An Imperial System
The King and his government had little to do with the American colonies in their early days. Only gradually did the royal government in London exert its authority over the colonies. Even then, the colonists retained their legislatures and a great degree of control over their affairs.
The Growth of Imperial AdministrationThe earliest imperial legislation imposed on the American colonists was economic. The dominant mercantilist philosophy of the day emphasized the importance of monopolizing as much commerce and bullion as possible. Nations regulated merchants and shipping in an attempt to maintain a favorable balance of trade.
When did England become Britain?
Since 1603, England and Scotland had been ruled by one monarch. In 1706 and 1707, the Parliaments of England and Scotland voted to unite into the Kingdom of Great Britain. From this point on, Englishmen and Scots became British.
Worried about the business enterprise of Dutch traders in the 1640s, Parliament passed a Navigation Act in 1651 that required that all products from the colonies be shipped to other colonies or England in English ships. The Navigation Act was renewed in 1660 and 1661. Certain colonial products, such as sugar and tobacco, could only be shipped to England. Later, rice, naval stores, and furs were added to this list. In 1663, Parliament passed the Staple Act, which required that European goods destined for the colonies first be taken to an English port so customs duties could be levied.
A rudimentary bureaucracy was established to regulate the empire. The King's Privy Council created the Lords of Trade, later the Board of Trade, to oversee colonial affairs. Parliament strengthened the customs service and created admiralty courts to enforce the Navigation Acts.
King James II tried to exert a more direct control over the colonies. In 1685, he created the Dominion of New England, which merged New York, New Jersey, and New England into one royal province. This experiment, highly unpopular with the American colonists, proved short-lived and ended with the Glorious Revolution. Under James's successor, William III, a royal governor was imposed on Massachusetts. With the exceptions of Connecticut and Rhode Island, all governors were appointed by the King or by the colony's proprietor.
Political disturbances in England could sometimes roil colonial society. The Glorious Revolution of 1688, which overthrew King James II and led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, had a series of aftershocks in America. Leisler's Rebellion in New York and Coode's Rebellion in Maryland were American uprisings that were inspired by the news from home and driven by tensions within colonial society.
During these years, the colonists began to more systematically articulate a political perspective rooted in both their English heritage and local circumstances. The Americans saw themselves as heirs of the Glorious Revolution, hostile to unchecked and arbitrary power. Some read the writings of John Locke, the great philosophic defender of natural rights and constitutional government. Many more read the essays of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who in Cato's Letters attacked the political corruption of Britain in the early eighteenth century and argued that power always presented a threat to liberty.
The religious revivals of the Great Awakening, which swept the colonies in the 1730s, emphasized a direct and personal connection between a worshipper and God. The Great Awakening weakened the power of the clergy and inclined some to question the political establishment as well. By the mid-eighteenth century, many in the American colonies were little disposed to obey authority they did not recognize.
The Great Awakening helped draw the colonies together by blurring social and religious boundaries. The evangelist George Whitefield traveled north and south, preaching to crowds numbering in the thousands, impressing even a skeptic like Benjamin Franklin.
The American colonists were able to live easily and thrive economically within the British imperial system. Had the Navigation Acts and other British regulations been rigorously enforced, this might not have been the case. Fortunately for the Americans, throughout the first half of the eighteenth century the British government did not provide adequately for the enforcement of the laws it passed.
The colonies experienced a long period of salutary neglect, during which the imperial authorities interfered very little in American affairs. When Parliament passed the Molasses Act in 1733, placing a heavy tax on the cheap foreign sugar and molasses that the Americans imported from the West Indies, the Americans simply ignored it. Smuggling became an American art form. Despite these acts of defiance, both the colonies and Britain benefited economically from the trade patterns established by the Navigation Acts. The profits generated by this trade were such that the British authorities could reconcile themselves to looking the other way when the colonists occasionally strayed from the law.
