WEBVTT NOTE 34. The Rise of the Fisheries and the Merchants 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Volume 1, Chapter 34, The Rise of the Fisheries and the Merchants 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:13.000 Attempts of the government to subsidize the beginning of fisheries also proved fruitless. 3 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:21.000 During the 1630s, fish were either imported or came from Englishmen fishing off Newfoundland and the main coast, 4 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:27.000 but the Civil War of the 1640s crippled the English fishing fleet. 5 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:33.400 New England fishermen, without need of government coercion, expanded their activities to fill 6 00:00:33.400 --> 00:00:40.100 the gap. There sprang up, along the New England coast, communities of fishermen-farmers who 7 00:00:40.100 --> 00:00:47.680 fished and farmed in alternate seasons. These settlements in such towns as Marblehead, Nantucket, 8 00:00:47.680 --> 00:00:56.920 In the Isles of Shoals were conspicuously non-Puritan. In 1644, for example, not one 9 00:00:56.920 --> 00:01:04.540 resident of Marblehead qualified as a free man. In short, not one was a church member. 10 00:01:04.540 --> 00:01:12.040 In 1647, in fact, so solicitous was the general court of the morals of the Isle of Shoals 11 00:01:12.040 --> 00:01:15.760 that no women were allowed to live in the town. 12 00:01:15.760 --> 00:01:20.920 The growth of the fisheries greatly expanded the opportunities for trade, and merchants 13 00:01:20.920 --> 00:01:28.360 came in to market the catch and equip the cargoes. Indeed, the Navigation Act of 1651, 14 00:01:28.360 --> 00:01:34.440 extending to fish, the ban against foreign vessels carrying colonial products, was put 15 00:01:34.440 --> 00:01:40.080 through by the London merchants to seize the lucrative carrying trade from Dutch and French 16 00:01:40.080 --> 00:01:47.080 The New England merchants purchased the catch from the fishermen and shipped it to London importers. 17 00:01:47.080 --> 00:01:51.080 These importers were the major entrepreneurs of the trade. 18 00:01:51.080 --> 00:01:55.080 They owned, planned and financed the shipment from the beginning. 19 00:01:55.080 --> 00:02:00.080 Similarly, London exporters of manufactured goods to New England 20 00:02:00.080 --> 00:02:06.080 financed the retained ownership of the shipments until sold in the colony. 21 00:02:06.080 --> 00:02:12.440 So important were close ties to London that those New England merchants who had family 22 00:02:12.440 --> 00:02:19.400 or friendship connections with London merchants were the ones who flourished in the trade. 23 00:02:19.400 --> 00:02:24.800 New England merchants themselves financed fish exports to the southern colonies. 24 00:02:24.800 --> 00:02:32.640 By 1660, New England was the fish leader of the colonies and fish production was flourishing. 25 00:02:32.640 --> 00:02:38.260 From the fisheries, the newly burgeoning body of Massachusetts merchants expanded the caring 26 00:02:38.260 --> 00:02:41.200 trade to many other products. 27 00:02:41.200 --> 00:02:47.280 The merchants shipped New England agricultural products, including horses, cattle, and timber 28 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:48.880 abroad. 29 00:02:48.880 --> 00:02:54.800 They imported wine from Spain and East Atlantic Islands and sugar from the West Indies. 30 00:02:54.800 --> 00:02:59.640 They carried English manufactured goods to Virginia and North Carolina, buying in turn 31 00:02:59.640 --> 00:03:18.640 A particular feature of New England shipping was the triangular trade, exporting timber and agricultural products to the canaries, transporting slaves from there to the West Indies and then importing sugar from those islands. 