trade with the northern states. Portugal’s position on the west coast of Iberia made the sea a natural avenue.
Lisbon and Oport’s experience in maritime commerce naturally expanded into exploration and trading to the west in the New World but, more important, to Africa, India, and Asia. The New World was initially seen as an obstacle; the prize remained the East Indies, and Spanish competition encouraged the smaller Portugal to turn its attention to the known lucrative goal. Portugal raided and traded for slaves, gold, pepper, and ivory on the west African coast. Portugal moved to the Atlantic islands, finding honey, timber, and other raw materials. Settlement came later. Profitability of the commercial ventures led the Crown to finance ventures of its own. King Manuel financed Vasco da Gama, who found the sea route to India. Portugal’s monopoly of the spice trade followed. But Portugal failed to establish political control over its territories as Spain did. And the disadvantages of a small population caught up with Portugal by the end of the sixteenth century, when the overseas population became too great for the home population to support; Portugal expelled the Jews and Muslims and suffered a disastrous plague. The final blow came with the death of King Sebastian in 1578. His uncle, King Philip II of Spain, annexed Portugal in 1580. The union gave Philip an Atlantic seaboard, a fleet, and an empire that extended from Africa to Brazil and from Calicut to the Moluccas. Portugal regained independence in 1640, but the Dutch and English had taken its eastern trade in the early 1600s.
Spain sacrificed the colonies to the home country, exploited the natives, and gave the colonists little input or influence. And mercantilism became inflationary because of Spain’s economic backwardness; much Spanish wealth financed its competitors. Still, Spain had the most sophisticated colonial society and remained the leading colonial power into the eighteenth century.
After the silver supply declined, the need for money led nations to debase their coin, producing an economic crisis from 1619 through 1622. Spain devalued in 1603, 1636, and 1641. Easy expansion to Asia ended in the mid-1600s. A new approach became necessary. Success came when and where merchants took over trade from governments, developed creative tactics, moved away from bilateral exchange, and reduced transfer costs (information, paperwork, transportation, money transfer fees, and so on). This happened first in the Netherlands.
The United Netherlands came into being in 1581. Between 1648 and 1672, the Dutch dominated European trade. Northern ports such as Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Antwerp controlled European commerce. Dutch shipping dominated the trade from the Baltic to western Europe, had a large share of imports from the Americas and the East to Europe, and dominated reexports through Amsterdam. Antwerp controlled trade from Iberia to the Baltic, and even the Asian trade.
In 1640, Antwerp took over from Genoa and London the lucrative work as disbursing agent in the North for Spanish silver. The Dutch had been dominating Europe economically since the early sixteenth century because of their trading skill and their fleets. They were dominant in the North Sea, aggravating the English by catching huge amounts of herring from Britain’s east coast, running a factory-style salting operation, and exporting British fish throughout Europe. The Dutch built a bulk trade using off-season fishing vessels filled with the goods of Antwerp merchants. Some fishermen traded on their own, carrying grain, timber, salt, and other bulk goods. They adapted readily to the carrying of woolens, silks, spices, and other goods of the colonies.
The Dutch also cut costs: they launched the first fluitschip in 1595. Low, flat, longer than competitors, and made of cheaper wood (pine and fir instead of oak), this vessel required half the crew and was half the cost to construct of more traditional vessels of comparable size. It was built in large numbers with cheap loans. And since it was for commerce only, it did not have the costly armaments and defenses characteristic of competing vessels. The ships belonged to small companies with many small investors and a broad source of capital. By the 1670s, the Dutch merchant fleet exceeded those of England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Germany combined. The volume of European shipping peaked at record levels. Dutch diversification in types of goods and the opening of new routes in Europe meant they had 30 percent less likelihood of sailing without cargo than the English did. Dutch expansion reversed the unfavorable balance of trade with the Baltic, more than compensating for the loss of Spanish silver.
Other European merchants borrowed from the Dutch, whose credit system was the most reliable in Europe, so the Dutch also benefited from growth elsewhere. The Dutch made the internal improvements, set up special financial instruments to ease the flow of trade, extended the use of credit, and, with the creation of the public Bank of Amsterdam, provided a public bank with private capital rather than the government-funded charter companies that had dominated banking until that time.
