Industrial Revolution 1

Building the Atlantic Economy
The growth of world trade with the agricultural improvement, population pressure, and growing cottage industry characterized Europe in the 1700s. Spain and Portugal revita-lized their empires, and the Netherlands, France, and especially Great Britain benefited the most out of Europe. Great Britain formed in 1707 when England and Scotland were merged together. It became a sea power based on ships and merchants dominated the long-distance trade, particularly the trans-Atlantic trade

Mercantilism and Colonial Wars
European mercantilism was a system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state. It aimed at creating a favorable balance of foreign trade in order to increase a country’s stock of gold, which was used to pay for war. English mercantilism maintained that the government economic regulations could and should serve the pri-vate interest of individuals and groups as well as the state. Continental countries put the needs of the state far above those of business people and workers. The result of English desire to increase military power and private wealth were the Navigation Acts. Oliver Cromwell established the first in 1651, and Charles II extended them in 1660 and 1663. These acts required that most goods from Europe to England and Scotland be carried on British-owned ships with British crew or on ships of the country producing the article. It gave British merchants and shipowners a monopoly on trade with the British colonies. It was believed that these economic regulations would provide British merchants and workers with profits and employment and provide colonial plantation owners and far-mers with a guaranteed market. Britain would develop a shipping industry that could draft from any of its colonies to defend it and its empire. The Acts targeted that Dutch, and with the three Anglo-Dutch wars between 1652 and 1674, the Dutch shipping and commerce was badly damaged. The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was seized in 1664 and renamed New York. Once the Netherlands began to decline like Spain, France was the main target of Britain. France was rich in natural resource and had a much big-ger population with a powerful fleet and a monopolized colonial trade than Britain. From 1701 to 1763, Britain and France fought in a series of wars to determine which country would become the leading maritime power and claim Europe’s overseas colo-nies. The War of the Spanish Succession started when Louis XIV declared his willingness to accept the Spanish crown willed to his grandson. This upset the balance of power and threatened to destroy the British colonies in North America. Louis XIV lost and was forced in the Peace of Utrecht (1713) to cede Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hud-son Bay to Britain, and Spain had to give up control of the West African slave trade, Gi-braltar, and to let Britain send one ship of merchandise into the Spanish colonies an-nually through the Isthmus of Panama. The War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) started when Frederick the Great of Prussia seized Silesia from Austria’s Maria Theresa. Britain and France got involved and all territorial changes in North America were back to where they were at the beginning of the war. The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) began when Maria Theresa trying to win back Silesia and destroy Prussia. She almost did with the support of France and Russia, but Prussia survived. The population of New France was centered in Quebec but had expanded along the Great Lakes, Ohio country, and down the Mississippi to New Orleans. They had successful allied with many Native American tribes, and when Pennsylvania traders and Virginia land speculators moved across the Appalachians, it was seen as an intrusion of France’s fur trade. In 1753, the French built more forts in western Pennsylvania. Though Canada had 100 times less people than the colonies, the French fought well under marquis de Montcalm until 1758. The British got more men and money and were able to use superior sea power to destroy the French fleet and stop French commerce around the world. In 1759, they laid siege to Quebec, and after four months, the British defeated Montcalm’s army. The Treaty of Paris (1763) caused France to lose all possessions on the mainland of North America. Canada and all French territory east of the Mississippi went to Britain, and France ceded Louisiana to Spain to compensate for Spain’s loss of Florida to Britain. France gave up most of its holdings in India.

