Volume 1, Chapter 9, British mercantilism over Virginia
Rule in the European governments of the 17th century was exercised not only by the great landowners through feudalism,
but also by groups of merchants and capitalists specially privileged and subsidized by the state
in the system that later came to be known as mercantilism.
The essence of mercantilism was the granting or selling of monopolistic privilege and subsidy by the state to favored groups of businessmen.
Thus, crown, feudal nobility and privileged capitalists exercised rule over the exploited remainder of the populace,
and Capitalists, which included the bulk of merchants and capitalists who sought profit
by voluntary service in the marketplace rather than by obtaining privileges from the coercive
power of the state.
From the beginning, government meddling, especially by the English government, fastened the mercantile
system on the American colonies.
As early as 1619, the Crown imposed a duty of one shilling per pound of tobacco imported
by the Virginia Company and, in 1622, prohibited any tobacco from being grown in England or
Ireland. The motivation for the latter act was not to benefit Virginia, but to increase
the revenue seized by the Crown. Domestic tobacco producers, after all, paid no customs
duty. In 1621, the Crown indeed delivered a grave blow to the Company and to Virginia
by prohibiting the colonist from exporting tobacco, or any other commodity, to any foreign
country without first landing in England and paying customs duty there.
It was in vain that the company protested that other English subjects and companies
were allowed to sell their goods in the best markets, that the edict would cripple the
The tobacco-cattle trade with Ireland, that many Virginia products were not saleable in
England. The sweetener for the company in this network of restriction was the granting
in 1622 to the Virginia Company of the monopoly privilege of importing tobacco into England
and Ireland. The supposedly liberal Sir Edwin Sandys had led the Intra Company fight to
to accept the monopoly, and he and his faction were appointed to manage the monopoly at extravagant salaries.
In the period of the Republic, Parliament, as we have seen, hardly reluctant to impose mercantile restrictions for the benefit of merchant groups,
began the famous series of navigation acts.
In 1650, it outlawed foreign ships from trading in the colonies without a license, thus striking a blow at efficient Dutch shipping.
The following year, it decreed that no goods from Asia, Africa or America could be imported into England or its colonies except when the owner and most of the crew were English or English-American.
It also prohibited imports of foreign goods in entrepôt trade from countries where the product did not originate, prohibited the importation of fish by aliens and outlawed all participation of foreign ships in the English coastal trade.
These were blows to the efficiency and prosperity of interregional trade and to the property, actual and potential, of the colonies.
all for the special privileges accorded to inefficient ship owners.
To enforce these sweeping prohibitions required a bureaucratic apparatus mighty for the time and place,
including a network of paid government informers.
So strict was the enforcement that not enough English vessels existed to replace the outlawed Dutch shipping,
and grave complaints of shortages spread throughout the English colonies in the Americas, including the West Indies.
The rebellious Virginia Assembly asserted in 1655 that freedom of trade would be maintained and demanded that sea captains pay bond not to molest Dutch or other foreign shipping.
England, however, continued to tighten its mercantile restrictions, especially after monarchal rule had been restored.
Thus the Navigation Act of 1660 provided that no goods, whatever, could be imported into or exported from any English colony except in English-owned ships,
of which at least three-fourths of the crew must be English, and compelled certain important enumerated colonial products, including tobacco, to be shipped only to England, thus outlawing colonial export trade in these goods to any other country.
All ships leaving the colonies were required to give bond that they would not ship the goods elsewhere.
The Navigation Act of 1662 extended these privileges.
All future ships not built in English shipyards were now to be excluded from this colonial
trade.
The mercantilist structure of the Navigation Acts was completed in 1662 with the exclusion
of all European goods, except for a few commodities, from the colonial market, except as shipped
from English Ports and in English Built Ships. Colonial governors were charged with the responsibility
of enforcement of the navigation laws, but in practice the power was delegated to a naval
officer appointed in England. The navigation laws continued to be tightened still further.
