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BRITISH GOVERNMENTS, COLONIAL CONSUMERS, AND CONTINENTAL EUROPEAN GOODS IN THE BRITISH ATLANTIC EMPIRE, 1763–1775*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2015

STEPHEN CONWAY
STEPHEN CONWAY*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
History Department, University College London, Gower Street, London, wc1e 6bts.conway@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article looks at the attempts made by British governments after the Seven Years War to reduce colonial consumption of continental European manufactures. It begins by sketching the pre-war background, focusing first on the availability of European goods in North America and the Caribbean and then on British debates about foreign commodity penetration of the Atlantic colonies. The next part charts the emergence after 1763 of a political consensus in London on the need to give British goods added advantage in American markets. The article goes on to suggest reasons for the forming of this consensus, and finally considers the success of the measures introduced by British governments to diminish colonial purchases of European products.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 711 - 732
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I should like to thank the owners and custodians of the manuscript materials used in this article, especially Lady Elizabeth Godsal, who allowed me to examine her family archive at Haines Hill. I am also grateful to the anonymous referees of an earlier version of the article, to Professor P. J. Marshall for his reading of a draft and the suggestions he made for its improvement, to Dr Aaron Graham for providing me with transcripts of material in the Dowdeswell papers, and to Dr Negley Harte for giving me his photocopies of parliamentary material relating to the linen trade.

References

1 Quoting [Thomas Whately], The regulations lately made concerning the colonies and the taxes imposed on them considered (London, 1765), p. 4. Whately's pamphlet is analysed in detail in Christie, I. R., ‘A vision of empire: Thomas Whately and The regulations lately made concerning the colonies’, English Historical Review, 113 (1998), pp. 300–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See, e.g., E. H. Gould, The persistence of empire: British political culture in the age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000), ch. 4; P. J. Marshall, The making and unmaking of empires: Britain, India, and American, c. 1750–1783 (Oxford, 2005); S. Conway, War, state, and society in mid-eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2006), ch. 9; B. Simms, Three victories and a defeat: the rise and fall of the first British empire, 1714–1783 (London, 2007), ch. 18.

3 See, e.g., J. W. Tyler, Smugglers and patriots: Boston merchants and the advent of the American Revolution (Boston, MA, 1986); T. M. Truxes, Defying empire: trading with the enemy in colonial New York (New Haven, CT, 2008); P. Andreas, Smuggler nation: how illicit trade made America (New York, NY, 2013), pp. 30–3; Kinkel, S., ‘The king's pirates? Naval enforcement of imperial authority, 1740–1776’, William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 71 (2014), pp. 3–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See, e.g., P. Gauci, ed., Regulating the British economy, 1660–1850 (Farnham, 2011); Pincus, S., ‘Rethinking mercantilism: political economy, the British empire, and the Atlantic world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 69 (2012), pp. 3–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. J. Stern and C. Wennerlind, eds., Mercantilism reimagined: political economy in early modern Britain and its empire (Oxford, 2013).

5 Adam Smith, An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations (London, 1776).

6 See, e.g., A. G. Olson, Making the empire work: London and American interest groups, 1690–1790 (Cambridge, MA, 1992); Harris, B., ‘Parliamentary legislation, lobbying and the press in eighteenth-century Scotland’, Parliamentary History, 26 (2007), pp. 76–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. Gauci, ‘Learning the ropes of sand: the West India lobby, 1714–1760’, in Gauci, ed., Regulating the British economy, pp. 107–21.

