The Georgian period of the British Empire is defined by the rule of the Hanoverian kings who were all named George. The Late-Georgian era spans from 1763, with the reign of George III, George IV and William IV to the crowning of Queen Elizabeth in 1837. The Georgian era was a time of British expansion throughout the world. During this period mercantilism dominated British and Western European economic policies. British Imperial trade was governed by The Navigation Act of 1651, which restricted colonial trade for almost 200 years. But it was in 1763, with the end of the Seven Years War that the modern age of imperial colonialism had truly begun.
Mercantilism sparked the creation and expansion of colonies and caused wars between many of the large European countries. Mercantilism is a system were the mother country benefited by forbidding its colonies from trading with countries outside the mother country and its other colonies. Raw materials were worked domestically and finished goods were sold inside the mother countries’ colonies, excess goods were exported to supply more gold to the mother countries economy.
Great Britain employed mercantilism in the so-called triangle trade. Ships from Liverpool would take textiles, rum and finished goods to Africa. Then on the West African coast, these goods would be traded for men, women and children who had been captured by slave traders or bought from African chiefs, in exchange for finished goods. It often took a long time for a captain to fill his ship. The slavers would often spend three to four months sailing along the coast, looking for the fittest and cheapest slaves. There was often violent resistance by Africans against slave ships and their crews. They were attacks from th...
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...t of any other European country. The American colonies declared and won independence from the empire. Great Britain outlawed the slave trade effectively ended the triangle trade. The doctrine of free trade eventually replaced mercantilism.
The triangle trade accounted for over 2 million slaves sold to plantations in the British West Indies and 500,000 slaves to North American plantations. This was a dark time in British and American History from which many argue, the countries have still not fully recovered to this day. Slavery was the worst aspect of several forms of exploitation of colonies and colonist by the British Empire through its mercantilism and discriminatory taxation and regulation of its colonies, which in the end was doomed to fail and be replaced by a system that treated colonies and colonists with at least slightly more fairness and equality.
Middle Passage -- refers to the forced transportation of African people from Africa to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade[1] and was the middle portion of the triangular trade voyage. Ships left Europe for African markets, where their goods were sold or traded for prisoners and kidnapped victims on the African coast. Traders then sailed to the Americas and Caribbean, where the Africans were sold or traded for goods for European markets, which were then returned to Europe. The European powers Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Brandenburg, as well as traders from Brazil and North America, all took part in this trade.
Ex. Despite the Navigation Acts, which were created to restrict foreign trade of the colonies to just Great Britain, the colonists had to depend on themselves for many things so they started to trade with other nations
In a similar economic revolution, the colonies outgrew their mercantile relationship with the mother country and developed an expanding capitalist system of their own. England's economic system was primarily based on mercantilism, which was directly related to the colonies. This concept of mercantilism said that wealth is power and however much power you have is how much gold and silver one country has in its treasury. For this concept to take place, England had to export more than import. Because the colonies had the raw materials needed England set up laws such as navigation laws to restrict what the colonies coul...
The transatlantic slave trade was one of the most important factors in how the world came to be the way it is today. This trade led to the economic prosperity and political development in European countries and the population decline on the African continent. It was the catalyst for the development of both rich and poor societies today. The Two Princes of Calabar is a prime example of how this trade affected the economic growth of the countries and civilizations involved.
To expand, the European great powers took part in a tremendous race to colonize the world, and by doing so, enormous global conflicts began to take place. The revolution brought forth by the American rebels against the British created a tremendous and lasting effect on the globalizing world. Alongside the colonizing movement, originated new trade regulations, shifting alliances, and an ocean overran with commercial exploits (Bender 62). Colonies of the European superpowers, especially the thirteen American colonies, began to feel exploited, and further, were often denied the right commerce by their colonizers (Bender
European colonialism was the period between 16th and mid-20th century. The triangle trade had emerged in the 16th century and slaves, sugar, furs, and cotton, enforced through military interventions, drew together the people, politics, economics, and even diseases of Europe, Africa, and the Americans in a triangle of previously unimaginable, highly unequal, and long-lasting relationships of exchange. Even today, we can find traces of many of these connections in the global economy for example, the French military operating in Côte d’Ivoire. So, the European colonialism played a pivotal role in establishing the framework for today’s global economic system.