32 00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:27.640 During the 1640s and 1650s, the impact of the English Civil War on New England trade was a shifting one. 33 00:03:27.640 --> 00:03:34.960 In 1645 the merchants drove a free trade bill through the Massachusetts General Court, allowing 34 00:03:34.960 --> 00:03:40.400 trade with ships of all countries. This was accomplished over the protest of many of the 35 00:03:40.400 --> 00:03:46.000 leading magistrates of the colony who were interested more in the Puritan cause than 36 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:53.480 in freedom of trade. Later, however, the Navigation Acts forced Massachusetts to prohibit trade 37 00:03:53.480 --> 00:04:00.480 with France and Holland, and over merchants' protests, Massachusetts obeyed Parliament 38 00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:07.120 by outlawing trade with those colonies that remained royalist, specifically Virginia and 39 00:04:07.120 --> 00:04:14.120 the West Indies. Returning the favor, Parliament in 1644 exempted New England trade from all 40 00:04:14.720 --> 00:04:21.720 English import and export duties. One of the most important economic consequences of the 41 00:04:21.720 --> 00:04:28.720 The Puritan Revolution for New England was its impact upon the timber industry. 42 00:04:28.720 --> 00:04:35.400 The expansion of New England shipping had given rise to a flourishing shipbuilding industry. 43 00:04:35.400 --> 00:04:42.000 It had also spurred the growth of one of the most important New England industries, timber, 44 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:48.880 especially mast trees for ships, which flourished particularly on the Piscataqua, a region of 45 00:04:48.880 --> 00:04:54.600 Massachusetts now in New Hampshire. But the biggest single impetus to the growth of the 46 00:04:54.600 --> 00:05:02.200 mast tree industry was not so much the natural growth of shipbuilding as the huge war contracts 47 00:05:02.200 --> 00:05:10.560 suddenly begun in 1655. In that year, Oliver Cromwell launched the expedition that captured 48 00:05:10.560 --> 00:05:17.400 Jamaica from Spain. Fearful that the Baltic trade, the largest source of timber and mast 49 00:05:17.400 --> 00:05:24.400 for England would be cut off by the war, Cromwell gave orders for the stockpiling of timber in New England. 50 00:05:24.400 --> 00:05:34.400 But more than excessive caution lay at the root of this stockpiling program, the appropriation of special privilege was even more in evidence. 51 00:05:34.400 --> 00:05:44.400 For during the Commonwealth era, many Puritan merchants of New England returned home to England and rose to leading positions in the government. 52 00:05:44.400 --> 00:05:50.400 Several were even involved with the awarding of contracts for the Jamaica Expedition. 53 00:05:50.400 --> 00:06:01.400 These merchants, still deeply connected with New England trade, took care to grant themselves and their associates enormous and lucrative timber contracts. 54 00:06:01.400 --> 00:06:11.400 Thus, the head of the Jamaica Expedition was Major General Robert Sedgwick, one of New England's biggest merchants. 55 00:06:11.400 --> 00:06:17.400 The Commissioner of the English Navy was Edward Hopkins, another leading Massachusetts merchant. 56 00:06:17.400 --> 00:06:25.400 Commissioner of Trade was Rear Admiral Nehemiah Bourne, a leading Massachusetts shipwright. 57 00:06:25.400 --> 00:06:31.400 Another Commissioner of the Navy was the Massachusetts shipwright, Francis Willoughby. 58 00:06:31.400 --> 00:06:38.400 And Treasurer of the Navy and direct awarder of the naval contracts was Richard Hutchinson, 59 00:06:38.400 --> 00:06:51.400 by 1660, all the general patterns of New England trade and production were set for more than the next hundred years. 60 00:06:51.400 --> 00:07:05.400 These included not only the trade and production outlined above, but also the emergence of Boston as the overwhelmingly dominant trading center for Massachusetts and for all of New England. 61 00:07:05.400 --> 00:07:14.400 The produce of agriculture, fish, and forest from the rest of New England was sent to Boston, 62 00:07:14.400 --> 00:07:21.080 whence it was shipped abroad. The other towns became secondary and subsidiary centers, feeding 63 00:07:21.080 --> 00:07:27.320 the main metropolis from the produce gathered from their outlying areas. Similarly, almost 64 00:07:27.320 --> 00:07:33.320 all imports into New England came to Boston. From here they were shipped to the rest of 65 00:07:33.320 --> 00:07:40.320 of the Colony. Of the 20,000 residents of Massachusetts, fully 3,000 lived in Boston. 