7 For recent accounts of the war and its impact, see F. Anderson, Crucible of war: the Seven Years War and the fate of empire in North America, 1754–1766 (New York, NY, 2000); Conway, War, state, and society in mid-eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland; M. Schumann and K. Schweizer, The Seven Years War: a transatlantic history (London, 2008); D. Baugh, The global Seven Years War, 1754–1763 (London, 2011). For the European consequences, see Scott, H., ‘The Seven Years War and Europe's ancien régime’, War in History, 18 (2011), pp. 419–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 For the imperial, see, e.g., K. Wilson, The island race: Englishness, empire, and gender in the eighteenth century (London, 2002); K. Wilson, ed., A new imperial history: culture, identity, and modernity in Britain and the empire, 1660–1840 (Cambridge, 2004); P. K. Monod, Imperial island: a history of Britain and its empire, 1660–1837 (Oxford, 2009); for the European, see, e.g., B. Simms and T. Riotte, eds., The Hanoverian dimension in British history, 1714–1837 (Cambridge, 2007); T. Claydon, Europe and the making of England, 1660–1760 (Cambridge, 2007); Peters, M., ‘Early Hanoverian consciousness: empire or Europe?’, English Historical Review, 122 (2007), pp. 632–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. Conway, Britain, Ireland, and continental Europe in the eighteenth century: similarities, connections, identities (Oxford, 2011).

9 For the colonies as increasingly integrated into the manufacturing world of Britain, and resistance to this development, see the work of Breen, T. H., ‘An empire of goods: the anglicization of colonial America, 1690–1776′, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986), esp. pp. 498–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The baubles of Britain: the American and consumer revolutions in the eighteenth century’, Past & Present, 119 (1988), esp. pp. 83–4, 97–103Google Scholar; ‘Narrative of commercial life: consumption, ideology, and community on the eve of the American Revolution’, William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 50 (1993), pp. 471–501CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The marketplace of revolution: how consumer politics shaped American independence (Oxford, 2004).

10 For Dutch imperial products in British colonial markets, see, e.g., British Library (BL), London, West papers, Additional (Add.) MS 34,728, fo. 54, Peter Razer to James West, 1 Mar. 1757. For the same in an earlier period, see C. J. Koot, Empire and periphery: British colonists, Anglo-Dutch trade, and the development of the British Atlantic, 1621–1713 (New York, NY, 2011), ch. 6.

11 J. M. Price, ‘The imperial economy, 1700–1776′, in P. J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford history of the British empire, ii:The eighteenth century (Oxford, 1998), p. 102 (Table 4.5).

12 BL, Walpole (Wolterton) papers, Add. MS 74,053, fo. 148.

13 T. M. Truxes, Irish-American trade, 1660–1783 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 171; A. J. Durie, The Scottish linen industry in the eighteenth century (Edinburgh, 1979), p. 145.

14 BL, Walpole (Wolterton) papers, Add. MS 74,053, fo. 44 (14 Mar. 1750/1).

15 Huntington Library (HL), San Marino, California, invoice-book of Brandt and Schuyler, 1744–53, HM 637, pp. 17, 46, 50, 53, 54, 84–7, 162–3.

16 BL, West papers, Add. MS 34,736, fo. 205, petition of Willoughby Marchant, n.d., but probably 1756.

17 For Madeira, which can be described as a European product only if we adopt a very broad definition of Europe, see D. Hancock, Oceans of wine: Madeira and the emergence of American trade and taste (New Haven, CT, 2009).

18 G. F. Dow, ed., The Holyoke diaries (Salem, MA, 1911), p. 22.

19 O. Handlin and J. Clive, ed. and trans., Journey to Philadelphia by Gottlieb Mittelberger (Cambridge, MA, 1960), pp. 37, 51.

20 [George Milligen Johnston], A short description of the province of South-Carolina, with an account of the air, weather, and diseases, at Charles-Town. Written in the year 1763 (London, 1770), p. 29.

21 Webber, M. L., ed., ‘Journal of Robert Pringle, 1746–1747’, South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 26 (1925), pp. 21Google Scholar, 22, 23, 24, 26.

22 American Weekly Mercury, 11 June 1741. For other papers, see, e.g., Pennsylvania Gazette, 13 Oct. 1743, 8 May, 23 Dec. 1746, 6 Jan. 1747; Boston Evening-Post, 11 June, 26 Nov. 1753.

