“NAVIGATION ACTS”
TERESA HAMMOCK
MR. CREWS
US HIS 1111
1 DECEMBER 2013

Teresa Hammock
Mr. Crews
US History 1111
December 1, 2013
“Navigation Acts”
The Navigation Acts were a series of acts passed by the English Parliament during the seventeenth century to protect England’s trade an prevent the American colonies from directly trading with foreign countries or other colonies.
The Navigation Acts, in English history, was a name given to certain parliamentary legislations, more properly called the British Acts of Trade. The acts were an outgrowth of mercantilism and followed principles by Tudor and early Stuart trade regulations. Mercantilism was an economic system of the major trading nations during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, based on the premise that national wealth and power were the best served by increasing exports and collecting precious metals in return. Mercantilist nations were impressed by the fact that the precious metals, especially gold, were in universal demand as the ready means of obtaining other commodities. The tended to identify money with wealth. As the best means of acquiring bullion, foreign trade was favored above domestic trade, and manufacturing or processing, which provided the goods for foreign trade. State actions were the essential feature of the mercantile system, which was used to accomplish its purpose. Under the mercantilist policy a nation sought to sell more than it bought so as to accumulate bullion. There was a rise in Dutch carrying trade, which threatened to drive English shipping from the seas, and was the immediate cause for the Navigation Act of 1651, and it was a major cause of the First Dutch War. The
Hammock, pg. 2
Dutch War forbade the importation of plantation commodities of Asia, Africa, and America except ships on by Englishmen. Dutch merchants transported enslaved Africans to English colonies, especially when the English Civil War disrupted Anglo-Atlantic trade. In 1663, Charles II awarded the predecessor of the Royal African Company a monopoly on English trade with Africa, a concession that included the Atlantic slave trade. After the close of the English Civil War, England sought to regain control over its one ordinance and four laws between 1651 and 1696. The 1663 Staple
Act stipulated that, with a few exceptions, European goods had to be exported to English colonies through English ports. The 1673 act set customs duties for overseas possessions and ordered the creation of a customs service to collect them. The 1696 Act of Trade and Plantations set up admiralty courts in England’s colonies and thereby strengthened central control over matters of trade and revenue.
The First Navigation Act enumerated such colonial articles as sugar, tobacco, cotton, and indigo, these were supplied only to England. This act was expanded and altered by the succeeding Navigation Acts of 1662, 1663, 1670, 1673, and by the Act to Prevent Frauds and Abuses of 1696. The Stamp Act of 1765, enacted by the British Parliament to implement stamp duties and amend other trade duties in the American colonies and plantations. A stamp duty of varying amounts was placed on each piece of paper that was used for declarations, court petitions, claims, pleas, bail , libel or renunciation matters. The Sugar Act of 1764, was a legislation passed the British Parliament intended to increase the government’s income from the American colonies through sugar taxes. The amount in taxes imposed per gallon of molasses that entered the colonies from ports
Hammock, pg. 3 outside Britain’s authority. Several northern colonies had successful rum industries which depended greatly on imported molasses. Many rum producers believed that the tax would eat up all of their profits. Before the producers could protest against the tax, the Parliament had passed the Stamp Act. This then placed a heavier financial burden on the colonist, which took their attention away from the Sugar Act. In 1766, after the Americans protested against both of the acts, Parliament reduces the tax to a penny per gallon. The Molasses Act of 1733, raised duties on French West Indian sugar, and it angered Americans by forcing them to buy the more expensive British West Indian sugar, which resulted in extensive smuggling.
Smuggling was an illegal transport across state or national boundaries of goods or persons liable to customs or to prohibition. Smuggling has been carried on in nearly all nations and has occasionally been adopted as an instrument of national policy, as by Great Britain against Spain and France in the 18th and 19th century. The strict economic policies of mercantilism in the 17th and 18th century, gave rise to smuggling in France, the Spanish colonies, and North America. British attempts to halt the practice by stringent enforcement of the Navigation Acts were a contributory cause of the American Revolution. American historians disagree on whether or not the advantages of the acts outweighed the disadvantages from a colonial point of view. It was clear, that the acts hindered the development of manufacturing in the colonies and were a focus of the agitation preceding the American Revolution. Vigorous attempts to prevent smuggling in

Hammock, pg. 4 the American colonies after 1765 led to arbitrary seizures of ships and aroused hostility. The legislation had an unfavorable effect on the Channel Islands, Scotland (before the Act of Union of 1707) and Ireland, by excluding them for a preferential position within the system, along with mercantilism, fell into decline. The acts were finally repealed in 1849.

Hammock, pg. 5
REFERENCES
American Horizons Vol. 1 to 1877
Uclibrary.troy.edu
www.mccpl.ib.al.us