Ottoman Algeria in Western Diplomatic History with ... - Bibliothèque

particularly true for overseas commerce, shipbuilding, and sea-related
industries.
English mercantilists also favored the exclusion of trade rivals,
particularly the Dutch, French, and Spaniards, from Britain’s North American
empire. 9
Those mercantilist ingredients protected but also strengthened the
economy of the thirteen colonies. In the long run, however, mercantilist
policies proved to be beneficial to the colonies but disadvantageous to Britain.
On the one hand, they stimulated maritime activities and gave the New
England colonies a commercial fleet; but on the other, colonial commerce and
industries became so competitive with Britain that, by 1763, they became one
of the main underlying reasons which later led to the independence of the
colonies. 10
Starting from the 1660s onwards, a series of navigations laws gave the
English settlers of the American colonies, particularly those who were engaged
in overseas commerce, the same rights and privileges that were given to the
English subjects at home. 11 Even though the Navigation Act of 1661
exclusively restricted maritime carrying from and to the colonies to ships
owned and operated—at least ¾ of the crews—by the English, those
“requirements worked no hardships on the colonials because the term English
was understood to include them as subjects of the British Monarch.” 12
9 Muir, Expansion of Europe, p. 38-41.
10 Curtis P. Nettels, “British Mercantilism and the Economic Development of the Thirteen Colonies,”
in Abraham S. Eisenstadt, ed., American History: Recent Interpretations, Book I: To 1877, 5 th Edition
(New York, NY: Crowell Company, 1964), pp. 146-47.
11 Nettels, “Economic Development of the Thirteen Colonies,” p. 43.
12 Hofstadter, Conquering a Continent, p. 31.
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