23 BL, Kings MS 205, fos. 292–3, Glen's responses to the questions of the lords of trade.

24 T. M. Truxes, ed., Letterbook of Greg and Cunningham, 1756–1757: merchants of New York and Belfast (Oxford, 2001), pp. 354–8.

25 Bristol Record Office (RO), Ashton Court collection, Woolnough papers, AC/WO 16 (43) a.

26 See, e.g., ibid., AC/WO 16 (4) b, ‘Jamaica Accts 31 Decr 1747’, which refers to ‘11 Scotch Oznab. 778 Yds’. See also A. J. Durie, ed., The British Linen Company, 1745–1775 (Scottish History Society, 5th ser., ix, Edinburgh, 1996), p. 105, for an example of Scottish ‘Osnaburghs’ sold to the Royal Navy. For Irish and Scottish linen exports to America and the West Indies, see Price, ‘Imperial economy’, pp. 87–8.

27 For ‘Irish Holland’ in Virginia, see HL, Brock collection, BR 37, account-book of Micajah Crew, 17 Apr. 1761.

28 M. Schulte Beerbühl and K. Weber, ‘From Westphalia to the Caribbean: networks of German textile merchants in the eighteenth century’, in A. Gestrich and M. Schulte Beerbühl, eds., Cosmopolitan networks in commerce and society, 1660–1914 (German Historical Institute, Supplement No. 2, London, 2011), pp. 57, 59–74.

29 Liverpool RO, account-book of Case & Shuttleworth, 1754–61, 380 MD 33, pp. 5–85.

30 N. B. Harte, ‘The rise of protection and the English linen trade, 1690–1790’, in N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting, eds., Textile history and economic history (London, 1973), pp. 75–84.

31 A comparison can be made here with colonial consumption of Indian textiles: the Calico Acts of 1700 and 1721 prohibited the selling of Asian cotton calicos and silks in England and then Britain, but not in the colonies. The aim, it seems, was to preserve the home market for British manufacturers, but at the same time allow the East India Company to profit from colonial purchases. See Eacott, J. P., ‘Making an imperial compromise: the Calico Acts, the Atlantic and the structure of the British Empire’, William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 69 (2012), pp. 731–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Journals of the House of Commons, xxiii, cols. 26–7, 68, petitions from London and Scottish merchants and manufacturers, read on 9 Feb. and 8 Mar. 1737/8, respectively. For a contemporary response, see [Anon.], Reflections and considerations occasioned by the petitions presented to the honourable House of Commons, for taking off the drawback on foreign linens, &c (London, 1738).

33 For an important study of bounties in general, see J. Hoppit, ‘Bounties, the economy, and the state in Britain, 1689–1800’, in Gauci, ed., Regulating the British economy, pp. 139–60.

34 N. B. Harte, ‘The British linen trade with the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, in Textiles in trade: proceedings of the Textile Society of America biennial symposium, September 14–16, 1990 (Washington, DC, 1990), p. 21.

35 See Journals of the House of Commons, xxiv, cols. 770–1, petition of British and Irish linens merchants and manufacturers, 25 Feb. 1744.

36 BL, Hardwicke papers, Add. MS 35,910, fos. 5–8, undated paper on linens.

37 Ibid., Walpole (Wolterton) papers, Add. MS 74,053, fo. 58.

38 Ibid., fos. 48 and 113–14.

39 See, e.g., the division over the petition of British and Irish linen merchants and manufacturers, 25 Feb. 1744: Journals of the House of Commons, xxiv, col. 771; and the debates in the same year on linen duties: S. Taylor and C. Jones, eds., Tory and Whig: the parliamentary diaries of Edward Harley, third earl of Oxford, and William Hay, MP for Seaford, 1716–1753 (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 192–3.

40 For Scottish and Irish influence at Westminster, see J. Innes, ‘Legislating for three kingdoms: how the Westminster parliament legislated for England, Scotland and Ireland, 1707–1830’, in J. Hoppit, ed., Parliaments, nations, and identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660–1850 (Manchester, 2003), pp. 15–47.

