Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

35
Mercantilist Restrictions
The fundamental attitude of England toward its colonies was one of
imperial domination, regulation, and exploitation for the benefit of the
merchants and manufacturers of the imperial center. The basic mercantilist
structure was built up by the Navigation Acts during the seventeenth century,
even before Britain was in a position to attempt to enforce these regulations.
The aim was to benefit English trade, and to supply the home
country with raw materials, but always for the enhancement of the English
merchant or manufacturer. The means was a growing network of restrictions
and prohibitions, to be enforced by the arm of the state.
The Navigation Acts had begun with the Cromwellian Protectorate, as
the Puritan Revolution began to be transformed into the counterrevolution,
and eventually into a not very jolting Restoration of the Stuarts. The first
acts of 1650-51 prohibited the export of colonial and non-European products
to Britain in ships not owned or largely manned by Englishmen (or English
colonists), and prohibited the export of European goods to the colonies in
non-English ships that did not come from the producing country. The major
aim of the acts was to crush the efficient and flourishing Dutch carrying
trade, which provided unwelcome competition for English shippers.
The Navigation Act of 1660 greatly broadened the navigation laws by
prohibiting in colonial trade all non-English or non-American ships manned
by crews less than seventy-five percent English. An early addition also insisted
that the ships must be English-built. Furthermore, the act erected a
category of "enumerated articles"—the most important commodities in the
colonial trade—which Americans could sell only to England or to another
English colony. Thus, other European countries could not bid against English
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