A hogshead (a large wooden shipping cask) of Barbados sugar in 1700 carried the whole Atlantic economy inside it. It was grown by Africans bought on the Gold Coast with English cloth and Indian cottons, fed with salted cod and flour from New England and Pennsylvania, packed in barrels made from New England timber, and shipped to England, because a law of Parliament let sugar go only to England or another English colony.
How the Atlantic economy worked
European colonies existed to produce commodities, goods that sold in Europe at high prices: sugar, tobacco, rice and indigo from plantations; furs and deerskins from Native hunters; fish, timber and naval stores from the north. In return, Europe sent manufactured goods (woolen cloth, iron tools, guns, ceramics), and by the 1700s colonists bought so many British goods that historians speak of a consumer revolution. Tea, once a luxury, became an everyday drink in colonial households.
The textbook picture is the triangular trade: manufactured goods from Britain to West Africa, enslaved Africans to the Americas, and sugar or tobacco back to Britain. Slave ships from Bristol and Liverpool did sail that triangle, and some Rhode Island ships carried rum to Africa. But most colonial trade ran back and forth on two-way routes. Chesapeake tobacco went straight to Britain; New England ships shuttled between Boston and the West Indies, trading fish, grain and lumber for molasses and sugar. Think of the triangle as one route in a web.
Labor was the most valuable import. Plantation colonies needed workers that Europe would not supply, so the trade in people was the core of the system. Between 1501 and 1866 about 12.5 million Africans were forced onto slave ships, and about 10.7 million survived the voyage, called the Middle Passage, during which captives were chained below decks for weeks. Most went to Brazil and the Caribbean; about 388,000 landed directly in mainland North America. England's slave trade grew after the crown chartered the Royal African Company (reorganized in 1672) and Parliament opened the trade to all English merchants in 1698.
American Indians were traded too. From the 1670s, Carolina merchants supplied guns to Native allies such as the Westo and later the Yamasee and Creek, who raided other nations for captives. Historian Alan Gallay estimates that tens of thousands of Native people from the Southeast, between 24,000 and 51,000, were captured and sold by English traders and their Native allies from 1670 to 1715, many shipped from Charles Town to the West Indies. New England sold hundreds of Native captives into Caribbean slavery after King Philip's War (1675 to 1676). Trader abuses and the debts traders used to coerce Native hunters helped provoke the Yamasee War of 1715, which nearly destroyed South Carolina and collapsed the Indian slave trade there.
What trade did to American Indian communities
Native peoples did not only suffer the Atlantic economy; they joined it on their own terms where they could, and it changed them.
New goods changed daily life and work. Metal kettles, knives, axes and needles were more durable than clay, stone and bone; woolen blankets dried faster than furs; guns changed hunting and war. Native buyers were demanding customers who rejected cloth of the wrong color or weight. But over time trade shifted labor toward producing pelts and skins for market, and many communities came to depend on European goods, powder and gunsmiths they could not make themselves. Traders also sold alcohol, which Native leaders repeatedly asked colonial governments to restrict.
Competition for furs reshaped power. As beaver ran out near their homelands, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), armed with Dutch guns traded at Fort Orange, fought the Beaver Wars for access to furs and for captives to replace their epidemic dead. In 1649 they destroyed the Wendat (Huron) confederacy, France's main trading partner, and its survivors scattered across the Great Lakes.
Horses and guns moved in opposite directions. Horses spread north from Spanish New Mexico, especially after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 put Spanish herds into Pueblo hands and onto trade routes. Guns spread west from French and English traders. Where the two met on the Great Plains in the 1700s, peoples such as the Comanche and Lakota reorganized around mounted buffalo hunting and became powerful raiders and traders.
Disease traveled the trade routes. Smallpox reached the Great Lakes and New England in 1633 and 1634, and epidemics in the late 1630s cut the Wendat population roughly in half. Around 1696 to 1700, a smallpox epidemic spread across the Southeast along the paths of the Indian slave trade. The Cherokee lost perhaps half their people to smallpox in 1738. These were radical demographic shifts: survivors of shattered nations merged into new confederacies such as the Creek and Catawba. Historian Robbie Ethridge calls the region a "shatter zone," a landscape remade by the combination of epidemics, the slave trade and guns.
Mercantilism and an empire run by fits and starts
Britain organized its colonies around mercantilism, the belief that a nation's wealth and power depended on exporting more than it imported and building up gold and silver. In that view colonies existed to supply raw materials the mother country lacked, to buy its manufactures, and to keep trade, ships and sailors inside the empire rather than enriching rivals.