41 [Whately], Regulations lately made, pp. 89 and 58.

42 Ibid., p. 92.

43 Ibid., pp. 67, 98.

44 Ibid., pp. 66–7, 88, 92.

45 M. Jensen, ed., English historical documents, ix:American colonial documents to 1776 (London, 1969), pp. 638–9.

46 P. D. G. Thomas, ed., ‘The parliamentary diaries of Nathaniel Ryder’, Royal Historical Society, Camden Miscellany, xxiii, Camden 4th ser. (London, 1969), p. 234.

47 Hampshire RO, Winchester, Malmesbury papers, 9M73 G733, political memoranda of James Harris. For difficulties encountered in securing information, see National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Sandwich papers, SAN/V/107, Richard Wolters (at Rotterdam) to the earl of Sandwich, 22 Jan. 1765.

48 See, e.g., E. S. Morgan and H. M. Morgan, The Stamp Act crisis: prologue to revolution (New York, NY, 1953), pp. 41–2; P. D. G. Thomas, British politics and the Stamp Act crisis: the first phase of the American Revolution, 1763–1767 (Oxford, 1975), esp. pp. 47–50; J. L. Bullion, A great and necessary measure: George Grenville and the genesis of the Stamp Act, 1763–1765 (Columbia, MT, 1982), pp. 78–98; A. S. Johnson, A prologue to revolution: the political career of George Grenville, 1712–1770 (Lanham, MD, 1997), ch. 9; Anderson, Crucible of war, ch. 60.

49 The 1764 Act also placed new duties on Asian calicos, underlining the Grenville government's departure from previous ideas about the role of the colonial market. See Eacott, ‘Making an imperial compromise’, for the old orthodoxy.

50 Hampshire RO, Malmesbury papers, 9M73 G773/9/2.

51 Report from the committee appointed to enquire into the present state of the linen trade in Great Britain and Ireland (1773), in S. Lambert, ed., House of Commons sessional papers of the eighteenth century (145 vols., Wilmington, 1975), xxv, p. 432.

52 HL, Stowe collection, Grenville papers, STG box 13 (6), letter-book, Whately to John Temple, 5 Nov. 1764.

53 [Whately], Regulations lately made, p. 60.

54 Ibid., p. 59.

55 See, e.g., Liverpool RO, Parker family papers, 390 PAR I/27/5, Charles Steuart to Aitchison & Parker, 29 Jan. 1764.

56 A week after Grenville became first minister, the treasury produced information on drawbacks on goods re-exported from England to North America: see the account of 15 Apr. 1763, in The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA), Kew, treasury papers, T 1/430/8.

57 See Hampshire RO, Malmesbury papers, 9M73 G713, pp. 116–19, parliamentary diary of James Harris, 23 Mar. 1764. Liverpool RO, Parker family papers, 390 PAR I/27/10, Steuart to Aitchison & Parker, 4 May 1764, provides a retrospective judgement. For a more opaque assessment of Grenville's reaction to the merchants, see Oxfordshire RO, Oxford, Jersey collection, J XXVi b/4, diary of George Bussy Villiers, 23 Mar. 1764.

58 For the stamp duties, see the records of Grenville's and Whately's meetings with colonial agents in E. S. Morgan, ed., Prologue to revolution: documents on the stamp act crisis, 1764–1766 (New York, NY, 1959), pp. 27–8, 33–4.

59 See, e.g., BL, Newcastle papers, Add. MS 32,957, fo. 5, copy of Newcastle's letter to H. B. Legge, 13 Mar. 1764: ‘I, & our Friends, at present, are wholly employed in our Cambridge Affair.’

