The trade between North American states, Europe, and Africa grew out of England’s desire to dominate and exert greater control over its rapidly growing empire. Around the middle of the seventeenth century, England’s demand for natural resources, e.g., gold and ivory from its colonies grew, prompting for a solidified hold on the trading routes off North America’s easterly cost. The trade dynamic led to mercantilism, a theory that explains England’s stiff regulation of economic activity within its colonies, particularly in North America 1 . Under this theory, England maintained that the influx of wealth was much higher than the outflow, boosting its manufacturing capacity.
Far from enriching Britain, the Atlantic trade improved living standards in North American colonies and incubated trade and commerce. By 1750, about 1 million people living in the colonies benefited directly from the trade, and reportedly, infant mortality rates and fertility rates were improving 2 . The exchange also improved financial opportunities for the colonies, leading to significantly higher purchasing power and skill. Towards the 19th century, incomes in the Americas substantially rose, and luxurious items that were previously considered exclusive to the wealthy because available to the ordinaries. That describes the consumer revolution, primarily attributed to credit availability to the colonies and the gradual establishment of paper money markets.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The sugar trade formed an integral part of the Atlantic trade. Given the considerable proximity between the Caribbean and North American colonies, British colonialists traded sugar for mahogany wood from New England. Given the unfavorable climatic conditions for growing sugar in England and North America, the colonialists greatly favored Caribbean colonies, rendering the regions much more economically viable than British colonies in the Western hemisphere. As the demand for sugar grew and the product became ingrained in England’s production chain, the Northern American route became equally important. As a result, the slave trade became a common phenomenon along the routes, shipping human labor to the colonists bulging industry.
As trade grew, Great Britain imposed taxes along the trade routes and specific trade items to control sales volumes and rubberstamp its authority on the Atlantic trade. As the trade volume grew towards the 19th century, Germans, the Scott, French, and Italians aggressively joined the Atlantic trade, threatening England’s supremacy. In response, the Sugar Act was imposed in 1764, alongside amending the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts to root out illicit trade whereby Dutch and French guards would be bribed to allow passage of goods with counterfeit tax documents 3 . However, administering these taxes was costly, prompting levies on goods such as tea and glass.
The state of Carolina played a significant role in the Atlantic trade. The state’s fine rice and deerskin were among the most demanded trade items in Great Britain and broader Europe. Foster (2020) also observes that Carolina trade heavily relied on the prevailing legislation, necessitating the enactment of the Rice Act in 1730 and Coercive Acts in 1774. Beyond trade and legislation, Carolina merchants and British lords progressed into dissenting ideological beliefs. The diplomatic conflict manifested in the failure of the legislature to oppose the Coercive Acts, effectively severing the political tranquillity that would not be resuscitated until the reconstruction. The importance of Carolina manifested in the secession of the Union and Confederate states. Given the conflicting interest of Northern Americans and the British, Carolina’s causative impact on the Civil War proved that the Atlantic trade was a defining element in the growth and stability of the state. As a result, Americans would coerce some British merchants to side with their economic interests in cotton, rewarding them and consequently facilitating the rapid resumption of the British-Carolina trade.
France, a major player in the Atlantic trade, had an operational base in North America. The French North American empire coordinated commerce in fur, logging, and agriculture products. However, fishing, mainly salmon export, was the most lucrative engagement for the French. The empire had strategic locations along River Ohio and Lawrence, overseeing trade networks through Lawrence town. Slave trade was also part of France’s interests in the Atlantic trade, primarily motivated by competition from England. Prior to the Seven Years War, in which the French lost, France held major stocks in global trade in tobacco and sugar 4 . These products, mostly grown along the Mississippi and West Indies, would be coordinated through Guadeloupe and Martinique. While the French had fewer numbers (vessels and tradespeople), it also had mercantilist policies. The rules were instituted by the prime minister, Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619 – 1683) 5 . The orders required manufacturers to acquire raw materials only from their colonies. All in all, France was not as successful as Great Britain in the Atlantic trade.
