“The hatters of England have prevailed to obtain an act in their own favor restraining that manufacture in America. ...  In the same manner have a few nail makers and a still smaller body of steelmakers (perhaps there are not half a dozen of these in England) prevailed totally to forbid by an act of Parliament the erecting of slitting mills or steel furnaces in America; that Americans may be obliged to take all their nails for their buildings and steel for their tools from these artificers [craft workers].”

An article in the Boston Gazette also complained:

“A colonist cannot make a button, a horseshoe, nor a hobnail, but some sooty ironmonger or respectable buttonmaker of Britain shall bawl and squall that his honor’s worship is ... maltreated, injured, cheated, and robbed by the rascally American republicans.”

—adapted from The Rise of American Civilization

Mercantilism

Mercantilism is a set of ideas about the world economy and how it works.  These ideas were popular in the 1600s and 1700s.  Mercantilists believed that to become wealthy and powerful, a country had to accumulate gold and silver.  A country could do this by selling more goods to other countries than it bought from them, causing more gold and silver to flow into the country than what was flowing out to pay for products from other countries.  

Mercantilists also argued that a country should be self-sufficient in raw materials.  If it had to buy raw materials from another country, gold and silver would flow out to pay for those materials.  In order to be self-sufficient, a country should establish colonies where raw materials were available.  The home country would then buy the raw materials from its colonies and, in turn, sell them manufactured goods.

Mercantilism did provide some benefits to colonies.  It gave them a reliable market for some of their raw materials and an eager supplier of the manufactured goods they needed.  This system also had drawbacks, however.  It prevented colonies from selling goods to other nations, even if they could get a better price.  Also, if a colony produced nothing the home country needed, the colony could not acquire gold or silver to buy manufactured goods.  This was a serious problem in New England, and it explains in part why New England merchants turned to triangular trade and smuggling.  These methods were the only way for the colonies to get the gold and silver they needed.

The Navigation Acts

During the first half of the 1600s, England’s mercantilist policy was very simple.  The government tried to encourage exports and restrict imports.  Other than some attempts to regulate the tobacco trade from Virginia, little attention was paid to the colonies and how they fit into England’s economic system.

When Charles II assumed the throne in 1660, however, he and his advisers were determined to generate wealth for England by regulating trade and expanding the colonies in America.  In 1660 Charles asked Parliament to pass a navigation act.  The act required all goods imported or exported from the colonies to be carried on English ships, and stated that at least three-fourths of the crew on each ship had to be English.  The act also listed specific raw materials that could be sold only to England or other English colonies.  The list included sugar, tobacco, lumber, cotton, wool, and indigo—the major products that earned money for the colonies.  Many colonists, especially tobacco planters, complained about the act.  They argued that it forced them to deal with English merchants who charged such high prices for shipping that the planters were robbed of their profit.  Three years later, in 1663, Parliament passed another navigation act called the Staple Act.

This act required everything the colonies imported to come through England.  All merchants bringing European goods to the colonies had to stop in England, pay taxes, and then ship the goods out again on English ships.  This generated money for England but also increased the price of goods in the colonies.

Frustration with these acts encouraged colonial merchants to break the new laws.  To enforce the acts in the colonies Parliament authorized the appointment of customs inspectors, who would report directly to the English government.  As a colonial power, England had the authority to enact and enforce the Navigation Acts.  Problems arose, however, when it tried to do so.

Problems With Enforcement

In 1675 King Charles II appointed a committee called the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations to oversee colonial trade and advise him about problems.  It was soon discovered that Dutch and other foreign ships crowded Boston Harbor and that the merchants of Massachusetts routinely ignored the Navigation Acts and smuggled goods to Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa.  Massachusetts’s governor, John Laverett, wasted no time in informing England that Massachusetts was not required to obey laws made by Parliament unless it was in the interest of Massachusetts to do so.

For the next few years, Massachusetts refused to answer the charges that had been brought against it.  Finally, in 1684, King Charles II responded to this defiance by depriving Massachusetts of its charter and declaring it to be a royal colony.

The Dominion of New England

James II, who succeeded his brother Charles to the English throne in 1685, went even further in asserting royal authority and punishing the merchants of New England for their defiance.  In 1686 the English government merged Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Rhode Island together to create a new royal province called the Dominion of New England.  The following year Connecticut and New Jersey were forced to join the Dominion, and by the spring of 1688, New York had been added as well.

The Dominion was to be run by a governor-general and councilors appointed directly by the king.  All colonial assemblies were abolished.  The governor-general and his council would have the power to make laws, impose taxes, administer justice, and confirm or deny all existing land grants.  King James II appointed Sir Edmund Andros to be the first governor-general.  Andros, a former soldier and governor of New York, was loyal to the king.  His contempt for the Puritan religion and his determination to overturn the systems of government in the colonies heightened tensions there.

Andros declared all deeds and land titles issued under the Massachusetts charter to be worthless, and he insisted that anyone who wanted a new deed would have to pay an annual tax to the government.  Working closely with English soldiers and the Royal Navy, he also rigorously enforced the Navigation Acts.

Equally disturbing to Puritans were the governor-general’s efforts to undermine the Puritan Church.  Andros declared that only marriages performed in Anglican churches were legal, and he demanded that Puritan meeting halls be made available for Anglican services every other Sunday.  He also declared that no one was to teach school, a traditional function of Church leaders in New England, without permission.

Andros had managed to anger nearly everyone in New England society—landowners, church leaders, and merchants.  Fortunately, just as tensions were peaking in New England, a peaceful revolution took place back in England, preempting violence in the colonies.

Examining
In what ways did the Navigation Acts affect trade in the colonies?
 