60 Thomas, ed., ‘Parliamentary diaries of Nathaniel Ryder’, pp. 236, 237, 238.

61 Oxfordshire RO, Jersey collection, J XXVi b/4, diary of George Bussy Villiers, 22 Mar. 1764.

62 Thomas, ed., ‘Parliamentary diaries of Nathaniel Ryder’, pp. 236, 238. See also the views of Rose Fuller, another Newcastle supporter: BL, Newcastle papers, Add. MS 32,957, fo. 116, Fuller to Newcastle, 16 Mar. 1764.

63 Hampshire RO, Malmesbury papers, 9M73 G713, p. 116.

64 As a fellow MP described him in 1742: Taylor and Jones, eds., Tory and Whig, p. 180. See also Liverpool RO, Parker family papers, 390 PAR I/27/8, Steuart to Aitchison & Parker, 23 Mar. 1764, which refers to the efforts of the ‘Hambro’ merchants &c’.

65 The standard accounts are now all quite old: P. Langford, The first Rockingham administration (Oxford, 1973); and F. O'Gorman, The rise of party in England: the Rockingham Whigs, 1760–1782 (London, 1975), pt ii. See also, from the same period, R. Hoffman, The marquis: a study of Lord Rockingham, 1730–1782 (New York, NY, 1973), chs. 3 and 4.

66 As George Bussy Villiers put it, ‘The Affair of Stamp Act…so much engrossed the thought of every one’: Oxfordshire RO, Jersey collection, J XXVI b/4, diary of George Bussy Villiers, 18 Mar. 1766.

67 William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Dowdeswell papers, box 1, folder 12, Dowdeswell to Rockingham, 14 Aug. 1768.

68 BL, Newcastle papers, Add. MS 32,975, fo. 58, James West to Newcastle, 30 Apr. 1766.

69 Ibid., Hardwick papers, Add. MS 35,374, fo. 291, Yorke to Hardwicke, 19 May 1766.

70 T. W. Copeland et al., eds., The correspondence of Edmund Burke (10 vols., Cambridge, 1958–78), x, p. 252.

71 BL, Hardwicke papers, Add. MS 35,607, fo. 255.

72 W. J. Smith, ed., The Grenville papers (4 vols., London, 1852–3), iii, p. 240. The equally partisan James Harris was no less doubtful about the Free Ports Act; the safeguards, he wrote, ‘were to be imposed by the weak hands of Revenue Officers’: Hampshire RO, Malmesbury papers, 9M73 G716, p. 73, parliamentary diary of James Harris, 30 Apr. 1766.

73 BL, Newcastle papers, Add. MS 32,971, fo. 18, ‘Mr [ ] thoughts on the American Trade’, n.d.

74 Ibid., Add. MS 32,974, fo. 374, copy of Newcastle to Roberts, 14 Apr. 1766.

75 6 Geo. III, c. 49, § 3.

76 Haines Hill, Berkshire, Colleton, Garth, and Godsal family papers, box 23, letter-books of Charles Garth, Garth to committee of correspondence of the South Carolina assembly, 26 Sept. 1766. The South Carolina assembly's views on rice exports appear in the committee of correspondence's letter to Garth of 5 June 1762.

77 Ibid., Garth to the committee of correspondence, 24 Nov. 1766.

78 Suffolk RO, Bury St Edmunds, Grafton papers, Ac 423/445, Townshend to Grafton, [25 May 1767].

79 Thomas, ed., ‘Parliamentary diaries of Nathaniel Ryder’, p. 344. Dalkeith House, Midlothian, Buccleuch and Queensberry muniments, Townshend papers, box viii, bundle 31, includes documents on ‘Proposed duties on wine, oil, & fruit imported into America’, detailing the charges that Townshend was considering.

80 See ‘The Trumbull papers’, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 5th ser., ix (1885), p. 236, William Samuel Johnson to William Pitkin, 9 June 1767.

