The British Atlantic World

Part 2 The Mercantile System

A Quick Recap
By 1732 Georgia is founded as the final English Colony.
The colonies have been founded for different reasons, but are now
all under the same Imperial system.
Differing climate will have a profound impact on the economic and
social constructs of each colony and colonial region.

The Mercantile System

Based on the cartoon, what is the

purpose of Mercantilism?

The Mercantile System

This is a very important concept, it is the central issue that underlies the
American Revolution. See MAXIMUM SALIENCY Episode 2 for additional
clarification.
Mercantilism A system by which a mother country creates colonies. The colonies
provided raw material back to the mother country and a new market for
manufactured materials.
Effectively, colonies are captive audiences (like you, my students). The
mother country will control who the colony can trade with.

The Navigation Act of 1660

This act of Parliament is passed to establish the Mercantile
relationship between the N. American colonies and Great
Britain.

The American colonies are ONLY allowed to sell raw materials

to Great Britain.
The American colonies can ONLY purchase manufactured
goods from Great Britain.
American products may ONLY be carried in British ships.

Previously, colonists had been purchasing cheaper, French

and Dutch made, goods and had been selling much of the
cash crop to the French in the West Indies.
Colonists are infuriated by this attempt by the Royal
government to control them, HOWEVER

Salutary Neglect
The British pass the Navigation Acts, but only make a half-hearted attempt
to enforce them.
During the reign of George I and II the British government would practice a
policy of relaxed control over the colonies.
This policy, developed by Sir Robert Walpole, was engineered to allow the his political
party to appoint their friends into the royal bureaucracy.
Once in office, such as the Board of Trade, they accomplished little.

The policy of neglect undermined the legitimacy of the royal government:

Patronage, or the giving of office to political allies and friends, caused the colonial
governments to question the effectiveness of royal authority vs. their own legislatures.

The South Atlantic System and Southern

Economy

The Beginnings of Southern Slavery

The British produced vast amounts of sugar in the
Caribbean using a plantation system and African labor.
This system will carried North to the colonies by
planters seeking their fortune in South Carolina and
Virginia
The will bring the highly structured system and
many of the black codes that will become to
foundation of Southern society.
By nature sugar farming benefits large planters.
(High entry costs for you civic students, leads to
what?)

Cont.
Britain, supported by the Navigation Acts, will dominate the sugar
trade. Sugar would be imported from the colonies and then resold
to the rest of Europe.
Slaves could be sold for far more than the cost of importation.
Slave trading becomes ever increasingly lucrative, driving importation.

The northern colonies benefit from this as well.

Shipbuilders profit from the ever growing demand for merchant vessels and
northern ports become trading hubs.
An urban society emerges, centered around the deep water ports.

Triangular Trade
Slavery is driven by a circular
flow of goods and materials
around the Atlantic.
The main legs of this
journey:
Raw materials (sugar, molasses,
timber, tobacco, etc.) are shipped
from the American colonies and the
West Indies to England.
Traders from England carried rum,
guns, iron and other items to West
Africa.
Slaves are purchased and
transported from Africa across the
Atlantic to the West Indies and
North America.
And so on.

The Middle Passage

Particularly horrible, the Middle Passage represented the trip from Africa to the
Americas.
Africans were stuffed into tiny, dirty and disease ridden ships where almost 20%
died during the journey.
They were the power that turned the emerging colonial economic engine and
slavery would continue to be a contentious issue for almost 200 years.
The slave trade would be an important part of the mercantile system