The Long Eighteenth Century

by Frank O'Gorman

  The commercial and colonial policies of successive Whig governments did much to further the expansion of trade. In the eighteenth century British exports grew sixfold, re-exports tenfold and imports sixfold. Indeed, the first half of the eighteenth century was a period of spectacular, and quickening, commercial growth. The average annual value of overseas trade increased from £10.4 million in the decade 1700–9 to no less than £26.8 million in 1765–74, an increase of 250 per cent. The average annual rate of growth for the period 1700–9 to 1745 was around 0.5 per cent but between 1745 and 1771 the rate accelerated to 2.8 per cent. Between 1745 and 1763 it almost reached 4 per cent per annum. The near tripling of the tonnage of the merchant marine from 3,300 vessels (260,000 tons) in 1702 to 9,400 vessels (695,000 tons) in 1776 reflects the spectacular commercial growth of the period.

  Within this overall increase, British trade with her colonies was increasing much more quickly than her trade with established markets in Europe – by 250 per cent compared to 25 per cent between 1700–9 and 1760. Although the phenomenon can be traced back to the 1720s, it is in the middle decades of the century that the rising importance of the North American market to a number of rapidly growing industries, especially the metal and textile industries, becomes evident. However, it still only accounted for 20 per cent of British exports (£2.5 million per annum) compared with Europe’s 60 per cent (£7.5 million). A rather more dramatic trend is revealed in the import figures. Imports from Europe between 1715 and 1724 had been 53 per cent of all British imports (£3.39 million). By the 1750s they had declined to 43 per cent (£3.87 million). Set against this percentage decline, imports from British colonies in the New World had risen by 75 per cent during the same period, from £1.49 million to £2.6 million. By the 1750s, indeed, British re-exports of goods from the American colonies represented no less than 40 per cent of all Britain’s exports. The consequences of economic growth on such a scale, on London, on provincial cities like Bristol and Liverpool, on seaports and dockyards, on marine and allied trades, on financial services and on transport were enormous. The growth of the Atlantic trade represented a shift of Britain’s trade from Europe to the New World. This reorientation of British commerce reflected changes in domestic consumer taste, for tea, coffee, sugar and tobacco. It probably also reflects the near-saturation of the European market for British manufactured goods and the need to seek markets elsewhere, especially the North American colonies with their rapidly growing population and purchasing power. (The population of the North American colonies increased tenfold between 1700–9 and 1776, from 300,000 to almost 3 million.) Such a lucrative trade bound the mother country to her North American empire with the steel bands of economic interest.

  The British Empire in the middle of the century was scattered across the globe in four principal groupings, in all of which it came into conflict with France. First, in North America Britain occupied a number of Caribbean islands. From these small, tropical islands staple goods that could not be produced in Europe were exported, notably tobacco, cotton, coffee, sugar and indigo. Islands like Jamaica, Barbados and Bermuda were thought to be ideal colonies because they depended upon the mother country for the supply of basic commodities like meat, timber and most manufactured products, and for the purchase of local products. The West Indian islands showed the quickest and highest returns on investment and bought the largest amount of British manufactured goods. Because the slaves and the sugar they produced were extremely attractive, the Caribbean colonies were liable to attack from foreign powers. Furthermore, the British possessions in the West Indies suffered from the competition of the French islands of Dominica, Martinique and Guadeloupe. Successive governments were, moreover, incensed at the willingness of the North American colonies to trade with the French and Spanish islands rather than with the British islands. The second grouping were the thirteen mainland American colonies, settled and governed by Britons. They were wealthy and their peoples wealthy and industrious, capable of fostering a rapidly growing trade with the mother country. They were characterized by an enterprising spirit and by a hunger for land which brought them up against the French in Quebec to the north and in Louisiana to the south, in a wilderness where boundaries were disputed and frontiers unclear. Third, there were a number of forts and trading posts on the West African coast from which trade, especially in slaves, was conducted with African rulers and merchants. Fourth, and further east, British trading posts in the Persian Gulf, in India and in China were bases for further transactions, especially in luxury commodities. In India, French influence in the Deccan peninsula and in the Carnatic threatened to surround the British base at Madras.

  MAP 7: North America and the West Indies.

  Only in the second of these groupings was the empire an empire of settlement. Indeed, from the 1670s to the 1740s there are few examples of Britain actually seizing territories in wartime for permanent possession, however commercially desirable, that were not returned at the peace table. Territorial acquisitions were thought to be expensive hostages to fortune which involved problems of political control. Where settlements did exist, as in North America, they were deemed to be British colonies, entitled to be governed under British laws and in accordance with British political principles. One of these principles, to which the North American colonists heartily subscribed, was that of political autonomy. By the 1740s, indeed, the Board of Trade, which in theory was responsible for coordinating imperial administration, was expressing the anxiety that such tendencies had gone too far. Nevertheless, before the middle of the century the empire remained secure, easily and cheaply governed and relatively small, if widely dispersed.