Parliament put the theory into law in the Navigation Acts:
| Law | What it did |
|---|---|
| 1651 and 1660 | Colonial trade had to be carried in English or colonial ships, crewed mostly by English subjects, which was aimed at Dutch shippers. "Enumerated" goods, including sugar, tobacco, cotton and indigo, could be shipped only to England or other English colonies. Rice (1704) and furs (1721) were added later. |
| 1663 (Staple Act) | European goods bound for the colonies had to pass through England first, where they paid duties. |
| 1673 (Plantation Duty Act) | Duties on enumerated goods shipped from one colony to another, closing the loophole of sending tobacco to another colony and on to Europe untaxed, and royal customs collectors in America to collect them. The money went to the crown. |
| 1696 | Stronger enforcement: vice-admiralty courts, where judges ruled on smuggling cases without juries, and a new Board of Trade to oversee the colonies. |
The laws gave something back. Chesapeake planters had a guaranteed market for tobacco, Parliament paid bounties (a fixed government payment to producers for each unit they made) on naval stores and indigo, the Royal Navy protected colonial shipping, and colonial-built ships counted as English, which made New England shipbuilding boom. Most colonists accepted the system when it was loosely enforced.
The tightening, 1675 to 1689. Charles II and James II tried to turn a patchwork of chartered colonies into a centralized, hierarchical empire. A royal committee, the Lords of Trade, began supervising the colonies in 1675. Massachusetts, which had ignored the Navigation Acts, lost its charter in 1684, and in 1686 James II combined the New England colonies into the Dominion of New England, later adding New York and New Jersey. Its governor, Sir Edmund Andros, ruled with an appointed council and no elected assembly, levied taxes, limited town meetings, questioned colonists' land titles, and enforced the trade laws. When news arrived that James II had been overthrown in England's Glorious Revolution, Bostonians jailed Andros in April 1689. Rebels also seized power in New York (Leisler's Rebellion) and Maryland. The new monarchs, William and Mary, dissolved the Dominion. Massachusetts got a new charter in 1691 with a royal governor but an elected assembly, a compromise between imperial control and self-government.
Conflict with American Indians disrupted imperial plans as well. In Virginia, Bacon's Rebellion (1676) began when frontier settlers demanded war on Native peoples and accused Governor William Berkeley of protecting his friends' fur trade; the crown answered by sending soldiers and royal commissioners. After the Yamasee War, South Carolina's colonists overthrew the proprietors' government in 1719 and asked the king to rule them directly; the crown sent a royal governor in 1721 and bought out the proprietors in 1729.
The loosening, 1720s to 1750s. Britain then mostly stopped trying. Under Robert Walpole, Britain's leading minister from 1721 to 1742, the government valued peace and the trade flowing into British ports more than strict obedience, and customs posts went to political allies who often stayed in England. The Molasses Act of 1733 placed a duty of six pence (half a shilling) a gallon on molasses imported from the French and Dutch West Indies, to protect British sugar planters, but New England merchants smuggled or bribed customs officers, and little was collected. This period of lax enforcement was later called salutary neglect, a phrase from Edmund Burke's 1775 speech on conciliation with the colonies. Meanwhile, colonial assemblies gained power by controlling taxes and governors' salaries. Wars with France (1689 to 1697, 1702 to 1713, 1744 to 1748) also made Britain need colonial cooperation, which made it reluctant to push. When Britain tightened control again after 1754, colonists who had spent decades governing themselves resisted (Topic 3.3).
Worked examples
Identify ONE pattern that connects the Navigation Acts of the 1660s and the Molasses Act of 1733.
Show solution
Answer. Both laws applied mercantilist goals, keeping colonial trade inside the empire and favoring British producers and shippers, and both were weakly enforced: colonial merchants evaded them through smuggling, and Britain lacked the officials or the will to stop it until it tightened control in the 1690s and again after 1754.
Why this works. A "pattern" is something the two developments share, not a description of each one. This answer names two shared features, purpose (mercantilism) and result (evasion and uneven enforcement), and supports both with specifics. Topic 3.3 continues the same pattern when the Sugar Act of 1764 cut the molasses duty but began enforcing it.
And Wee do by these presents give and grant unto you full power and authority by and with the advise and consent of our said Councill, or the major part of them, to impose assess and raise and levy rates and taxes as you shall find necessary for the support of the government within our territory and dominion of New England . . .
King James II, Commission to Sir Edmund Andros as governor of the Dominion of New England, 1688
a. Briefly describe ONE way the excerpt reflects British imperial goals in the late 1600s.
b. Briefly explain ONE reason the British government created the Dominion of New England.
c. Briefly explain ONE way colonists responded to British imperial policies between 1686 and 1754.
Show solution
a. The excerpt gives a royally appointed governor and his council the power to tax colonists, with no mention of an elected assembly. It reflects the crown's goal of bringing the colonies under centralized royal control instead of leaving them to govern themselves under their charters.
b. Massachusetts had defied the Navigation Acts by trading directly with foreign ports, and the crown wanted to enforce its mercantilist trade laws. Combining the northern colonies under one royal governor, Andros, was meant to make enforcement and defense against France easier.
c. When news of the Glorious Revolution reached Boston in 1689, colonists overthrew the Dominion and jailed Andros, and similar uprisings occurred in New York and Maryland. Later, under salutary neglect, New England merchants simply evaded the Molasses Act of 1733 by smuggling molasses from the French West Indies.