Land and Wealth in British America
British colonies in America provided an outlet for surplus population, causing little po-verty in the home countries. The settlers also benefited by sharing the rights of Euro-pean conquest and free and unlimited land. Free land was rare in Britain because in was already controlled by the nobility and the gentry in 1700 and became stronger with agri-cultural improvements and enclosures in the 1700s. Settlers came as indentured ser-vants who would work 7 years for their passage or as prisoners and convicts could ob-tain their own land as soon as they were out of prison. Life was hard, but there were lit-tle taxes. Labor was expensive in the colonies, limiting the growth of industry in the co-lonies. Because of the weakness of Native Americans, the Spanish and Portuguese in-troduced slavery in the Americans in the 1500s and the Dutch in the 1600s transported thousands of Africans to Brazil and the Caribbean. They worked on sugar plantations that earned large profits. England established sugar plantation in the Caribbean and brought slave laborers from Africa in the 1600s. By 1730, there were large tobacco plantations in Virginia and Maryland, creating a wealthy aristocracy. Slavery was uncommon in New England and the middle colonies, and many of the farmers produced more than they needed. They exported their food to the West Indies, where they came to depend on the mainland colonies’ food. The colonies, with the help of the Navigation Acts, grew a strong shipping industry. Free land resulted in a rapid increase in the colonies in the 1700s. Poverty was not common, and agricultural development resulted in high standards of living for colonists. There was also economic equality.

The Growth of Foreign Trade
The rapidly growing and increasingly wealthy agricultural populations provided an ex-panding market for English manufactured goods. The rising demand for manufactured goods in the Americas and Africa allowed English cottage industry to continue growing and diversifying. In the 1700s, continental Europe was trying to develop their own cot-tage textile industries to deal with rural poverty and overpopulation, and they also adopted protectionist, mercantilist rules such as tariffs. France had closed its markets to the English by 1600, German states had purchased less woolen cloth in the 1700s and had instead encouraged their own cottage industries, and by 1773, England was selling only about two-thirds as much woolen cloth to continental Europe than in 1700. Stagna-tion in many continental markets meant that the English economy needed new markets and products to develop and prosper. Protected colonial markets saved them with 8-fold profits. The English exported axes, firearms, and chains to America and Africa, as well as clocks, coachers, buttons, saddles, china, furniture, musical instruments, and scientific equipment. The mercantilist system founded in the 1600s had great success verse the Dutch in the 1700s.

Revival in Colonial Latin America
After the last Spanish Habsburg emperor, Charles II, died in 1700, Spain’s empire was almost ruined. However, it held together and prospered, while a landowning aristocracy enhanced its position in society. Under the ruler of Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip V (r. 1700–1746), he brought new men and ideas from France and used the Spanish to help the French in the War of the Spanish Succession. After the war, a series of reforming ministers reasserted royal authority, overhauled state finances, and strengthened de-fense. In the Spanish colonies, they defending themselves again British attacks and grew in size, from Louisiana to northern California. Silver mining recovered greatly and ac-counted for half of world silver production in 1800. The American born Spanish, the Creoles, were able to purchase European luxuries and manufactured goods. Wealthy Creole merchants handled this trade, which often relied on smuggling goods from Great Britain. The Creole elite rivaled the government and they controlled much of the land and wanted to be an aristocracy. The Indians were forced to work on their estates, at first as slaves and forced labor and then by debt peonage in which they were conti-nuously in debt and had to work more to get out of it. The middle class consisted of mestizos, the offspring of Spanish men and Indian women. They wanted to join the Creoles so that they could have enough money and power to be considered white. Large amounts of Africans worked in the sugar plantation of Brazil. They intermixed sexually and culturally with the people of Brazil.

Adam Smith and Economic Liberation
Creoles merchants opposed regulations imposed from Madrid, small English merchants complained about the injustice of handing over exclusive trading rights to great trading combines, and many independent merchants began to campaign against monopolies and calling for free trade. Scottish professor of philosophy Adam Smith wrote Inquiry in-to the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nation (1776), explaining what the basis for modern economics was, and how mercantilism was wrong. He said mercantilism was a combination of stifling government regulations and unfair privileges for state-approved monopolies and government favorites. Free competition would protect consumers from price gouging and give all citizens a fair and equal right to do what they did best. Gov-ernment should only provide a defense against foreign invasion, maintain civil order with courts and police protection, and sponsor certain indispensible public works and institutions that could never adequately profit private investors. Smith was one of the Enlightenment’s most original and characteristic thinkers who relied on the power of reason to unlock the secrets of the secular world and the truth. He made the pursuit of self-interest in a competitive market the source of an underlying and previously unre-cognized harmony. Free competition had an “invisible hand” that disciplined selfish in-dividuals.