The movement of goods, people, and wealth in the late 17th and 18th centuries permanently changed societies across the continents of Europe, Africa, and North and South America, thereby increasing the reach of globalization in the modern age. Most influential to this movement was what is sometimes referred to as “The Atlantic Circuit”, a triangle of trade between Western Europe, western Africa, and the West Indies. Out of this circuit came the rapid growth of the Atlantic slave trade, which not only established multiple industries of agriculture, but significantly changed the economies of all countries involved. The agriculture industries, in combination with further colonization transformed the land of the Americas, and the impacted diets across the world. Capitalist systems and mercantilist policies provided structure to trade, and allowed both private investors and nations to profit from it. These systems laid the foundation for future economies by creating new levels of power and interaction between the private and public sectors and, in the process, generating many successes and failures.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade was a service that transported around twelve and a half million men, women, and children to be bought and sold as slaves by countries mostly in the New World, like the United States of America. (The Transatlantic Slave Trade) The Portuguese were the first to bring African slaves over to the new world, but it quickly caught on over the years. Around 80% of the slaves that came across the Atlantic ended up in Brazil or the Caribbean Islands while only 7% wound up in the United States.(Ross) With the climate being completely different in South America, Europeans found it extremely hard to work and were not used to the living conditions so they contracted diseases. Unlike Europeans, the African slaves were capable of handling the climate and were used to working hard. (How Many Slaves Came to America? Fact vs. Fiction.) The reason the Transatlantic Slave Trade worked for many years was because it had a triangular trade form where Africa would send slaves over to America who would send the products of the slave labor over to Europe who would send ammunition and weapons back to Africa. There have been over 30,000 documented trips from Africa to the Americas. The trip from Africa to America lasted about three months by ships. This was called the middle passage, where a large amount of slaves died from malnutrition
The slave trade became a competition between the five major powers. Each country tried to create a monopoly over certain trade routes.
Slaves and slave trade has been an important part of history for a very long time. In the years of the British thirteen colonies in North America, slaves and slave trade was a very important part of its development. It even carried on to almost 200 years of the United States history. The slave trade of the thirteen colonies was an important part of the colonies as well as Europe and Africa. In order to supply the thirteen colonies efficiently through trade, Europe developed the method of triangular trade. It is referred to as triangular trade because it consists of trade with Africa, the thirteen colonies, and England. These three areas are commonly called the trades “three legs.”
One facet of this unique system involved the numerous economic differences between England and the colonies. The English government subscribed to the economic theory of mercantilism, which demanded that the individual subordinate his economic activity to the interests of the state (Text, 49). In order to promote mercantilism in all her colonies, Great Britain passed the Navigation Acts in 1651, which controlled the output of British holdings by subsidizing. Under the Navigation Acts, each holding was assigned a product, and the Crown dictated the quantity to be produced. The West Indies, for example, were assigned sugar production and any other colony exporting sugar would face stiff penalties (Text, 50). This was done in order to ensure the economic prosperity of King Charles II, but it also served to restrict economic freedom. The geographical layout of the American colonies made mercantilism impractical there. The cit...
British imperial regulations with the American colonies were closely tied in with the system of mercantilism. Mercantilism controls the relations between the leading power and the colonies under its empire. A nation would want to export more than it imports gaining more money to obtain economic stability. The colonies exist for the profit of the mother country.
The origins of the Atlantic Slave Trade began at the purchase of slaves from slave traders. This was due by the formally arrangement that was done by the king of Oba. Where European trade goods were distributed in return for the procuring of slaves (Hine 34). Though this might be seen as wrong in today’s view. The trading of people was seen as normal to the eyes of the Europeans. This was a form of gaining more labor for their crops and a beneficial method for them. Since the workforce of the slaves would not be paid.
The first leg of the journey was from Europe, mainly Portugal to Africa. Many of the goods produced in Europe were not available in Africa or America. The Europeans traded manufactured goods, including weapons, guns, beads, cowrie shells (used as money), cloth, horses, and rum to the African kings and merchants in return for gold, silver and slaves. Africans were seen as very hard workers who were skilled in the area of agriculture and cattle farming. They were also used to the extreme temperatures that people of lighter complexions could not bear. There had always been slavery in Africa amongst her own people, where men from different tribes/villages would raid other villages to kidnap the women for their pleasures, and the men to use as slaves. To learn that they could actually profit from this activity made the job of getting slaves very easy for the Europeans. Slaves acquired through raids, were transported to the seaports were they were help prisoner in forts until traded.
The concept of imperialism is one that has pervaded nearly every major society or empire throughout human history. It seems to be a natural consequence of societies growing in size, power, and knowledge. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries vast changes occurred in Western Europe (and soon spread elsewhere) that spurred a new round of imperialism the likes of which had not been seen before. The changes were the industrial revolution that was taking place. Countries were rapidly advancing to industrial societies producing much greater quantities of goods at much lower costs. The goods produced ranged everywhere from cotton textiles to military machinery, all of which would play important roles in rounds of imperialistic expansion that would follow. The imperialistic displays by Western European nations also brought about several other industrial revolutions in other regions including the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and Japan. I will take a look at how the industrial revolution encouraged imperialistic expansion, as well as some of the results of that expansion in other regions.