Why these earn the points. Part (a) ties a detail of the source (taxation by governor and council) to a broader goal (centralization). Part (b) gives a cause rooted in mercantilism, with evidence. Part (c) stays within the dates and names a specific response.
Evaluate the extent to which transatlantic trade transformed American Indian societies from 1607 to 1754.
Write a thesis and an outline of the body.
Show solution
Thesis: Transatlantic trade transformed American Indian societies to a great extent, since it spread epidemic disease, fueled wars for furs and captives, and made many nations dependent on European goods; however, Native peoples shaped the trade to their own ends, and some, like the Haudenosaunee and the Comanche, grew more powerful through it.
Body 1, demographic change. Smallpox moved along trade routes: the Wendat lost about half their people in the 1630s, an epidemic followed the Indian slave trade across the Southeast around 1696 to 1700, and the Cherokee lost perhaps half in 1738. Reasoning: trade carried the disease that caused the deepest change.
Body 2, war and enslavement. Haudenosaunee warriors with Dutch guns destroyed the Wendat in 1649 during the Beaver Wars; Carolina's trade in Native captives enslaved tens of thousands and helped cause the Yamasee War of 1715. Reasoning: European demand for furs and labor turned rivalries between Native nations into wars of destruction.
Body 3, economic and cultural change. Metal tools, cloth and guns replaced older goods, hunting shifted toward commercial pelts and deerskins, and dependence on traders for powder and repairs grew. Reasoning: participation in the trade reorganized work and created dependence.
Body 4, the qualification. Native nations bargained hard, chose partners, and used trade to gain power: the Haudenosaunee played the French and English against each other, and Plains peoples such as the Comanche used horses and guns to build new empires. Reasoning: transformation was real but not one-directional, since Native peoples drove much of it.
Why it scores. The thesis takes a position on "extent" and signals a qualification. Each body paragraph ties specific evidence (dates, nations, numbers) back to the claim, and the final paragraph shows complexity by showing Native agency alongside loss.
Where students lose points
On the exam
This topic's skill is making connections: questions ask you to link a source to a pattern (mercantilist policy, erratic enforcement, the effects of trade on Native peoples) or to developments before and after it. The Dominion of New England and salutary neglect are strong evidence for essays about British control and colonial self-government, and they set up the crisis of the 1760s.
Check yourself
Question 1
Under mercantilist theory, what was the main purpose of Britain's North American colonies?
- A
To give British subjects a place to practice any religion freely
- B
To supply raw materials and buy British manufactures so that wealth stayed inside the empire
- C
To raise tax revenue to pay off the national debt from the Seven Years' War
- D
To trade freely with any nation that offered the best prices
Show answer
B
Mercantilists measured national strength by a favorable balance of trade, and colonies helped by supplying what Britain lacked and buying what it made. Choice C describes the revenue goals of the 1760s, which came after this period; choice D is what the Navigation Acts were written to prevent.
- A
Question 2
Explain how the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 connects to changes in the societies of the Great Plains in the 1700s.
Show answer
The revolt drove the Spanish out of New Mexico for twelve years and put their horse herds in Pueblo hands, and the horses spread north and east through Native trade. Plains peoples such as the Comanche and Lakota combined horses with guns obtained from French and English traders and reorganized their societies around mounted buffalo hunting, raiding and trade.
This is a connection between two developments in different places: one event redistributed an Atlantic import, and trade carried it into the interior, where it transformed how people lived and which nations held power.
Question 3
Which development most directly ended the Dominion of New England?
- A
The Yamasee War
- B
The overthrow of James II in the Glorious Revolution
- C
Bacon's Rebellion
- D
The passage of the Molasses Act
Show answer
B
When news reached Boston in 1689 that James II, who had created the Dominion, had been overthrown, colonists jailed Andros, and William and Mary did not restore it. Bacon's Rebellion is tempting because it was also a revolt against a governor, but it happened in Virginia in 1676, a decade before the Dominion existed.
- A
Question 4
Why did trade with Europeans increase the spread of epidemic disease among American Indians in the 1600s and early 1700s?
Show answer
Trade routes carried people, goods and germs far inland, often ahead of colonists themselves, and war and slave raiding fueled by the trade forced people into crowded, malnourished refugee communities where smallpox spread fast. The epidemic of about 1696 to 1700 followed the paths of the Southeast's Indian slave trade.
Disease was not separate from trade: the same networks that delivered kettles and guns delivered smallpox, and the violence of the fur and captive trades made communities more vulnerable to it.