81 C. C. Carter, ed., The correspondence of General Thomas Gage (2 vols., New Haven, CT, 1931–3), ii, pp. 50–1.

82 Jensen, ed., English historical documents, ix, pp. 702, 707.

83 Harte, ‘Rise of protection and the English linen trade’, pp. 98–9.

84 Percentages derived from B. R. Mitchell, British historical statistics (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 449 and 469.

85 Harte, ‘Rise of protection and the English linen trade’, p. 108.

86 [Whately], Regulations lately made, p. 3.

87 [Thomas Whately], Considerations on the trade and finances of this kingdom, and on the measures of administration with respect to those great national objects since the conclusion of the peace (London, 1766), p. 11.

88 BL, Newcastle papers, Add. MS 32,973, fo. 343, copy of Newcastle to the archbishop of Canterbury, 2 Feb. 1766.

89 Berkshire RO, Reading, Neville, and Aldworth papers, D/EN O34/23, parliamentary diary of Richard Neville, 21 Feb. 1766.

90 R. Davis, ‘English foreign trade, 1700–1774’, in W. E. Minchinton, ed., The growth of English overseas trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (London, 1969), p. 120.

91 See B. Harris, Politics and the nation: Britain in the mid-eighteenth century (Oxford, 2002), p. 238. For Austrian tariffs of the 1750s, see P. G. M. Dickson, Finance and government under Maria Theresia, 1740–1780 (2 vols., Oxford, 1987), ii, p. 34.

92 [Whately], Considerations on the trade and finances of this kingdom, p. 11.

93 BL, Newcastle papers, Add. MS 32,973, fo. 343, Newcastle to the archbishop of Canterbury, 2 Feb. 1766 (copy).

94 Truxes, Irish-American trade, p. 188.

95 Price, ‘Imperial economy’, p. 103 (Table 4.5).

96 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS North c. 83, fos. 22–4. See also TNA, treasury papers, T 64/275/189–90, account of foreign printed and painted linens exported annually, 1765–70. Returns for 1772 and 1773 are in T 64/275/201.

97 L. W. Labaree et al., eds., The papers of Benjamin Franklin (40 vols. to date, New Haven, CT, 1959–), xi, p. 215.

98 The Colden letter-books, i: 1760–1765 (New York Historical Society Collections for 1876, New York, NY, 1877), p. 375.

99 BL, Newcastle papers, Add. 32,971, fo. 20.

100 TNA, treasury papers, T 1/430/116, Colden to the earl of Halifax, 10 Nov. 1764.

101 C. Matson, Merchants and empire: trading in colonial New York (Baltimore, MD, 1998), p. 299.

102 Carter, ed., Correspondence of General Thomas Gage, i, pp. 135–6.

103 See, e.g., J. P. Greene, ed., The diary of Colonel Landon Carter of Sabine Hall, 1752–1778 (2 vols., Charlottesville, VA, 1965), ii, pp. 671, 737.

104 See, e.g., Connecticut Courant, 6 and 13 May 1765.

105 South-Carolina Gazette; and Country Journal, 11 Feb. 1766.

106 See, e.g., Boston Gazette, 11 Aug. 1766; Boston Evening-Post, 15 Sept. 1766; Providence Gazette; and Country Journal, 11 Oct. 1766; New-York Mercury, 2 Feb. 1767; New-York Journal, 4 June 1767; Pennsylvania Chronicle, and Universal Advertiser, 28 Sept. 1767, 6 June 1768, 4 Sept. 1769; Pennsylvania Packet; and the General Advertiser, 9 Mar., 27 Apr., 11 May 1772.

107 BL, cash account-book of James Pinnock, 1758–1810, Add. MS 33,317, fos. 64 and 74.

108 [Whately], Regulations lately made, pp. 66–7.

109 See Shammas, C., ‘The decline in textile prices in England and British America prior to industrialization’, Economic History Review, 47 (1994), p. 503CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Table 7), for a comparison of the cost of ‘Osnaburgh’ linens in 1660–73 and 1774. But note that whether the Osnaburghs in 1774 were the German originals or British and Irish imitations is unclear.