227. Survey of England’s position and resources about 1500.—The importance which English commerce assumed in this period and has since maintained, justifies us in pausing at the start to consider the conditions prevailing at the beginning of the period, about 1500.

England and Wales together had an area much smaller than that of most of the important continental states, about equal to the area of Illinois, and less than that of New England. Ireland was a sort of colonial possession, counting for little; Scotland remained till about 1700 an independent kingdom, and continued to be relatively unimportant after the union. England (a term which will be used roughly for other parts of the United Kingdom as they were included) had from nature one endowment of supreme advantage, separation by the Channel from the Continent, which made unnecessary for defense the government of a military absolutism, and allowed an early development of popular freedom.

From the economic standpoint, however, the climate favored grazing rather than tillage, and the mineral resources, aside from tin, were still of comparatively little use. England was a poor as well as a small country in 1500, needing to rely upon the energy of the people and upon their cooperation among themselves and with the government to win a place among the leading countries.

228. England’s chief advantage; her advanced organization.—Progress had been made, however, in various lines of which the importance was to appear as time went on. Serfdom had disappeared from the country districts, and production was stimulated by a fair reward for work well done. On the basis of their flourishing sheep industry the English had built up a cloth manufacture which had outgrown the narrow restrictions of the old gild system, and won the inestimable advantage of an organization like that of modern times; the industry was not so much ruled by antiquated custom or by the laws of politicians, as guided by specialists who had invested their capital in manufacture or trade, and who linked their fortunes with progress and extension.

229. Benefits of the English political constitution.—Finally, in summing up the advantages which the English of this period enjoyed, we must put as perhaps the chief and certainly a very important one, their political development. They were not only spared from the necessity of using their resources to repel a foreign invasion, they had attained to national unity among themselves; and they had a government which, however crude it may seem now, was much more closely in touch with the people than that of most states, and which proved capable of further development at comparatively slight expense, measured in men and money. The student who, in estimating the commercial assets of England during this period, left out of account the English constitution would go wide of the mark. Spanish inquisition and expulsions, Dutch corruption, French oppression and revolution, German or Italian disunion—to be free from these was worth great wealth.

230. Development of the English into an active commercial people about the fifteenth century.—The English historian, Seeley, combats the idea that it is “in the blood” of Englishmen, that it is “the genius of the race” to be a maritime and colonizing people. During the Middle Ages, in fact, the English were not great navigators, in spite of the facilities offered by the excellent harbors and the rivers penetrating far inland; English commerce was carried on largely by foreigners, as has been said in a previous section. The advance of the English from passive to active commerce came at the close of the Middle Ages, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In 1400 English merchandise was mostly borne in foreign ships; in 1500, it is said, English vessels carried more than half of all the cloth exported, and about three fourths of all the other wares.

231. Agencies helping to extend English commerce.—Among the influences aiding the development of English commerce in this period we must put the skilful diplomacy of the sovereigns of the Tudor line, which secured important privileges for English merchants in other countries, and the energy of the fellowship of Merchants Adventurers, which made the most of these privileges. The Merchants Adventurers differed from the Merchants Staplers (see section 126), in three important points, each of which marks an advance: they were all native Englishmen instead of foreigners; they exported manufactured goods, chiefly cloth, instead of raw materials; they were not bound to a fixed staple but “adventured” to different places. Though the association was not nearly so close as that of later stock companies, it was strong enough to protect the interests of English commerce against abuses by individual merchants and attacks by foreigners; and was especially helpful in pushing English trade along the coast of the North Sea (Flanders, Netherlands, Germany).

232. Enlargement of the commercial area.—Beyond these nearby districts English merchants were building up an important trade with Spain and Portugal in the South, and with the Scandinavian countries in the North, where the Hanseatic League was now unable to hold its own. English ships were voyaging further still. Bristol merchants like Sturmys and Canning built up merchant fleets of considerable size, and sent them as far as the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and the coasts of Iceland and Finland. A London grocer recorded in his diary about 1550 the voyage of an English vessel to “Russier” laden with “English bookes of the Scriptures” and with other wares which probably sold to better advantage.

Nor have we yet reached the limit of English voyages. American readers are familiar with the exploits of the Cabots, which began a series of frequent voyages to America, and which were followed by daring expeditions to the far North in search of a passage to India, either east or west. These distant voyages were too venturesome as yet to be the means of regular commerce; they sought rather discoveries or plunder. The English merchant who went outside the narrow circle of civilized Europe turned his hand chiefly to smuggling, kidnapping, robbery, and murder. John Hawkins shared with Queen Elizabeth the profits of the African slave trade, and was proud to add to his coat of arms a demi-Moor proper, bound with a cord, to record his achievements.

