Mercantile_Policy_in_the_Colonies

Before 1763, British mercantilist policy while restricting colonial economic development allowed colonial political life to develop unhampered by the Mother Country. Prior to 1763, the main focus of the British government was to control the economic development of the colonies. Britain’s singular focus was the open door for the unhampered growth of colonial political life. While the British government was occupied with passing numerous tax laws and trade restrictions, the colonists were free to assemble, develop the political ideals of a nation and unite. The tax and trade restrictions imposed by the British government exemplified the 18th C. European concept of mercantilism: An economic system to increase a nation’s wealth by government regulation of all of the nation’s commercial interests. The acquisition of the colonies was a tremendous opportunity for Britain to gain significant economic power. In pursuit of this goal, the British government enacted the Navigation Acts, a series of limitations on colonial economic development. In 1651, the British government required all goods transported to England and the colonies to be carried on English-made ships. The Act’s effect was to limit colonial trading to and through England. In 1660 Act was renewed and added further limitations to the British chokehold on colonial commerce. Added provisions included a requirement that ships’ crews need to be 75% English and that colonial production of tobacco, sugar and cotton had to be shipped from the colonies to England or to other English colonies. The final part of the Navigation Acts was the 1663 laws which necessitated the routing of European goods to England first and then to the colonies. Taxes on the goods were levied in England and then again in the colonies. The 1663 addition served to reinforce England’s goal to make it, the Mother Country, the sole trading partner of the colonies and the beneficiary of the enormous revenue being generated through the restrictions and taxes placed upon the colonies. While this series of the Navigation Acts was being drafted, revised and enforced, Britain gave little heed to the political activity developing in the colonies. The British government largely ignored the importance of the Albany Congress, a gathering of colonial delegates who met to discuss and eventually create the first plan of unification of the colonies. The Albany Plan of 1754 was drafted by Benjamin Franklin in an attempt by the colonists to form a coalition of colonies to govern military conflicts with the Indians. When the plan was ultimately rejected, Benjamin Franklin made the following declaration: “Everyone cries, a union is necessary, but when they come to the manner and form of the union, their weak noodles are perfectly distracted.” He further emphasized his strong belief for the need for unity through the May, 1754 publication of a political cartoon entitled “Join, or Die”. The cartoon depicts a snake cut into 8 pieces each labelled with the name of a colony or colonial region. As a whole, the fractured pieces are Franklin’s satiric comment on the lack of the colonies to come together as one entity. The existence of this cartoon, the assembly of the delegates and the Albany Plan is the evidence of Britain’s lack of attention to the growing colonial political activity. Britain’s singular focus on enacting laws to gain an all-encompassing economic dominance over the colonies resulted in the freedom of the colonists to engage in meaningful political acts. In its attempt to rule colonial commerce with an iron hand, Britain neglected the colonists’ increasing desire to unite under their own government. This development of political activity became the beginning of Britain’s eventual loss of its firm grip on the colonial economy.