The Navigation Act of 1673 moved against the attempt of the planters to maintain some of
The act placed a prohibitive tax of one penny on each pound of tobacco shipped from one colony to another, and appointed customs commissioners to collect the duty. This act crippled the flourishing tobacco trade with New England. More sweeping was the Navigation Act of 1696, which confined all colonial trade to England.
English built ships, enlarged the powers of the colonial naval officers and gave the provincial
custom officers the right of forcible entry, which they already enjoyed in England.
The act led to the establishment of vice admiralty courts in the colonies to enforce the regulations.
Operating under Roman law, a vice admiralty court could try and convict without having
to Submit the Cases to Colonial Juries, which were almost unanimous in their sympathy with
any arraigned smugglers.
We have mentioned the drastic fall in the prices of tobacco in the 17th century.
Much of this drop was due not to the great expansion of the Virginia tobacco crop, but
to the Navigation Acts and their smashing of the export market for tobacco in Holland
and other countries in Europe.
Before the Navigation Acts, the Dutch had paid three pence per pound for Virginia tobacco.
After the Acts, the tobacco price had fallen to half a penny per pound by 1667.
The fall was aggravated by the heavy losses of the English tobacco fleet in the wars with
Since Holland, the Dutch Wars of 1664-67 and 1672-73, to offset the crisis, Virginia turned to domestic mercantilism, compulsory cartels to raise tobacco prices, but since such an increase could only be accomplished by coerced restrictions on tobacco acreage, this meant that tobacco markets were not being widened and prosperity could not be restored
In a compulsory tobacco cartel, some tobacco producers could only benefit at the expense of others and of the rest of the colony's population.
In brief, quotas based on existing production must privilege the inefficient grower and the large grower about to fall behind in the competitive race and discriminate against the efficient and the new up-and-coming planters.
In the plant-cutting riots of 1682, the planters benefiting from the quotas organized bands of vandals to go from plantation to plantation, destroying the tobacco crop.
The protection from foreign competition accorded by the Navigation Acts to British shippers not only ruined the Virginian's tobacco market and that of neighboring Maryland's planters as well,
It also raised the price of the gamut of imported goods now confined to British ships.
Thus, Virginians suffered doubly from the imperial restrictions.
English enforcement of the Navigation Acts was unfortunately rigorous, especially in the southern colonies.
Three wars of aggression against the Dutch between 1652 and 1675 drove the Dutch,
The more efficient of England's competitors, out of the Chesapeake trade.
The varied geography of the Chesapeake Bay area made enforcement easy.
The English Navy needed only to control the narrow entrance of the bay
to keep foreign ships from buying or selling to the Virginia or Maryland plantations.
Thus, the English orientation of Virginia trade and finance was compelled by the Navigation Acts,
Acts, which gravely injured Virginians and retarded Virginia development. Furthermore,
the canker of slavery was also due partly to the Navigation Acts. The economic pressure
of the Acts on the planters led them to look to slavery as a way to cut cost by exploiting
forced labor. Moreover, the English government forbade Virginia from restricting the infamous
was slave trade, the monopoly of which had by the wars against the Dutch been assured
to British traders. John Bland, a London merchant who had traded with the Dutch in Virginia
tobacco presented the excellent case of the Chesapeake planters against the Navigation
Acts, but unfortunately to no avail. Added to the devastation caused by the Navigation
in the 16th century.
The first tax tax in the 16th century was the burden of increased taxes.
In addition to the crippling penny a pound on all coastal tobacco trade imposed in 1673,
the hated poll tax was reimposed.
In his first years of rule, Governor Berkeley had abolished the poll tax, which being levied
equally on all particularly burdened the poor strata of the population.
In 1674, however, when Berkeley reintroduced the poll tax, a number of farmers assembled
with their arms in Kent County to prevent collection of the new taxes by force if necessary.
This incipient tax rebellion was dispersed upon Berkeley's proclamation that tax rebels
would be accounted guilty of treason and punished accordingly.
Lately adding to the grievances of most Virginians was the steady accumulation ever since his
reappointment of absolute rule in the hands of Governor Berkeley and his clique of allies
in the great planter oligarchy.
No sooner was he reappointed governor than Berkeley seized control of the House of Burgesses.