233. Relative standing of the English ports.—An idea of the relative rank in foreign commerce of the English ports can be gained from the proportions which they contributed to the customs revenue. The most striking fact is the immense lead of London over other ports, like that of New York in the United States now; it contributed half of the total in the time of Henry VII (say 1500). The second port, Southampton, fell in this period from 18 per cent to 9 per cent; the Flanders galleys had ceased coming, and the Guinea trade, by which it revived later, had not yet begun. Newcastle upon Tyne paid 5 per cent of the total, while the port of Bristol, destined to be later the great haven for the American trade, paid only 3 per cent and was exceeded by Boston. No other port than those named contributed as much as 3 per cent of the total customs revenue. The list of minor ports comprises some which had been great in the Middle Ages but which were now rapidly declining in relative importance (Ipswich, Sandwich, etc.), some, like Hull, which were destined to grow in importance, while great modern ports like Liverpool and Cardiff are not yet heard of at all.

234. Partition of the field of commerce among companies.—The reader will remember the discussion in a previous section of the difficulties experienced in this period when commerce was left to individuals, and the reasons for the association of the merchants who traded to any country. With that discussion in mind the organization of English commerce in the period of the later sixteenth century and following years will not seem so strange as it may appear to be at first. An ordinary Englishman could trade about 1600 with only three countries: France, Spain, and Portugal. Commerce with the rest of the world could be carried on only by members of specific companies, who had mapped out and occupied the routes of trade much as modern railroads divide the territory inside a country. Beginning in the North and going around the compass the companies were as follows: the Eastland Company, trading to Scandinavia and the Baltic; the Russia Company; the Merchant Adventurers, controlling trade from Denmark to France, where the free-trade gap appears; the Levant Company, trading in the Mediterranean; the Guinea or Africa Company; the East India Company, with its immense Asiatic field; and then the various companies familiar to students of American History, the Virginia Company, the Plymouth Company, later the Hudson’s Bay Company, etc. By means of the trade of these companies England marketed her surplus wares, especially her woolen fabrics, and imported the goods of which she stood in need—naval stores from the Baltic, manufactures and wine from the Continent, gold from Africa (cf. the English “guinea” of twenty-one shillings), Oriental products, and furs and fish from America. The colonies which had been founded in the New World were still too young to affect greatly the sum total of English trade in the early seventeenth century, but increased rapidly in commercial importance.

235. Characteristics of the companies.—In their organization and development these companies show such variety that it is impossible here to do more than indicate some common features of their history. They tended to one of the two types (joint-stock or regulated) which have been described, and sometimes wavered between the two. The monopoly which they enjoyed made them unpopular with the public, who thought that it was used to secure unduly high profits, and still more unpopular with private merchants who were prevented from sharing in the trade. These merchants who could not gain admission to the companies, because of lack of capital, or distance from London, formed a class of “interlopers” or smugglers trading inside the companies’ preserves. Toward the close of the seventeenth century the feeling against the companies grew so strong that reform was forced upon them; entrance fees were lowered or exclusive privileges were taken away and the trade was thrown open. Some of the companies continued to exist, however; the greatest of them all, the East India Company, kept its hold on the trade with Asia, and other companies continued as semi-public or private corporations after their chief privileges had been annulled. The Levant Company was not dissolved till 1825, and the Hudson’s Bay Company is still in existence, as an ordinary trading corporation.

236. Rapid growth of commerce in the eighteenth century.—The period in which the companies were most active, roughly the seventeenth century, was preparatory to the period of individual enterprise which in the eighteenth century brought England to the leading position among the commercial states. The advance is shown by the following table, giving in millions of pounds sterling (and a rough equivalent in dollars) the annual average of trade in the different periods:

The figures show that the foreign trade of England grew between five and six fold in the course of the century; that it advanced considerably in the first half, but moved with the speed of a revolution in the second.

237. Relative share of different continents in English commerce.—An indication of the direction of the trade, and of the relative importance of different elements in it, is given in the following tables, the figures again being simplified to round millions. The commerce of England was distributed as follows:

The student may perhaps need the caution that he should not attempt to learn outright such statistics as are given here; the attempt would be a waste of energy. The figures give more concisely than any other method of description the measurement of a country’s commerce, and are valuable for reference. They must, however, be translated into a more simple expression of facts before an ordinary student can grasp their significance and hold it permanently in mind. In the few lines of text following the first table the author has suggested the most obvious conclusions to be drawn from it, and will point out others applicable here.

The trade with Europe was still by far the most important part of English commerce, being equal to more than all the rest of the trade together. It grew steadily throughout the eighteenth century, as the figures show, but still it was a less important part of the whole in 1800 than it had been in 1700. At the earlier date other continents furnished but one fourth of the total; in 1800 they furnished nearly one half. The two most important, America and Asia, were coming up with nearly equal speed, their commerce increasing roughly fivefold in the course of the century. America had a clear lead over its older rival, while Africa counted for very little in the total.

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