The Dutch established colonies in Asia and America, seeking sources of raw materials. Barred from Lisbon by Philip II of Spain, they established their own route around the Cape of Good Hope to Indonesia. They bested the Portuguese in a series of encounters in the late sixteenth century. The Dutch founded Batavia, Java, in 1597, the Dutch East India Company and a stock exchange in 1602, the Dutch West India Company in 1621, and New Amsterdam in 1625–1626. But rivals fought back; the first Anglo-Dutch war took place between 1652 and 1654 and a second from 1665 to 1667. From 1653 through 1672, the Dutch lacked strong leadership. New Amsterdam fell to England, but the Asian effort remained viable for centuries after mercantilism and Dutch dominance faded.
France worked against the Dutch by raising tariffs and port fees and by cracking down on Dutch smuggling in the West Indies. It also set up state companies to compete with the Dutch companies in the Baltic and East and West Indies. When the cost of the effort became too high, Jean Baptiste Colbert, the chief minister of Louis XIV from 1661 to 1683, invaded and lost. The companies proved too expensive as was the war, so France went into a slump. As wars occurred again in 1652–1654, 1665–1667, and 1672 (this one included a French land war)—the unarmed Dutch ships, even with escorts, began to fade. The Dutch, with a population of two million, faced foes three to ten times as numerous, and the instability killed the entrepôt business. Dutch trade at Bordeaux dropped more than half from 1651 to 1684. Between the 1660s and 1700, the Dutch trade continued to decline, and British exports grew by 50 percent, half from reexport of colonial imports, primarily to Europe. The eighteenth century belonged to England and France. But the Dutch did lower trade and transportation costs for all.
Jean-Baptiste Colbert strongly advocated economic regulation, but he understood as a practical politician that his well-being depended on the middle class. He used France’s strong central state to ban the export of money, set high tariffs on foreign finished goods, and provide generous bounties to shipping. He bought Guadeloupe and Martinique, pushed for the settlement of Santo Domingo, Canada, and Louisiana, and established armed trading posts/settlements in Africa and India. He required French manufacturers to obtain their raw materials from French domestic or colonial sources. His merchant fleet consisted of almost 300 vessels. He discouraged the taking of holy orders and exempted families with ten or more children from taxation. National power rested on self-sufficiency, hard money, and large families.
Although he banned the export of bullion, his real goal was to replace bullion with export earnings as the method of paying for imports. State subsidies, the recruitment of foreign artisans, and emphasis on high-value products such as quality furniture, glass, and tapestries made French workmanship legendary. Tariffs protected French industries from foreign competition, as in the case of cloth where he doubled the duty on imports to keep the better-established British cloth from competing. He also tried to keep domestically produced raw materials for the exclusive use of domestic manufacturers. Heavy restrictions on exports kept sheep and wool for the domestic cloth industries. Manufactures, not raw material, were the desired exports, because they helped the balance of trade and brought in bullion. Likewise, the import of manufactured goods was discouraged. Importing raw materials was acceptable, but the use of domestic products was preferred.
Colbert challenged the Dutch. His merchant marine fleet grew from 60 to more than 700 ships of 300 tons or more, rivaling the Dutch. His navy grew from 20 ships to 250. Unlike the English, he did not let merchants affect his decisions, which he based on reasons of state. Colbert was also a mercantilist in regarding commerce as a zero-sum game, and he liked to boast that his creation of a French glass industry by importing Venetian glassblowers cost Venice one million livres a year. Between 1715 and 1771, French foreign trade grew eightfold, almost reaching the British trade level. Exports multiplied more than four times between 1716 and 1789.
England also had problems with the Dutch. In 1601, London’s port handled 360 Dutch ships and only 207 English. The Navigation Acts of 1651 were directed primarily at the Dutch. The first Navigation Act required that Asian, African, and American goods could only be brought to England in English ships. And European imports had to enter England either on English ships or on ships of the producing country.
Spanish wealth aided English mercantilists, who operated on the assumptions enunciated by Thomas Mun in the 1620s:
The system intensified under the Stuarts after 1660 with increased emphasis on planning, industrial output, and increased awareness of international competition and diplomatic maneuvering.
