The so-called Navigation Act 1696 (7 & 8 Will. 3 c. 22), long titled An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Missuses in the Plantation Trade, came into force in the following years because of its far-reaching provisions; The Act bears the short title Plantation Trade Act 1695. It includes new restrictions on colonial trade and several different administrative provisions to strengthen enforcement and consolidate previous laws. [43] One law tightening colonial trade legislation, sometimes referred to as the Navigation Act 1670, is the Tobacco Planting and Plantation Trade Act 1670 (22 & 23 Cha. II c. 26). [37] This Act provides for forfeiture penalties for the vessel and cargo if the listed goods are shipped without warranty or customs certificate or if they are shipped to countries other than England, or if the ships unload sugar or listed products in a port other than England. The law requires U.S. plantation governors to submit annually to London Customs a list of all ships loading goods there, as well as a list of all loans taken out. The Act provides that proceedings for violations of the laws on navigation must be heard before the Court of the High Admiral of England, before one of the courts of the Vice-Admiralty or before any other court registered in England, but although the Act again refers to the jurisdiction of the Admiralty courts, it does not explicitly provide for them. In a move against Ireland, the act also abolished Ireland (in the 1660 Act) the ability to obtain the necessary loan for goods shipped to overseas colonies. [38] [39] The English were well aware of their inferior competitive position.
Three Acts of Parliament rump in 1650 and 1651 are notable in the historical development of England`s trade and colonial programs. This included the first trade commission established by an act of parliament on August 1, 1650, to advance and regulate the nation`s trade. [16] The instructions given to these commissioners included consideration of internal and foreign trade, trading companies, manufacturers, free ports, customs, excise duties, statistics, coins and foreign exchange trade, as well as fishing, but also plantations and the best ways to promote their welfare and make them useful to England. The comprehensive and stateworthy instructions of this law were followed by the October Law, which prohibited trade in pro-royalist colonies, and the first Navigation Act the following October. These laws were the first final expression of English trade policy. They represented the first attempt to establish legitimate control over commercial and colonial affairs, and the instructions indicate the beginnings of a policy that had at heart only the prosperity and wealth of England. [17] However, the 1650 Law Prohibiting Trade in the Royalist Colonies was broader because it prohibited all foreign ships from trading with English plantations without a license, and it was declared legal to seize and reward all ships that violated the law. This act, sometimes referred to as the Navigation Act of 1650, was hastily passed as a war measure during the English Civil Wars, but a more carefully drafted law followed the following year. [11] As early as 1641, some English merchants urged to embody these rules in an act of parliament, and during the Long Parliament, the movement in this direction began. The Free Trade Ordinance with the Plantations of New England was passed in November 1644. In 1645, both to reconcile the colonies and to promote English navigation, the Long Parliament forbade the shipping of whale bones, except in Ships of English construction; [13] Later, they banned the import of French wine, wool and silk from France.
[14] More generally and significantly, on January 23, 1647, they passed the Ordinance Granting Privileges to Plantations in Virginia, Bermuda, Barbados, and other places in the Americas to encourage adventurers; it did not impose export duties on goods destined for the colonies for three years, provided that they were transported on English ships. [10] Adam Anderson noted that this law also includes “the guarantee given here and the certificates therefore that the said goods are actually exported there, and for the sole use of the said plantations”. He concluded: “This laid the foundation for navigation laws, which can rightly be described as Britain`s commercial palladium. [15] The English Navigation Laws were a set of laws restricting the use of foreign navigation for trade between England and its colonies, a process that had begun in 1651. Their aim was to force colonial development along lines favorable to England and to stop direct colonial trade with the Netherlands, France and other European countries. The original decree of 1651 was renewed during the restoration by laws of 1660 and 1663 and then slightly modified. These laws also formed the basis of British trade abroad for almost 200 years. Overall, trade and navigation laws were followed, with the exception of the Molasses Act of 1733, which led to significant smuggling, as no effective means of law enforcement was available until the 1750s. Irritation over the stricter application of the Sugar Act of 1764 became a source of resentment among merchants in the American colonies against Britain and helped provoke the American Revolution. The main impulses of the navigation laws were the ruinous deterioration of English trade after the Eighty Years` War and the associated lifting of Spanish trade embargoes on trade between the Spanish Empire and the Dutch Republic.
The end of embargoes in 1647 triggered the full strength of the Amsterdam Warehouse and other Dutch competitive advantages in world trade. Within a few years, English merchants were practically overwhelmed in trade in the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean and the Levant. Even trade with the English colonies was “deepened” by Dutch merchants. English direct trade was displaced by a sudden influx of goods from the Levant, the Mediterranean and the Spanish and Portuguese empires and the West Indies via the Dutch warehouse, which was taken into account in Dutch soils and for Dutch soils. Like all laws of the Commonwealth period, the Act of 1651 was amended during the restoration of Charles II. Declared null and void after its adoption by “usurpation powers”. However, as the benefits of the law were widely recognized, parliament quickly passed new laws that expanded its scope. While the Law of 1651 applied only to maritime transport or maritime transport, the Law of 1660 was the most important commercial law with regard to shipbuilding, navigation, commerce[11] and for the benefit of the merchant class. [25] The 1660 Act is generally regarded as the foundation of the Navigation Acts. which (with subsequent amendments, additions and exceptions) remained in force for almost two centuries. Navigation allowed colonial ships and seafarers to take full advantage of the benefits of the otherwise exclusively English regulations. “English soils” included ships built on English plantations, particularly in America.
There were no restrictions on English settlers who wanted to build their own ships or trade with them to foreign plantations or other European countries other than England, unless they violated the listed merchandise clause. [26] Some of colonial America`s most important products, including grains of all kinds and fishing in New England, have always been unlisted goods. The specifically anti-Dutch aspects of the early acts were in full swing for a relatively short period of time. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the English had to abandon the Baltic trade and allowed foreign ships to enter the coastal and plantation trade. [40] After the war, which ended disastrously for England, the Dutch were given the right to ship to England goods produced in their German hinterland as if they were Dutch goods. More importantly, when England accepted the concept of neutrality, it recognized the principle of “free ships make free goods”, which offered freedom from harassment by the Royal Navy to Dutch navigation on the high seas during wars in which the Dutch Republic was neutral. This gave the Dutch more or less the freedom to conduct their “smuggling” unhindered, as long as they were not caught red-handed in The territorial waters controlled by England. These provisions were confirmed in the Treaty of Westminster (1674) after the Third Anglo-Dutch War. [41] Although English tonnage and trade steadily increased from the end of the 17th century, critics of the navigation system argue that this would have happened anyway and that politics drove up freight prices, ultimately making English industrial products less competitive.
In fact, from the 1720s to the 1760s, under the leadership of Robert Walpole and then Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, Parliament practiced an unwritten policy of “salutary negligence,” under which trade rules for the colonies were applied laxly as long as the colonies remained loyal to Britain and contributed to the profitability of the British economy. The tightening of laws in 1764 contributed to the riots that led to the rebellion of the American colonies in England; Their independence made the first serious break in the navigation system, and from that moment on, more and more exceptions were made.