CE - Development of Colonies (Lesson)
The Development of Colonies
Mercantilism
While colonies in North America were comprised of Spanish, French, and British powers, it was the background of British influence which became the foundation for the United States.
Many colonists came to the North America seeking religious or political opportunities. The first permanent English settlement began at Jamestown in 1607. Jamestown was established under the authority of the Virginia Company, a company of Englishmen given a colonial charter with hopes to find gold and other riches. This desire for wealth fueled the founding of numerous North American colonies under British control. The colonists sought riches while England sought to use the North American colonies for their resources as part of the economic theory of mercantilism.
Mercantilism is the concept that the best way to gain wealth is to export more resources than you import. Mercantilism propelled European nations to gain colonies throughout the world in order to have access to resources, manpower, and trade networks to export goods and thus gain wealth and power.
With its North American colonies, England was able to conduct a favorable balance of trade. Raw materials such as lumber, sugar, tobacco, rice, and indigo were acquired from the North American colonies and England used these resources to trade throughout Europe, Africa, and even back to the North American colonies.
This favorable balance of trade between continents has become known as the trans-Atlantic trade. Trans-Atlantic trade is also commonly referred to as the triangular trade network for the shape it often imitates from trading from Europe to Africa, Africa to North America, and North America back to Europe. Most often English ships with rum, cloth, and other goods sailed to Africa where those goods were eventually traded, or sold, for African slaves. The African slaves were then transported to North America to be used to help produce more raw materials such as tobacco or rice. The route of African slaves to North America as part of this trans-Atlantic trade is known as the Middle Passage. After the Middle passage, the goods produced by slaves, or the profits from their sale, were then used to buy, or produce, manufactured goods which were shipped back to England.
The trans-Atlantic trade and the goods distributed during this process, made England extremely wealthy and powerful. As such, England tightened its grip of control on the North American colonies through a series of acts known as the Navigation Acts. (Whenever studying this time period consider using the word “act(s)” and “tax” interchangeably as that was typically each act’s purpose.) These Navigation Acts were designed to force English colonies to trade only with England itself and thus eliminate competition from other nations and markets. This greatly inhibited North American colonists from making a greater profit on their goods or resources. Furthermore, the lack of a competitive market forced colonists to pay high prices for goods. While the Navigation Acts did increase the number of ships produced in the North American colonies, as only English ships could be used under the Navigation Acts, the acts served as the starting point for resentment amongst the North American colonists towards their “mother country”.
Trans-Atlantic Trade and the Triangular Trade Network Practice Activity
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