Mercantilists wanted low unemployment because it was most efficient. They also assumed that colonies were suppliers of raw material to home industry and markets for home goods, not competing sources of industry.
In 1704, England restrained Irish industry, but allowed the Irish linen industry to help Protestant flax growers and linen weavers in northern Ireland. Ireland exported little to the colonies. Previously, in 1668, the English Parliament ruled that cattle could no longer be imported to England and that there was to be no competition with English wool, either in raising sheep or in converting wool into fabric. The American colonies had fewer limits, thanks to the 3,000 miles between them and England.
Regulation of shipping dated to the fourteenth-century reign of Richard II, but as late as 1642, the Long Parliament declared New England imports and exports free of duties, and shortly thereafter the Parliament put goods entering southern colonies on English ships on its free list as well. The first act that restricted trade was passed in 1651, when Oliver Cromwell ruled England.
As stated in the previous section, the first Navigation Act required that Asian, African, and American goods could only be brought to England in English ships. European imports had to enter England either on English ships or on ships of the producing country. The act, as did those that followed, affected England’s American colonies differently in the northern and southern regions. Because northern goods tended to be the same as those produced in England, the barring of those goods was damaging. In the south, which produced rice, tobacco, and other goods that England could not produce itself, the impact was not nearly as serious. But the impact of the act on the colonies was not the primary consideration of the English Parliament, which was to harm the Dutch, England’s primary commercial rival. Enforcement remained lax to nonexistent in the colonies, especially in New England.
The second act, that of 1660, incorporated the first and prohibited colonial imports and exports on other than English or colonial vessels. It also enumerated items that could be shipped only to England or English territory. Enumerated items included cotton, wool, tobacco, sugar, and other items. Over time, the list of enumerated items grew. There was also a duty assessed on items shipped to England. A law of 1672 set the duties on intercolonial sales of the enumerated items. The duties had a potentially disastrous impact on intercolonial trade as well as trade with other countries. However, enforcement again proved lax to nonexistent. Trade restrictions also provided protection for goods such as grain and salt, which England produced for itself. On the other hand, the act protected colonial tobacco and iron from European competition by establishing high tariffs, and it provided subsidies through bounties on certain colonial products.
Other legislation hampered colonial development while promoting domestic interests. The Corn Laws, first enacted in 1666, shut out colonial grain shipments, leading New York and New England to shift to manufacturing. But England pro hibited colonial manufacturing. In 1708, New York manufactured about 75 percent of its own woolen and linen goods; the English prohibition killed that manufacture. Additional eighteenth-century restrictions damaged colonial hat manufacture for domestic use and export. Similarly, restrictions on iron and wool industries hurt the northern colonies. The Molasses Act of 1733 proved to be the worst act of all.
The act set prohibitively high duties on molasses and sugar that the colonies obtained from the French West Indies. New England had a flouishing trade with the West Indies, exchanging flour, lumber, fish, and livestock for the molasses and sugar. Because of the Corn Laws, New England had no English market for its products other than the French colonies. Again, serious enforcement would have had significant adverse impacts in New England, but neglect and subterfuge allowed New England to prosper.
English enforcement, even after the establishment of the Board of Trade and Plantations in 1696 to oversee trade and colonial affairs, remained weak and mostly produced colonial lawbreaking with the connivance of customs officials and sometimes even the governors. Widespread smuggling in the face of Admiralty courts occurred because juries refused to convict. The impact of the Molasses Act also included increasing contempt for Parliament because that body could not enforce its laws.
Smuggling was not confined to the colonies. An estimated 40,000 British smugglers were active in bringing in French silk and Indian tea well beyond import restrictions.
Some of the trade laws were actually advantageous to the colonies. The prohibition on growing tobacco in England that originated under James I, who regarded the weed as noxious, protected colonial interests. Also, to counter an unfavorable balance of trade in naval stores with Russia, Sweden, and Norway, England established bounties on colonial stores, such as hemp, lumber, tar, and turpentine, which generated a surplus of naval stores. Eventually, England was able to export these and other products, rather than import them from Russia, Norway, and Sweden, as it had previously done.