  Contemporaries agreed that the colonies existed for the commercial benefit of Britain. The economic philosophy of the British Empire was expressed in the Navigation Acts. Their purpose was to ensure that Britain would not become dependent upon her European neighbours for vital economic supplies. They also ensured a first call for Britain upon colonial products while denying them to other countries. Indeed, whatever their political status, colonies were believed to be indispensable to the economic health and prosperity of Britain, acting both as vital sources of raw materials and as stable markets for British goods. However, colonial goods should not compete with British goods in case such competition led to domestic unemployment. The southern colonies of North America and the Caribbean fitted happily into this scheme of things because their products did not, on the whole, compete with those of Britain. But this was not the case with those of the northern colonies, especially iron products and shipbuilding. Britain attempted to persuade the colonists to switch production out of such staples and into the production of those raw materials which Britain lacked, especially naval supplies such as timber, hemp and iron, for which Britain was dangerously dependent on the Baltic countries. These attempts, whether through bounties or other official policies, were usually unsuccessful. They highlight an inherent contradiction in the prevailing British attitudes towards commerce and empire, between her wish to promote trade within the empire on the one hand and her wish to regulate it in the interests of the mother country on the other. This contradiction was particularly evident in the passage of the Molasses Act in 1733. The objective of the act was to restrain the trade of the American colonies with the French West Indies in order to exclude non-British sugar from the imperial market. In the short term, the contradiction could be managed by turning a blind eye to violations of the act. In the longer term, this was to be an issue that would return to haunt British ministers.

  By the late 1730s there were signs that opinions in the country towards commerce and empire were becoming more aggressive. Commercial opinion, especially in the towns, was already highly sensitive to commercial issues and tended, if anything, to exaggerate the importance of extra-European trade. By the end of the 1730s such opinion was expressing itself in patriotic demands for war against Spain. During the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–8) Britain was still principally concerned to fight a war in Eu
rope, to which end in 1742 she despatched troops to the Austrian Netherlands, in 1743 to the western parts of the Holy Roman Empire and between 1744 and 1748 to the unsuccessful defence of the Low Countries. During the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), however, it was to North America that Britain dispatched her ships, leaving to others the business of protecting the Low Countries. The naval victories towards the end of that war vindicated the value of an extra-European commercial strategy and prepared the way for the intoxicating vision of a global commercial empire, articulated by and epitomized in the figure of William Pitt the Elder.

  MAP 8: British North America, c.1763.

  Until the middle of the century the British government had shown little interest in the internal affairs of the American colonies. Indeed, except in wartime, the government took little interest either in establishing new colonies or in inaugurating new colonial ventures. The colonies in North America were the result of private rather than public initiative. Significantly, the Board of Trade, which managed colonial affairs, lacked a cabinet seat. Such central direction of imperial affairs as there was came from successive Secretaries of State. Not until the energetic administration of Lord Halifax between 1748 and 1761 was there much evidence of administrative reform, and even then the fruits of his work only came after his retirement. Until then, a policy of ‘salutary neglect’ prevailed, according to which the colonies were left alone to administer their own affairs while the British government interested itself largely in commercial issues.

  Within each colony a governor, aided by a council, represented the interests of the British crown. In making colonial laws, the governor was helped, in practice often hindered, by an assembly. The colonial elites who made up the assemblies were heavily Anglicized groups which were thoroughly influenced by the political rhetoric of opposition parties in England and their Country opinions. As a consequence, they vigorously championed local interests against the centralizing and allegedly corrupt politics of London. In the North American mainland colonies, moreover, the assemblies were elected by fairly large electorates which were fiercely sensitive to local needs and local rights. In Massachusetts elections were held annually, in South Carolina and New Hampshire triennially. By the early decades of the century the assemblies had already established their right to initiate as well as to give their assent to legislation. Not surprisingly, it was difficult for the governors to retain intact their prerogatives as local representatives of the monarch. Deprived of adequate funding by the Treasury in London, governors were thrown back upon the goodwill of their assemblies. If they refused to vote supplies, then the governor’s room for executive action was almost extinguished because none of them had the resources with which to organize an effective Court party. Enjoying the power of the purse, some of the assemblies had even won the right to appoint to important offices. Halifax, at least, encouraged the governors to curb the pretensions of their colonial assemblies. Like Newcastle, he understood that the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) was nothing more than a temporary peace in North America. Indeed, defence expenditure in North America actually doubled during the seven years of peace after 1748.