Colonies in New England participated in triangular trade through logging. Given the region’s vast forests with an abundance of indigenous tress ideal for furniture, Europeans took the advantage to build ships for ferrying cargo across the Atlantic. New England was also the favorite spot for the exchange of goods to and from the Caribbean islands, where sugar was planted on a large scale. The region’s favorable climatic conditions allowed seasonal navigation to deliver sugar, fur, and other raw materials across the Atlantic to Europe. Rogue Italian traders also used New England’s coastlines to traffic slaves from North Africa into labor markets in France and England 6 . As a result, the region experienced cultural imports, which account for some phenomena like the occurrence of many French-speaking peoples in Canada.
Competition between Europeans in the Atlantic trade was heightened by, among other things, Britain’s classification of “enumerated goods,” which could only be traded with Great Britain. These high-value commodities at the time – sugar, cotton, wool, tobacco, and dyeing woods – sharply rose in demands in Italy, France, and Portugal, escalating tensions that led to war between French Quebec and North America. Before that, Navigation Acts had been implemented as early as 1689, but rival European merchants had flouted them consistently. A significant change in paradigm was noted between the 1720s and 1760s with the introduction of “salutary neglect,” whereby Britain ignored the violation of worker’s rights 7 . However, that would soon be overturned by King George III’s attempt to regain control over the trade networks, ultimately triggering the American Revolution.
West Indies had a special place in North America’s ties to Europe. The colony was a slave trade hub for all western powers interested in slaves from Africa. As of 1600, colonists from Portugal, France, Spain, Holland, and Denmark would buy the slaves and deploy them to vast sugar plantations across North America. With the West Indies population greatly wiped out by a contagious disease, more and more African slaves would be brought in to increase the labor supply. As the spread of Roman Catholicism grew, the push to free slaves or give them reasonable rights intensified 8 . Chesapeake slavery was then subjected to discourage interracial marriages. The poll tax would then follow up in 1643, which made slave life even harder. The British rule was significantly more segregated than the Spanish. For instance, the Spaniards had a mulatto race, a mixture of blacks and Europeans. These hybrids were treated slightly better, unlike in British colonies, where even mix-races were considered black.
Essentially, North American colonies were directly linked to Atlantic commerce by laws and trade enforced and maintained by Europeans. What had initially begun as trade evolved into slavery, and the laws continued to burden the Americas. Clearly, Spanish, French, and English masters extorted Americans of natural resources, given that commodities like sugar, silk, and fur were in high demand but could not be sourced locally. Ideally, the Atlantic trade defines the starting point of the US’s colonial history and the long fight for unity and economic stability.
Notes
Clark, A. F. (2005). The Atlantic Slave Trade Revisited. Journal of Third World Studies. 22(1): 273-286. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45194241
Emily Arendt et al., “Colonial Society,” Nora Slonimsky, ed., in The American Yawp , eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).
Foster, A.K. (2020). [Review of the book Trade, Politics, and Revolution: South Carolina and Britain’s Atlantic Commerce, 1730–1790, by Huw David]. Journal of Southern History 86(2), 446-447. doi:10.1353/soh.2020.0094.
Gregory Ablavsky et al., “British North America,” Daniel Johnson, ed., in The American Yawp , eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).
Steckel, R. H. (1995). The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe . https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1220pd1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j
1 Clark, A. F. (2005). The Atlantic Slave Trade Revisited. Journal of Third World Studies. 22(1): 278.
2 Steckel, R. H. (1995). The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe. p223.
3 Emily Arendt et al., “Colonial Society,” Nora Slonimsky, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).
4 Clark, A. F. (2005). The Atlantic Slave Trade Revisited. Journal of Third World Studies . 22(1): 273-286. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45194241
5 Ibid.
6 Foster, A.K. (2020). [Review of the book Trade, Politics, and Revolution: South Carolina and Britain’s Atlantic Commerce, p.1765.
7 Gregory Ablavsky et al., “British North America,” Daniel Johnson, ed., in The American Yawp , eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).
8 Ibid.
