The first seafaring act, passed in 1381, remained about a dead letter because of a deficit of ships. In the sixteenth century versatile Tudor measures had to be repealed because they provoked retaliation from other countries. The system came into its own at the begin of the colonial era, in the seventeenth century. The big Navigation Act passed by the Commonwealth politics in 1651 was aimed at the Dutch, then England ’ mho greatest commercial rivals. It distinguished between goods imported from european countries, which could be brought in either english ships or ships of the nation of origin, and goods brought from Asia, Africa, or America, which could travel to England, Ireland, or any english colony merely in ships from England or the especial colony. assorted fish imports and exports were entirely reserved to English shipping, as was the English coastal trade. The police was reenacted in 1660, and the drill was introduced of “ enumerating ” certain colonial products, which could be shipped directly only to England, Ireland, or another english colony. These included boodle ( until 1739 ), anil, and tobacco ; rice and molasses were added during the eighteenth century. Nonenumerated goods could go in English ships from English colonies directly to foreign ports. From 1664 english colonies could receive european goods merely via England. Scotland was treated as a foreign nation until the Act of Union ( 1707 ) gave it equal privileges with England ; Ireland was excluded from the benefits of the laws between 1670 and 1779 .
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westerly colonialism : The English seafaring acts
England adhered to mercantilism for two centuries and, possessing a more lucrative empire than France, strove to implement the policy by …
Although English tonnage and barter increased steadily from the late seventeenth century, critics of the seafaring system argue that this would have occurred in any sheath and that the policy forced up freight prices, therefore ultimately making english manufactured goods less competitive. indeed, from the 1720s to the 1760s—under the leadership of Robert Walpole and then Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st duke of Newcastle — Parliament practiced an oral policy of “ good neglect, ” under which trade regulations for the colonies were laxly enforced arsenic long as the colonies remained patriotic to Britain and contributed to the profitableness of the british economy. The tightening of the laws in 1764 contributed to the agitation conduct to the rebellion of England ’ s american colonies ; their accomplishment of independence made the first unplayful breach in the navigation system, and from then on exceptions were increasingly made. Enumeration was abandoned in 1822, and the navigation laws were last repealed in 1849 and 1854.