  Nevertheless, during the first half of the century there were few signs of serious conflict between the colonial legislatures and the mother country. The British Parliament legislated as a matter of course upon commercial matters affecting the colonists but only rarely on internal questions. When it did legislate on the domestic concerns of the colonists it was, again, usually on economic and commercial concerns. In theory at least, the principle of parliamentary sovereignty entitled the British Parliament to legislate on any matter, including the right to levy internal taxes. In practice, the principle was never tested. Many colonists denied the right of Parliament to tax them, and would have refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of the King-in-Parliament. Whenever a scheme of internal imperial taxation was under discussion, as it was, for example, in 1726, or whenever Britain brought forward any other economic measure which threatened their prosperity, such as the Molasses Act of 1733, the slogan ‘No taxation without representation’, which was to become one of the cardinal precepts of the American Revolution, was soon on the lips of colonial protesters. For the moment, however, the British Empire maintained a superficially coherent appearance. It was united by its aggressive Protestantism (albeit a disruptive source of tension in Ireland and Highland Scotland), its acceptance of Parliament as a centralizing agency of legitimation, law and, not least, by the power of the British navy. Far more than anyone could have anticipated, the empire was about to undergo some of the most tumultuous years in its history.

  WILLIAM PITT AND THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR, 1756–1763

  Few periods in British history have been so decisive as the middle decades of the eighteenth century. Britain fought one of the most important wars in her history. Great power rivalry and renewed war against France and Spain revived fears of Bourbon Catholic domination not only in Europe but also across the globe. Britain’s victory enabled her to become the leading imperial power in Europe. Imperial conflict proved to be a forging ground for patriotism; the British nation achieved a unity which was not to be seen again for almost half a century. It is no accident that all of these changes were bound up with the political career of William, the Elder, Pitt.

  Few eighteenth-century personalities made as great an impression upon their contemporaries as Pitt the Elder. Unlike Walpole and Newcastle, Pitt had not been born into one of the traditional governing families. Indeed, his grandfather, ‘Diamond’ Pitt, had been a buccaneering East India merchant who rose to become Governor of Fort St George in Madras. He entered politics in 1735 for the rotten borough of Old Sarum – like most young men of his generation, in opposition to Walpole. His spellbinding oratory, his patriotic integrity and his lofty view of the importance of commerce and empire to Britain’s future marked him out as a rising man, albeit an independent force, an outspoken outsider. It would be unwise to credit William Pitt with a comprehensive imperial strategy in this early part of his career. His speeches were more conspicuous for their patriotism, their concern for the strength and security of Britain and their passionate hostility to France and Spain than they are for any early detailed intimations of imperial destiny. Yet there are signs of his firm belief that the future of Britain lay with her trade, her markets and her manufactures, that French military and economic power would stand in her way and that the key to military conflict between them would lie in North America. If Britain could wrest Canada and the sugar islands from France, then their enormous wealth would be denied to the enemy and would supplement Britain’s already rapidly growing strength. This does not amount to a comprehensive imperial strategy but it shows in which direction Pitt was beginning to turn. Pitt obtained the office of Paymaster of the Forces in 1746. During the Pelham ministry he worked patiently to improve conditions in the army, but he received little credit for it and lost his post in the reshuffle following Henry Pelham’s death. Only in 1755, when Newcastle showed his preference for working with Henry Fox, did Pitt begin to articulate the gospel of commerce and empire, a detailed and intoxicating vision of an imperial destiny, which many of his biographers have tended to exaggerate.3 We saw in a previous section how Pitt the Elder eventually rose to the highest offices in the land, first in the Devonshire–Pitt administration in October 1756 and, more permanently, in the Pitt–Newcastle ministry from June 1757.4 At that date, Pitt’s reputation with the public was still uncertain. The Pitt–Newcastle ministry represented a victory not for any ‘Pittite’ principles but for the principles of ‘Broad-bottom’. Almost all politicians rallied behind the throne in 1757, sick of faction and anxious to unite in the patriotic cause of war against France. It has to be admitted that successive Whig governments had failed to fly the flag of patriotism in recent years. Pulteney had raised the standard of patriotism against Walpole, in the early 1740s, only to disappoint the hopes he had raised. Thereafter, patriotism had been an oppositionist and indeed a popular cry. In the ye
ars after Henry Pelham’s death, Pitt made it his own. As Paymaster he had ostentatiously demonstrated his virtue by refusing to make money out of the office. He returned the Hanoverian and Hessian troops brought over by Newcastle and by passing the Militia Bill, rejected in the House of Lords a year earlier, he placed in the hands of Englishmen the means of defending their own country. His lavish support for the Militia Bill (1757) was little more than playing to the patriotic gallery. The militia issue was a happy combination of popularity and patriotism, and Pitt did well to identify himself with a cause that was overwhelmingly more popular than the hated standing army. After initial acute unpopularity, in which 50,000 troops were required to suppress over fifty riots in different parts of the country, Pitt’s support of the militia was to pay rich political dividends.