Abstract
The expansion and development of British overseas activity in the eighteenth century was based upon foundations established well before 1700. At the end of the seventeenth century, English settlements in North America were scattered throughout the politically demarcated colonies running along the coast from the Carolinas to Maine, while the Hudson Bay Company engaged in commercial activity in an amorphous region between the Great Lakes and the Arctic littoral. In the Caribbean, Britain had settlements on Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica, Montserrat, Nevis and part of St Kitts. In the Orient, despite several serious setbacks suffered at the hands of the Dutch in the East Indies during the course of the seventeenth century, the East India Company had established itself at Bombay, Madras and Surat. Just before the turn of the century, the Company had acquired several small villages in Bengal and this settlement became Calcutta which grew to be the second city of the British empire by 1775.
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Notes
See, for example, John Shy, Toward Lexington. The role of the British army in the coming of the American Revolution (Princeton, 1965), pp. 28, 30, 34, 36–8.
For a brief summary of the development of the relationship between merchants and the state in Britain see M.N. Pearson, ‘Merchants and states’, in J.D. Tracy (ed.), The political economy of merchant empires (Cambridge, 1991 ), pp. 87–94.
D. Crossley and R. Saville (eds), The Fuller letters, 1728–1755. Guns, slaves, and finance (Lewes, 1991 ), p. XXVI.
For a vigorous and wide-ranging reexamination of the expedition of 1740–2 see Richard Harding, Amphibious warfare in the eighteenth century. The British expedition to the West Indies, 1740–1742 (Woodbridge, 1991).
The development of these bases is charted in Daniel A. Baugh, British naval administration in the age of Walpole (Princeton, 1965), pp. 347–55.
PJ. Marshall, ‘British expansion in India in the eighteenth century: a historical revision’, History, LX (1975), 39.
P. Crowhurst, The defence of British trade, 1689–1815 (Folkestone, 1977), esp. pp. 43–80.
See, for example, the case of British activity in Asia as outlined in PJ. Marshall, ‘Western arms in maritime Asia in the early phases of expansion’, Modern Asian Studies, XIV (1980), 24; and idem, ’British expansion in India’, 38–40.
Marc Egnal, A mighty empire. The origins of the American Revolution (Ithaca, 1988), pp. 92–100.
See also Robert D. Mitchell, Commercialism and frontier. Perspectives on the early Shenandoah Valley (Charlottesville, 1977 ), pp. 59–60, 80.
For a study with a maritime perspective on the interactions between the British, French and Spanish empires in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean see John Robert McNeill, Atlantic empires of France and Spain. Louisbourg and Havana, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill, 1985 ).
See the examples taken from the 1760s cited in Philip Lawson, ‘“The Irishman’s prize”. Views of Canada from the British press, 1760–1774’, HJ, XXVIII (1985), 585. For a discussion of this issue see pp. 179–81.
S. Das, ‘British reactions to the French bugbear in India, 1763–83’, European History Quarterly, XXII (1992), 41.
These matters are discussed in detail in ibid., passim. For a case-study see Nicholas Tracy, ‘Parry of a threat to India, 1768–1774’, Mariner’s Mirror, LIX (1973), 35–48.
For the broad context see M.E. Yapp, Strategies of British India. Britain, Iran, and Afghanistan, 1798–1850 (Oxford, 1980), pp. 158–9. See pp. 184–5.
See, for example, the case of the southern frontier of the American colonies in Alan Gallay, The formation of a planter elite. Jonathan Bryan and the southern colonial frontier (Athens, Ga., 1989), pp. 17, 72. Shy, Toward Lexington, p. 285.
Shy, Toward Lexington, p. 43. For accounts of the development of the militia which stress regional diversity and the differences between defence forces and the volunteer forces used for offensive expeditions see ibid., pp. 6–19 and John Shy, ‘A new look at the colonial militia’, in John Shy, A people numerous and armed. Reflections on the military struggle for American independence (Oxford, 1976), pp. 22–33.
Carl Bridenbaugh and Roberta Bridenbaugh, No peace beyond the line. The English in the Caribbean, 1624–1690 (New York, 1971), pp. 171–2.
Edward Brathwaite, The development of creole society in Jamaica, 1770–1820 (Oxford, 1971), pp. 26–31.
