FREE ESSAY ON MERCANTILISM

MERCANTILISM

Mercantilism is an economic theory where a nation's strength comes from building up gold
supplies and expanding its trade. Britain formed the American colonies so that they could
increase their gold stores. They wanted raw supplies to make into products to sell and
make money. They wanted America to pay taxes so that Britain could make money. America
used the theory in that they thought they ought to, in order to be strong expand their
trade beyond Britain. Countries like Belgium, and France wanted to also increase their
trade, and expand it to trading with America. They also wanted to increase their gold
stores by trading with America. Britain however did not want America to trade with France
and Belgium and the Netherlands because they wanted to increase their gold stores, so
they needed a monopoly over American trade. So there was tension between Britain and its
American colonies. 
One of the first efforts made by Britain to control the American colonies was the Acts of
Trade and Navigation. What these acts did was limited American trade to basically just
Britain. These Acts were in place between 1650-1660 and they were there to ensure that
the mercantile system that existed stayed. It was mainly to prevent the Frenchmen and
Dutch from receiving American goods. The acts limited American shipping to be via
Britain. The British had to receive all American goods and them their merchants would
sell the goods to other countries, but America could not. Any goods that were to be
imported to the colonies had to be passed through British middlemen, where a tax was
added so that Britain would profit. America was also forbidden to produce goods or grow
crops for profit. If they were to do that then they would be competing with British
industries. The colonies were supposed to also buy more than they sold, so that their
currency was drained, but all to Britain. 
Before 1663, when the Acts of Trade and Navigation were not enforced the colonists
benefited from Britain. The colonists of the north smuggled goods and manufactured items
for profit. They avoided the British laws. The southern colonists had a guaranteed market
from the British because they had a monopoly. The colonies also benefited because they
had the British army troops to guard them, and they have low taxes, and the British navy
shielded them. The colonists were generally more prosperous than the English, so their
crime paid off.
The colonists however saw it in a different light. They thought that Britain was all bad,
and although they appreciated the benefits of Britain, they somehow felt that the bad
part of Britain outweighed the good. Their perception of Britain was not the greatest.
They seemed to believe that they were being held back by Britain economically, and
therefore in strength by Britain. The British set the prices and made all of the rules
for American trade. The people of the New England colonies felt that the British Navy was
stifling their entrepreneurial pursuits in the free market. So the navy was not in fact
helping them by protecting them, but hindering them. The people of the middle colonies,
who were producers of a vast amount of grain, felt that they too were being stifled. If
they could only trade with Britain then they hadn't much of a market, and little
opportunity to make more money. They felt that because of the presence of the British
troops they were being held back. The southern colonies were going further and further
into debt. Britain was buying their tobacco at a much lower price that they resold it in
the free market, therefore the south was losing money and Britain making money. The
colonists in general felt that they were being forced back by Britain intellectually and
politically, if they couldn't make money then they couldn't be strong under the theory of
Mercantilism.
At this point I should also mention that at the time there were other surmounting
troubles between Britain and America. The British parliament had passed taxes on America
to pay for the British troops, however Americans were not represented in parliament, so
the Americans felt that any taxes were unfair as well. 
Britain however was definitely profiting from the acts even though the northern colonies
weren't being precisely obedient. And the British felt this way. They had a monopoly over
the market, they were holding back American cheating with their Navy and they were making
a lot of money. So they didn't bother to enforce the Acts of Trade and Navigation. On
another note, they also didn't even have a chance of finding one little American ship in
the great vastness of the wide ocean. 
However the colonists couldn't blame the King because they wanted dominion status. They
couldn't blame parliament because parliament was supposedly on their side of things. So
this tyranny was called ministerial tyranny for the blame of it was put on the British
ministers who had been persecuting them all along, and doing the king's dirty work. 
Their social background, their economic background and their geographic location divided
each of the American socio-economic groups. The people from the back-country, such as
those living in the southern Piedmont were prevented from a lot of trade anyway by their
geographic location, no boat or reasonable means of travel could go to where they were.
But they still were angered by Britain's proclamation of 1763 where there was a
regulation put on how far west into the free land they could go. The people of the
harbors of New England weren't the richest of people, but they weren't by any means the
poorest either. However, they were the most rebellious, as the people in the middle
usually are in a historical perspective, because there are a lot of them and they,
therefore have the loudest voice. They cheated and schemed to get around the British.