Because mercantile theory defined colonies as consumers of finished goods and exporters of raw materials, England usually had a favorable balance of trade. For instance, in 1759 New England exported to England 38,000 pounds worth of goods while importing 600,000 pounds. Presumably, income from smuggling helped to finance the importation of British goods. Still, the policy did work significantly to New England’s advantage because the laws defined colonial shipping as English, thereby promoting the New England shipping industry.
Between 1702 and 1772, British trade tripled. Matching that growth rate, shipping exceeded a million tons in 1788. Growth meant wealth, primarily from the Americas. In 1700, British traders still looked to Europe, but by 1776, non-European areas accounted for two-thirds of British trade. Between 1700 and 1763, there was a fivefold increase in exports to the West Indies and America and a fourfold increase in imports. Control of trade with the Western Hemisphere, as with India, was worth going to war over.
The southern American, Caribbean, and Brazilian colonies shipped raw materials—tobacco, rice, coffee, sugar, and rice—to Europe, which sent finished goods back to the plantations. Atlantic cities from Lisbon and Cadiz to Bordeaux, London, and Liverpool prospered from the Atlantic trade. For cities such as Liverpool, the reexport of plantation products was important, but more so was the trade in plantation labor—slaves.
Slavers sailed from Liverpool, or Lisbon, for West Africa. There they traded cheap finished goods for live bodies. Slaves were packed tightly on the voyage to the Caribbean and the American south, where the survivors were sold. Slave ships returned with cotton, tobacco, or other plantation crops. Meanwhile, Portuguese slavers took their plantation cargoes to Brazil.
European finished goods made their way to Spanish America as well. Half a million settlers in Mexico and Peru initially paid for goods with silver. As silver became scarce, Latin America became more self-sufficient. Meanwhile, North American trade continued to grow. Eventually, North America diverged from England into self-sufficiency, self-determination, and dissatisfaction with a subordinate and dependent status.
Mercantilism had an adverse impact on Asia. Asian trade helped Europe to expand by promoting the rise of new commercial organizations, opening new markets, and encouraging shipbuilding and related industries. Initially, it was mutually beneficial if not more advantageous to the Asians, who had superior abilities and resources. But the European companies violated mercantilist theory in the pursuit of more trade, more goods, and more profits. They spent precious metals in exchange for textiles (flying in the face of mercantilist advocacy of home labor).
The mercantilist pattern developed in Asia only after free trade replaced mercantilism; that is, after the Industrial Revolution, when European merchants exchanged manufactured goods for Asian agricultural products and when restrictive trade practices were set into place.
In India, English mercantilism was more a company venture than a government effort. The government awarded a monopoly to a group incorporated on December 31, 1600, as the East India Company. Eight years later, in 1608, the first company ships arrived, and in 1615 Sir Thomas Roe, the emissary of James I, received the right to establish a factory at Surat. Over time, the British dominated and the Portuguese faded. English communities grew in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, and factories sprang up along the east and west coasts. In 1717, the Mughal emperor exempted the company from paying customs in Bengal. In the eighteenth century, Robert Clive of the British East India Company defeated the Bengali ruler in the Battle of Plassey in 1757, and within a few years the company was collecting revenues for the emperor. Company rule was, if not rapacious, at least detrimental to the province. The company’s revenues and volume of trade continued to grow, but so did its military expenditures, and the company eventually needed the assistance of the state. Lord Frederick North’s India bill, the Regulating Act of 1773, placed the company and India under governmental control. The company continued operations until 1858.
Although each nation had its own variations, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, each had economic policies intended to maximize national wealth, specifically bullion. Means of obtaining wealth were either the acquisition of territory or the creation of a trade surplus. State involvement in economic development was necessary to attain maximum wealth. Restrictions on the colonies’ trade and manufacturing and subsidies for raw materials—self-sufficiency within the system—reduced imports from rival mercantilist systems. And it was all enforced through the Navigation Acts, which restricted imports, exports, and shipping. Economic autonomy and a large share of a finite economic pie is what the European nation-states were striving for to increase their wealth and power. But, as Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) points out, wealth lies in productivity, not metal, and the pie has no limit. Eventually, mercantilism gave way to free trade.
John Barnhill
See also: British Empire; Smith, Adam; Spanish Empire.
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