The part played by the Company’s army in maintaining law and order in Bengal is explored in G.J. Bryant, ‘Pacification in the early British raj, 1755–85’, JICH, XIII (1985), 4–19.
P.J. Marshall, ‘The Company and coolies. Labour in early Calcutta’, in Pradip Sinha (ed.), The urban experience: Calcutta. Essays in honour of Nisith R. Ray (Calcutta, 1987 ), pp. 23–38.
Douglas M. Peers, ‘Contours of the garrison state: the army and the historiography of early nineteenth-century India’, in N.G. Cassels (ed.), Orientalism, evangelicalism, and the military cantonment in early nineteenth-century India. An historiographical overview (Lampeter, 1991 ), pp. 89–124.
For the pattern and growth of English trade in the seventeenth century see D.W. Jones, War and economy in the age of William III and Marlborough (Oxford, 1988), pp. 43–52.
Kathleen Wilson, ‘Empire, trade, and popular politics in mid-Hanoverian Britain. The case of Admiral Vernon’, Past and present, CXXII (1988), 98–101.
Marcus Rediker, Between the devil and the deep blue sea. Merchant seamen, pirates, and the Anglo-American maritime world, 1700–1750 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 21.
There has been considerable scholarly debate over the forces which influenced the making of the Navigation Acts. For a convenient review which strikes a balance between different interpretations see McFarlane, The British in the Americas, pp. 98–102. For concise details of the Navigation Acts see Ralph Davis, The rise of the English shipping industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1962), pp. 306–9.
For the general context provided by the development of the Atlantic economies see Ralph Davis, The rise of the Atlantic colonies (Ithaca, 1973).
For the central importance of the slave trade in helping to establish commercial links between America and Europe see Barbara L. Solow, ‘Slavery and colonization’, in Barbara L. Solow (ed.), Slavery and the rise of the Atlantic system (Cambridge, 1991 ), pp. 21–42.
Ralph Davis, The industrial revolution and British overseas trade (Leicester, 1979), pp. 13–14.
For the importance of the North American and West Indian colonial markets to the development of London’s economy in particular see Nuala Zahedieh, ‘London and the colonial consumer in the late seventeenth century’, Econ. Hist. Rev., second series, XLVII (1994), 239–61. For a general overview of the expansion of British trade which identifies a number of factors promoting growth see Price, ’What did merchants do?’, esp. p. 277.
Figures based upon Ralph Davis, ‘English foreign trade, 1700–1774’, Econ. Hist. Rev., second series, XV (1962), 285–303. For longer term trends which illustrate the further displacement of Europe as a destination for domestic exports see Davis, The industrial revolution and overseas trade, pp. 14–35.
For the North American context in particular see also Jacob M. Price, ‘New time series for Scotland’s and Britain’s trade with the thirteen colonies and states, 1740–91’, WMQ, third series, XXXII (1975), 307–25.
For attempts to develop English interests in the Pacific during this period see Glyndwr Williams, ’“The inexhaustible fountain of gold”: English projects and ventures in the South Seas, 1670–1750’, in John E. Flint and Glyndwr Williams (eds), Perspectives of empire. Essays presented to Gerald S. Graham (1973), pp. 27–53. This essay stands as a corrective to the view that the British only developed an interest in the Pacific after 1763.
Davis, The industrial revolution and British overseas trade. Davis was at pains to stress that overseas trade did not have a direct role to play in the initial stage of Britain’s industrial development (ibid., pp. 9–10, 63–4). In recent years, there has been considerable debate over the part played by overseas trade in the development of the domestic economy in the eighteenth century. For an interpretation which stresses the importance of overseas trade see P.K. O’Brien and S.L. Engerman, ‘Exports and the growth of the British economy from the Glorious Revolution to the Peace of Amiens’, in Solow (ed.), Slavery and the rise of the Atlantic system, pp. 177–209. For an alternative view which argues that ’At no time did the gains from trade revolutionise the economic strength of the nation’ see R.P. Thomas and D.N. McCloskey, ’Overseas trade and empire, 1700–1860’, in Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey (eds), The economic history of Britain since 1700. Volume 1: 1700–1860 (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 87–102 (quotation from p. 102).
