American Colonies - The Carolinas And Georgia | Britannica

New shapes of colonial development

In the 80 years between 1660 and 1740, three great new forces began to reshape the British colonies in North America. They were the economic regulations embodied in the Acts of Trade and Navigation, the partial systematization of imperial administration, and the contest with the French for dominion over the continent. By the year 1700 the colonists probably numbered about 250,000 and were increasing at a rate that has seldom been equaled in the history of Western nations. Immigration, early marriages, the economic value of children in an agricultural society, and the relatively high level of health sped this growth.

More From Britannica United States: Colonial America to 1763

Under the concept of mercantilism generally accepted by western Europe, English economic policy regarded the colonies as part of an imperial whole which should aim at self-sufficiency and a favorable trade balance. Each part of the empire had something to give and something to receive. This policy was first embodied in three Navigation Acts by Parliament in 1651, 1660, and 1663. The law of 1651 provided that all goods imported into England or the colonies must be carried in ships of which the owner, captain, and crew were English (colonials, of course, were considered Englishmen). The exception to this rule was that all goods imported into England and the colonies from Europe might come in ships of the country which produced the goods. The law of 1660, strengthening the first, required that ships used in carrying goods in and out of England must be built as well as owned and manned in England or the colonies. It also required that certain “enumerated articles,” of which sugar, tobacco, and indigo were the chief, be sold only to England or to other colonies. To give the colonists full control of the home market, no one could grow tobacco in England or import it from a foreign land. The law of 1663 was more serious. It stipulated that European goods must be shipped to the colonies through England and thus made it necessary for many colonial merchants to add an extra leg to their voyages.

Many colonists attempted to evade these acts. They shipped enumerated articles to Europe instead of to England, and they imported European goods directly from Europe without stopping in English ports. New laws of 1673 and 1696 were then passed by Parliament to end the evasions. Moreover, the list of enumerated articles was lengthened, so that by the year 1721 rice, molasses, naval stores (tar, pitch, and turpentine), furs, and copper, all important to the colonies, had been placed under control. In 1733 the British Parliament adopted a still more serious measure, the Molasses Act, which placed heavy duties on all sugar, molasses, rum, and other spirits imported into the colonies from the French, Dutch, and Spanish possessions. The object was to restrict trade to the British West Indies. Had it been enforced, this law would have been disastrous, for the colonies exchanged large quantities of fish, lumber, meat, and foodstuffs with the foreign islands for these commodities. Fortunately, the British government winked at the wholesale violations.

Other irksome restrictions on the colonies concerned manufactures, for the mother country wished to preserve the colonial market for its own industries. The Wool Act of 1699 prohibited the shipment of woolen fabrics across any colonial boundary. The Hat Act of 1732 similarly forbade any colony to export its hats and limited the number of apprentices. Late in the colonial period the Iron Act of 1750 stopped the erection in the colonies of rolling and slitting mills, forges, and iron-making plants. Like all new communities, the colonies needed a more abundant currency than they had and wished to print paper money, but the British authorities feared an inflation which would hurt British creditors and raise the price of colonial exports. In 1751 they therefore forbade the issuance of paper money by New England and in 1764 applied the ban to the other colonies.

But the mercantilist enactments had many features favorable to the colonies, and in total effect they were far from harsh. The navigation laws fostered shipbuilding in the colonies. A number of important American products were given a monopoly of the British market. Colonial pig iron and bar iron were admitted to Great Britain without duty. British bounties were paid on the production of naval stores. These facts, coupled with the salutary neglect of the colonies introduced by Robert Walpole and the nonenforcement of the more onerous laws, permitted a steady development of American economic life. The colonists meanwhile had the protection of the British army and navy. Nevertheless, two facts respecting the acts of trade had their bearing on later events. First, the colonies, like most frontier agricultural communities, were plainly exploited by the older countries both as a source of low-priced raw materials and as a market for manufactured wares—and, like other frontier lands, they resented the fact. Second, widespread law evasion fostered in the colonists a spirit of disobedience and insubordination.