The Glorious Revolution of 1688

While the colonists in New England raged at the actions of Governor-General Andros, the people of England were growing suspicious of their new king, James II.  James insisted upon his divine right to rule, and he frequently rejected the advice of Parliament.  He had revoked the charters of many English towns and corporations and offended many English people by openly practicing Catholicism.  He had also prosecuted Anglican bishops for defying his wishes concerning appointments in the Anglican Church.  Many members of Parliament worried that if James continued to act in this manner, he might lead the country into another civil war.
 
 

Anne Bradstreet
c.  1612–1672

Anne Dudley was born about 1612 in Northampton, England.  At the age of 16 she married Simon Bradstreet, and two years later she accompanied her husband on board the Arabella to America.

The Bradstreets, traveling with John Winthrop’s party, were among the first settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In America Anne Bradstreet faced the difficult task of building a home in the wilderness.  Despite the hard work of raising eight children, she found time to write poetry.  In 1650 the first edition of her poetry was published in England as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America.

Bradstreet had not anticipated this recognition.  Her brother-in-law had secretly taken a copy of her manuscript to a London publisher.

Anne Bradstreet was a devoted supporter of her husband, who became a leading political figure in Massachusetts, serving two terms as governor.  During the period of the Dominion of New England, he spoke out against the harsh rule of Edmund Andros.  In a poem, To My Dear Loving Husband, published after her death, Anne described their relationship:

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
 
 

A Bloodless Revolution

Most of the English people and members of Parliament were willing to tolerate James because they expected his Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange, to succeed James to the throne.  These hopes were shattered in June 1688, when James’s second wife gave birth to a son.  The son was now the heir to the throne and would be raised Catholic.

News of the birth triggered protests.  Unwilling to risk a Catholic dynasty on the throne of England, Parliament invited William and Mary to take the throne of England.  When William arrived, James fled, and William became the new king of England.  This bloodless change of power became known as the Glorious Revolution.

Before assuming the throne, William and Mary were required to swear that they would obey the laws of Parliament.  In 1689 Parliament read a bill of rights to William and Mary, outlining what would be required of them.  The English Bill of Rights abolished the king’s absolute power to suspend laws and create his own courts.  It also made it illegal for the king to impose taxes or raise an army without the consent of Parliament.  The Bill of Rights also guaranteed freedom of speech within Parliament and banned excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments.  Every English subject was guaranteed the right to petition the king and the right to a fair and impartial jury in legal cases.  Later that same year, Parliament passed the Toleration Act, granting freedom of worship to nearly all Protestants but not to Catholics and Jews.

The changes the Glorious Revolution brought to England contributed significantly to the colonists’ ideas of government.  Eventually the ideas found in the English Bill of Rights and the Toleration Act would be expanded and incorporated into the American Bill of Rights.  At the time, however, England’s Glorious Revolution offered colonists a justification to revolt against Governor-General Andros.

The Glorious Revolution in America

As soon as word reached Massachusetts that Parliament had dethroned James II, an uprising occurred in Boston.  Andros and his councilors were seized and imprisoned.  They were later returned to England.  Although William and Mary let the hated Dominion of New England die quietly, they did not completely restore the old system.  They permitted Rhode Island and Connecticut to resume their previous forms of government, but they were unwilling to surrender all control over Massachusetts.  Instead they issued a new charter in 1691.  The new charter combined the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth colony, and Maine into the royal colony of Massachusetts.

Under the new charter, the people of Massachusetts were given the right to elect an assembly.  The assembly, in turn, was given the right to elect the governor’s councilors, but King William insisted that the governor had to be appointed by the king.  The new charter also changed who could vote.  Under the new system, voters had to own property, but they did not have to be members of a Puritan congregation.  The new charter also granted freedom of worship to Anglicans living in Massachusetts.

GOVERNMENT
The Legacy of John Locke

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 also set a very important precedent.  It showed that there were times when revolution against the king was justified.  During this turmoil, a political philosopher named John Locke wrote a book entitled Two Treatises of Government, in which he explained the basis of political obligation and justified revolution.

Locke argued that a monarch’s right to rule came from the people.  He asserted that all people were born with certain natural rights, including the right to life, liberty, and property.  Before governments were created, Locke said, people lived in a “state of nature” where their rights were not safe.  To protect their rights, people had come together and mutually agreed to create a government.  In effect the people had formed a contract.  They had agreed to obey the government’s laws, and the government agreed to uphold their rights in return.  Locke claimed that monarchs were parties to this contract, and if they violated the people’s rights, the people were justified in overthrowing the monarch and changing their system of government.

Locke’s ideas had a profound influence on American colonists.  The colonists understood Locke’s “natural rights” to be the specific rights of English citizens that had developed over the centuries in England and were referred to in documents such as the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights.  Furthermore, Locke seemed to be describing the colonial experience.  Settlers had arrived in America in a state of nature and then built governments based on contractual arrangements.  The Mayflower Compact, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, and the various colonial charters were all agreements between the people and their government.

Others in England and America reinforced and repeated Locke’s ideas in the decades that followed the Glorious Revolution.  In January 1750, for example, Jonathan Mayhew, pastor of Boston’s West Church, preached:

“If we calmly consider the nature of the thing itself, nothing can well be imagined more directly contrary to common sense than to suppose that millions of people should be subjected to the arbitrary, precarious pleasure of one single man—who has naturally no superiority over them in point of authority. ...  What unprejudiced man can think that God made all to be thus subservient to the lawless pleasure and fancy of one so that it shall always be a sin to resist him?”

—quoted in The Making of American Democracy

Only a few years later, the American colonies would put these ideas into practice when they launched their own revolution against Britain.

Summarizing
What actions did William and Mary take upon becoming the English monarchs?
 

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