J.R. Ward, ‘The industrial revolution and British imperialism, 1750–1850’, Econ. Hist. Rev., second series, XLVII, (1994), 44–65. The following two paragraphs are based on this source.
For detailed annual figures for Company tea sales see B.W. Labaree, The Boston Tea Party (Oxford, 1964), p. 334.
Carole Shammas, The pre-industrial consumer in England and America (Oxford, 1990), pp. 76–86.
For a detailed case study see Julian Gwyn, The enterprising admiral. The personal fortune of Admiral Sir Peter Warren (Montreal, 1974). A successful officer such as Warren was able to acquire an enormous fortune of £127,405 from prizes between 1739–48 and this enabled him to engage in land speculation and money-lending on a grand scale, in both America and Britain.
The links between speculation and settlement are explored in general terms in Bernard Bailyn, The peopling of British North America. An introduction (1987) pp. 65–86.
And in more detail in Bernard Bailyn with the assistance of Barbara De Wolfe, Voyagers to the west. Emigration from Britain to North America on the eve of the Revolution (1986), pp. 335–637.
For detailed case-studies see Mitchell, Commercialism and frontier, pp. 15–58 and Charles E. Clark, The eastern frontier. The settlement of northern New England, 1610–1763 (New York, 1970), pp. 169–79.
Washington to Captain John Posey, 24 June 1767, quoted in T.H. Breen, Tobacco culture. The mentality of the great tidewater planters on the eve of revolution (Princeton, 1986 ), p. 184.
For examples of this as it applies to Scottish soldiers in New York in the 1760s and Georgia in the 1730s see W.R. Brock, Scotus Americanus. A survey of the sources for the links between Scotland and America in the eighteenth century (Edinburgh, 1982 ), pp. 72, 79.
Gary B. Nash, ‘The early merchants of Philadelphia. The formation and disintegration of a founding elite’, in Richard S. Dunn and Mary Maples Dunn (eds), The world of William Penn (Philadelphia, 1986 ), pp. 340–2, 344–5.
Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the wilderness. The first century of urban life in America, 1625–1742 (second edition, New York, 1955), p. 148.
Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the war against the pirates (Cambridge, Mass., 1986 ), pp. 26, 37–9.
Kidd’s career as a upstanding member of New York society was short-lived. See ibid., pp. 36, 39–40. For his connection with leading politicians see ibid., pp. 52–4. For the general economic and social benefits that stemmed from privateering see the examples cited in Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in revolt. Urban life in America, 1743–1776 (New York, 1955 ), pp. 61–4, 335.
For the contribution of American privateers to the British war effort in the mid-eighteenth century see Carl E. Swanson, ‘American privateering and imperial warfare, 1739–1748’, WMQ, third series, XLII (1985).
Nuala Zahedieh, ‘Trade, plunder, and economic development in early English Jamaica, 1655–89’, Econ. Hist. Rev., second series, XXXIX (1986), 205–22.
WI Eccles, ‘The fur trade and eighteenth-century imperialism’, WMQ, third series, XL (1983), 341–62.
PJ. Marshall, ‘Private British investment in eighteenth-century Bengal’, Bengal Past and Present, LXXXVI (1967), 52–67.
This theme is developed in more detail in PJ. Marshall, East Indian fortunes. The British in Bengal in the eighteenth century (Oxford, 1976).
For the development of private trade in western India in the mid-eighteenth century see Pamela Nightingale, Trade and empire in western India, 1784–1806 (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 16–23.
See also I.B. Watson, Foundations for empire: English private trade in India, 1659–1760 (New Delhi, 1980 ).
For the substantial involvement of English private traders in inter-Asian trade, the ‘country’ trade, see PJ. Marshall, ’Private British traders in the Indian Ocean before 1800’, in Ashin Das Gupta and M.N. Pearson (eds), India and the, Indian Ocean 1500–1800 (Calcutta, 1987 ), 276–300.
See, for example, the case of expansion into Awadh after 1764 in P.J. Marshall, ‘Economic and political expansion. The case of Oudh’, Modern Asian Studies, IX (1975), 465–82.
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Bowen, H.V. (1996). The Dynamics of Expansion. In: Elites, Enterprise and the Making of the British Overseas Empire, 1688–1775. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230390195_2
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