Trade and Navigation Acts

Gerald Pollio ()

Chapter Chapter 8 in The Rise and Fall of Britain’s North American Empire, 2022, pp 113-125 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In 1651 Parliament enacted the first of what became known as the Navigation Acts which, among other things, imposed various restrictions on trade with Great Britain; the terms of the Act applied equally to the American colonies. The Act additionally provided for bounties to encourage the development of supplies needed by Britain that mitigated the impact of the Act’s more restrictive measures. These Acts also imposed customs duties. Collectively the measures contained in the various Trade and Navigation Acts affected few Americans and their economic impact was accordingly slight. Americans circumvented the law by trading with directly with other European countries and their New World Colonies. However, trade duties per se were unobjectionable as it had long been recognised and accepted that trade duties, in contrast to direct taxes, were legal. If their overall economic impact was slight, the same cannot be said for the way they directly and adversely impacted important segments of American society. It was among this segment of American society, comprised mainly of merchants and plantation owners, which aroused anti-British sentiment that intensified as Parliament sought to impose more stringent measures.

Keywords: Boston; Tea; Smuggling; Independence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-07484-4_8

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031074844

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-07484-4_8

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().