They rebelled in every possible way that they could think of. The southerners were for
the most part loyalists. They liked the protection of Britain, and the monopoly they had
over British tobacco merchants. However even they began to get sick of the taxes without
representation and the high resale price that Britain put on tobacco. They began to write
petitions and letters of complaint in rebellion to Britain. The rich people of the middle
colonies had the advantage of having the two biggest cities and ports within their realm.
But they too were upset by the regulations that the British put on their trade. All of
these groups, poor, rich, loyalist, Whig, or geographic location each rebelled against
Britain in their own way. Eventually however they were all to bond together against the
common enemy to form one group, the Americans, to rebel against the British. As we all
bonded we formed a government of sorts. The continental congress was a government to
unite us, but it involved British rules, so we split off on our own slowly but surely. 
As we began to rebel we did so in many ways slowly escalating to Revolution, The American
Revolution by our terms. We started by a simple dissent towards the Sugar Act, where
Britain put a tax on sugar in 1764; it was the first enforced tax. The poll tax was never
enforced, however the British decided that if they were to supply America with troops
then they ought to get some payment for, other that having the Englishmen of Britain pay
for it. Then came the Currency Act, where Britain was trying to drain the colonies of all
their moneys. The Stamp Act came next, to which we protested in a violent manner. The
protest however was not so much against the actual act, or against even British rule, but
against Taxation without Representation, but more so was it protest against the general
principle, all we wanted from Britain was dominion status. We didn't want representation
in parliament, but to be able to make our own rules. In 1765 the British established the
Quartering Act, where the Americans had to house and feed the British Troops that were in
America. The Americans saw this as contrary to the Rights of Englishmen that were
established in such famous documents as the Magna Carta, or the Great Charter. The
Declaratory Act in 1766 was a retreat by parliament, it was a reaction by Britain to the
American action, which was a reaction to Britain's action... and so on and so forth. Next
came the Townshend Act in 1768, which placed a small tax on everyday items, Britain also
reorganized its customs so that the American smuggling would stop, and it closed the port
of NY. As a result the colonists decided that it was them vs. us, and so came
insurrection. As a result came the Boston Massacre. This was a violent protest, and yet
another step on the road to revolution where the Americans actually fought and killed
many British soldiers. The Americans started to organize and unify at this point, forming
the Commitees of Correspondence, so that they could communicate over what was happening
where. The people involved in this sought democracy and independence, which was not
necessarily what the rest of the colonies wanted, but even so, it happened anyway. The
people started to call themselves Patriots vs. Loyalists. In December of 1773 it was back
to insurrection, when the Boston Tea Party occurred. The radicals, who were calling
themselves the Sons of Liberty, decided that in protest to the taxes on tea, they would
dump a lot of tea overboard British merchant ships. Similar things happened in New York
and in Annapolis, however they were less violent. The British only made things worse when
they demanded that the colonists pay for all of the tea. They then went on to, in 1774,
pass the Coercive Acts, also called the Intolerable Acts. In these the British closed the
port of Boston, suspended the Massachusetts legislature, put an end to town meetings, and
installed a military government, where in one city of 16,000 they put 4,000 troops. The
colonists by this time were no the happiest of campers and when the Quebec Act was passed
the colonists had had almost enough. What this act did was to close off the Western
lands, the British gave religious freedom to the Catholics, and the Massachusetts
Protestants were anti-Catholic. The act also allowed the French to retain systems where
there were no representative assemblies, and where there were no jury trials, as a result
of this fear was installed into the colonists. 
Through all of this we knew that in mercantilism our strength was being depleted by
Britain, so there was an action, leading to a reaction, later leading to synthesis, or
another action. This continued on and on, getting more and more violent until the
American Revolution broke out. America was becoming increasingly patriotic, a nationalist
country.
This American Revolution that was to result was one of national self-determination being
that we can. We think we can, and in ourselves as a nation we can stand alone, free of
Britain. We determined this by a series of occurrences that all resulted, through our
mercantilist ideas and thoughts, eventually in us being America.