66 00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:47.200 To a lesser extent, Charlestown and Salem were also leading trade centers. In these 67 00:07:47.200 --> 00:07:54.200 three towns, being a merchant was a full-time occupation, whereas in the smaller urban areas, 68 00:07:55.040 --> 00:08:01.920 trade was a part-time calling. As early as the mid-1640s, the expanding and influential 69 00:08:01.920 --> 00:08:25.920 The merchants tended to be restive about the theocracy and its persecution of heresy. Trade and fanatical intolerance do not mix well. The trader tends to want peace, wider markets and freedom of movement. Anything else, any blocking of these channels is bad for business, bad for trade. 70 00:08:25.920 --> 00:08:39.920 In Massachusetts, the merchants saw that persecution blocked immigration, therefore the expansion of trade, and injured Massachusetts' reputation in England regarding credit and connections. 71 00:08:39.920 --> 00:08:54.920 In 1645, it was a group of eminent merchants, headed by Sedgwick, Bourne and Emanuel Downing, who led a petition for repeal of the virtual ban against strangers unacceptable to the government, 72 00:08:54.920 --> 00:09:01.120 and against the expulsion of the Baptist, but the church elders thundered against leniency 73 00:09:01.120 --> 00:09:03.440 and prevailed. 74 00:09:03.440 --> 00:09:09.280 We have seen the brusque fate meted out by Massachusetts to the petition in 1646 for 75 00:09:09.280 --> 00:09:15.400 greater religious freedom and broader franchise by Dr. Robert Child and other merchants and 76 00:09:15.400 --> 00:09:19.620 eminent non-Puritan church members of the colony. 77 00:09:19.620 --> 00:09:26.300 Six years later, the powerful Manorial Lord of Springfield, the fur trader William Pinchon, 78 00:09:26.300 --> 00:09:31.920 returned to England after his book, Critical of the Massachusetts Persecutions, was publicly 79 00:09:31.920 --> 00:09:38.980 burned by the authorities, and the Boston merchant Anthony Stoddard was jailed for insolence 80 00:09:38.980 --> 00:09:40.720 to the government. 81 00:09:40.720 --> 00:09:45.620 The merchants generally opposed the official adoption of theocracy by the general court 82 00:09:45.620 --> 00:09:57.420 When in 1651, it endorsed the Puritan confession of faith and discipline that had been drawn up by the Synod of Massachusetts five years earlier. 83 00:09:57.420 --> 00:10:06.220 This does not mean that the merchants were flaming libertarians. Indeed, they hardly endorsed the brutal persecution of the Quakers. 84 00:10:06.220 --> 00:10:12.220 But all in all, the merchants were the liberal wing of the Massachusetts community. 85 00:10:12.220 --> 00:10:18.780 Their softness was duly denounced by the Puritan zealot Edward Johnson. Being so taken up 86 00:10:18.780 --> 00:10:25.180 with a large profit, they would have had the commonwealth tolerate diverse kinds of sinful 87 00:10:25.180 --> 00:10:30.700 opinion to entice men to come and sit down with us that their purses might be filled 88 00:10:30.700 --> 00:10:37.700 with coin, civil government with contention, and the churches of our Lord Christ with errors. 89 00:10:37.700 --> 00:10:45.700 And so trade, economics, became increasingly a solvent of fanatical zeal. 90 00:10:45.700 --> 00:10:52.700 By their very presence alone, the merchants were a disrupting element in the would-be Puritan monolith. 91 00:10:52.700 --> 00:10:58.700 Many of the new merchants of the 1650s were not even Puritans at all. 92 00:10:58.700 --> 00:11:03.700 For example, Thomas Breeden, Colonel Thomas Temple, Richard Wharton. 93 00:11:03.700 --> 00:11:18.700 and whether inside or outside the church they brought with them a worldly, urbane and cosmopolitan spirit that weakened what the Puritans regarded as the moral fiber of the younger generation. 94 00:11:18.700 --> 00:11:31.700 It is no wonder that in 1659 the general court was so concerned as to proclaim a day of humiliation because of the great sensuality under our present enjoyments.