He filled the seats with his own henchmen and repudiated the Virginia tradition of frequent
elections.
In fact, he refused to call any election for the House of Burgesses from 1661 on and only
called meetings of the assembly at his pleasure.
Any recalcitrant Burgesses were bribed with public offices, all of which were appointed
by the Governor.
Berkeley's absolute control of the Council, always dominated by the Governor, was assured
by the fact that the bulk of the councillors were allowed to die without being replaced,
were not called together or were out of reach. Now Berkeley was in full control of both houses
of the assembly. In 1670 Berkeley and the assembly further tightened oligarchic control
by taking the franchise away from non-land owners. Berkeley also assumed supreme judicial
Oligarchic control by the leading planters over local government was further tightened.
The vestries, for example, became self-perpetuating local governing bodies.
County courts made up of the great planters met in secret to impose the county levy, which
more and more placed tax burdens on the poor.
Exorbitant fees were paid to sheriffs, clerks and other local officials out of these taxes
and there was considerable graft involved in the heavy expenditures needed to construct
forts westward on the rivers. Power is always used to acquire wealth and here was no exception.
Berkeley and his allies granted themselves the best lands, most of the public offices
and a monopoly of the lucrative fur trade with the Indians.
Another of Berkeley's tyrannical actions was to have the assembly reestablish the Anglican
Church and also to bring pressure for a governmental college that would include Anglican teaching
of the youth.
Whenever anyone in the American colonies in the 17th century decided to embark on a policy
The Theory of Tyranny and Religious Persecution The first group to bear the brunt was usually
the hapless Quakers, of all sects the least devoted to idolatry of church or state.
Upon embarking on the dictatorial rule of his second term, Governor Berkeley did not
hesitate to revive the old laws against dissenters and naturally concentrated on the handful
of Quakers. An English Quaker, George Wilson, upon arriving at Jamestown in 1661, was thrust
into a dungeon, scourged and kept in irons until death. While dying, he wrote in a truly
saintly manner, For all their cruelty, I can truly say, father, forgive them, they know
know not what they do.
The previous year, 1660, the assembly had passed an act outlawing an unreasonable and
turbulent sort of people commonly called Quakers who are endeavoring to destroy religion, laws,
communities and all bonds of civil society.
Apparently these bonds of civil society were to rest not on voluntary consent but on the
The Dungeon and the Torture Rack In 1662, Berkeley decreed heavy fines on any non-conformist
who refused to have their children baptized and threatened to exile any ship masters who
brought any dissenters into the colony.
The next year, two Quaker women entered Virginia, spreading the message in the colony.
The two, Mary Tompkins and Alice Ambrose, were imprisoned and inflicted with 32 lashes
from a whip of nine cords. After this, their property was seized and they were expelled
from Virginia. It stands to reason that a man with this sort of attitude toward religious
liberty and search for truth should be vehemently hostile toward education, freedom of inquiry,
and Individual and Collective Search for the Truth.
We are fortunate to have on record, however, a classic statement by Berkeley revealing
the despot's fury toward learning and free inquiry.
When asked in 1671 by the Crown what he had been doing to instruct the people in the Christian
religion, Berkeley in the course of his answer declared,
I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years, for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sext into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government. God keep us from both.
Learning and culture apparently were to be reserved to the safe hands of the ruling class and were not to be permitted the ruled who might learn enough to want to cast off their chains.
The inherent conflicts within Virginia's society, as well as between Virginia and England, were further aggravated by an enormous land grant made by Charles II to Lord Hopton and a group of his friends, including Berkeley's brother, Sir John, in 1649.
This was a grant of over 5 million acres, constituting the partially settled northern neck of Virginia between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers.
The Hoppen grant was assigned to Lord Culpepper in 1689.
Even more startling was the joint proprietary grant of all Virginia in 1673 to two royal favorites,
Lord's Arlington and Culpepper, for a term of 31 years.
The latter grant generated fierce opposition in Virginia because, for one thing, the Crown had been collecting the quit rents on Virginia lands in haphazard fashion,
where as Lord Culpepper and Arlington could be expected to make the best out of their
feudal grant.
The new proprietors were given the power to establish churches and schools, to appoint
ministers and teachers, and they were given the power to appoint the sheriffs and other
officers to grant lands and to create towns and counties.
Suddenly the Virginians were now confronted with the specter of absolute proprietary feudal
rule, as well as the deprivation of all their liberties in their considerable
measure of home rule. Indeed, no guarantees for the rights of Virginians
were included in the Arlington Culpepper Grant. The alarmed assembly met the
following year, 1674, and protested that the grants would threaten the rights of
the people, impose upon them new rents and dues, new grants and levies, and
and deprived them of the present protection of their rights and properties.
The Virginians insisted that they wanted no privileged proprietors, whether individuals
or chartered company, standing between them and the Crown and exploiting them still more.
At heavy expense, the assembly sent commissioners to London to ask for removal of the grant.
The negotiators eventually persuaded Lords Arlington and Culpepper to abandon all claims
In the course of the negotiations, the commissioners and the two proprietors agreed that Virginia
should buy back the vast northern net grant for four hundred pounds to each proprietor,
and that the quit rents on the remaining lands should continue to be paid to the crown, thus
ending feudal quit rents in the colony. The proprietary grant of 1673 was to be revoked
and no further grants made without consulting the Virginia Council. A new liberal charter
The Charter drawn up by the King's Solicitor General declared that the taxation provision contains that which we humbly conceive to be the right of Virginians, as well as all other Englishmen, which is, not to be taken into account by the Government of Virginia, and that no taxes could be imposed on Virginia without consent of the House of Burgesses.
by their consent, expressed by their representatives.
Unfortunately, this new charter was blocked upon the outbreak of rebellion in Virginia in 1676.
Neither did the losses suffered by Berkeley's administration in the Dutch War during 1673
endear the government to the people of Virginia.
One of the principal motives of the aggressive English war against the Dutch beginning in 1672
In 1892 was to drive the Dutch out of the Virginia trade. The Dutch attacked Virginia
and succeeded in sinking 11 Virginia merchant men laden with tobacco. Neither the war nor
the losses were calculated to gain the support of the populace. Indeed, many Virginians,
oppressed by English rule, welcomed the Dutch invasion and the prospective shift of sovereignty
to the Netherlands. If we consider then the situation in Virginia in the mid-1670s, we
can see the accumulation of grievances and the aggravation of conflicts. The sudden feudal
proprietary grant of all Virginia to Lords Arlington and Culpeper in 1673, the exclusive
of Landed Property Franchise in 1670, the reimposition of the poll tax in 1674, and
the general increase in taxation, and the establishment of tight rule by the Berkeley
clique.
To these we might add Berkeley's persecution of the dissenters, virtually driving them
out of the colony.
Tents of revolt and mutiny against Berkeley began to emerge in the 1670s.
On December 12, 1673, fourteen people met at Lons Creek Parish Church in Surrey County
to protest against excessive taxation and to insist that they would thereafter refuse
to pay their taxes.
Here was one of the first tax rebellions or organized refusals to pay taxes in America.
On January 3rd, the very day that Berkeley's judges issued a writ to haul the 14 into court
for sedition, the group met again in a field and one of their leaders, Roger Delk, declared
that we will burn all before one shall suffer. Berkeley lost no time in hauling the rebels
In April 1674, Swann was brought before the Council and General Court of Virginia
for his dangerous contempt in unlawful project and his wicked persisting in the same. Berkeley
was forced, however, by popular resentment at the treatment, according to the tax rebels,
to remit all the fines some months later. Many of the tax strikers were prominent landowners
of the county. Matthew Swan was possibly related to Colonel Thomas Swan, a member of the Council.
Ludwig's father had been a member of the House of Burgesses.
Several other protesters were related to former Burgesses, and one was relative of one of
the judges issuing a writ for their arrest.
Furthermore, a near uprising was called off in 1674, and two mutinies occurred in the
following year.
All in all, the stage was set for one of the most important American armed rebellions against
English Authority in the Colonial Era, Bacon's Rebellion of 1676.