#历史开讲 #
After the 40s of the 17th century, British international trade completely changed the traditional Antwerp woolen trade model, forming a colonial trade model, also known as the "Atlantic trade model". The colonial trading system spanning East Asia, North America, and India formed a major part of British foreign trade.
Colonial trade in North America
By 1733, Britain had established 13 colonies in North America. In the 18th century, tobacco and sugar in the Americas played an increasingly important role in the economic activities of the American colonies. Tobacco has a huge consumer market in Europe.
In 1639, the overproduction of tobacco caused the price to fall, and sugar flourished, and merchants began to actively invest in the sugar industry, and sugar became the most popular bulk export. Since then, the import of cane sugar has shown continuous and steady growth. According to statistics, "Between 1700 and 1767, the production of cane sugar in the West Indies increased threefold, from 22,000 tons to 67,000 tons. ”
The American colonies also provided Britain with a huge textile export market. The traditional market in Europe was close to saturation, and the East India initially had little demand for British textiles. But the population of the Americas is growing, and most of these immigrants come from Britain, and do not exclude the use of goods produced in Britain. The function of these institutions is, first of all, to collect various taxes, including land tax, consumption tax, domestic tax, poll tax, import tax, etc.
Secondly, the main purpose of the Trade Colonial Bureau was to make the colony a market for British goods and a source of raw materials, so in 1699, Britain issued the Wool Ordinance. In 1750, the Iron Ordinance was promulgated. The shipbuilding, handicrafts, and fishing industries in the North American colonies were suppressed. Over more than half a century, the average annual value of Britain's imports and exports to the Americas has increased nearly eightfold. In addition, Britain brutally destroyed the indigenous Indians in order to compete for colonies. Britain also violently seized the colonies of the Netherlands, Sweden and other countries in North America.
The East India Company's colonial trade in Asia
In the 18th century, British domestic textile companies resisted the influx of Indian textiles. Indian cotton began to be sold to other European countries. British cotton cloth also began to continue to be sold in the European market. The old and new British East India Company was merged in 1702, and the combined East India Company gained more trading privileges, tax exemptions and the right to circulate British currency, and 32 Indian cities were opened to the British at that time. The East India Company's profits had been rising in the 18th century.
The large profits made by the East India Company were not only the result of trade, but also of colonization. In the mid-18th century, the Mughal Empire in India gradually disintegrated. The nature of the East India Company also began to change, from a commercial company to a colonial regime. The British occupied Bengal by military means, plundering and exploiting the Bengali people. British taxes in Bengal increased from "£810,000 in 1764-1765 to £1.47 million in 1765-1766", and the British used brutal methods such as torture and looting during the collection of taxes.
In addition to increasing taxes, the East India Company forcibly bought Indian silk fabrics at 50% below market value. In addition, throughout India, the East India Company monopolized the salt monopoly and forced farmers to grow opium poppy and turn it into medicine for high profits. Marx pointed out: "Throughout the 18th century, the wealth transferred from India to England, of which vast assets were exploited directly from India and looted, far more than from relatively insignificant trade. ”
Promote unilateral free trade
In the second half of the 18th century, Britain took the lead in initiating the first "industrial revolution", in order to obtain a larger market for its industrial products, Britain began to vigorously dump its manufactured goods into the world, thereby implementing a free trade policy.
Dumping of printed goods
In the mid-to-late 18th century, North American industry developed, followed by the War of Independence, Britain gradually lost control of North American trade, and the center of gravity of the British goods market shifted to India. In the 19th century, India bore the brunt of the British dumping destination. Between the 17th and mid-18th centuries, Britain relied heavily on unequal commercial trade in India for high profits, and by the mid-to-late 18th century, Britain began to accelerate the dumping of Indian goods.
In 1813, Britain abolished the East India Company's trade monopoly in India, sent inspectors to India, and promulgated the Indian Act, which fully opened up the right of British enterprises to sell goods to India and allowed the industrial bourgeoisie and commercial bourgeoisie to freely enter the Indian market. In fact, it is a one-sided implementation of "free trade", which has led India to become a dumping market for British goods and impacted the development of India's national industry.
Britain dumped goods on India by means of tariff controls. The rapid influx of British machine-made cotton cloth into the Indian market was devastating to India's traditional textile industry. "The influx of British industrial goods into India is taxed only 2.5% or directly exempted, whereas Indian goods entering the UK are subject to high tariffs, up to 400%, and some Indian goods are prohibited from entering the UK."
Marx pointed out: "Until 1813, India was largely a trading nation of exports, and now it is a trading nation of imports. This transformation seemed to save the colonial people from brutal plunder, but in fact it dealt a heavy blow to India's industrial development and foreign trade, especially India's cotton weaving, silk weaving, wool textile industry, transportation industry and other industries were greatly hit, India became a British commodity market but its own related industries gradually declined.
Development of Oceania
British expeditions in Oceania came later, when British economic benefits overseas included plundering land and raw materials. After the Seven Years' War between Britain and France, although France was defeated, France has been actively coveting the "mysterious continent of the South", through mercantilism, physiocratism and free trade, of which physiocratism appeared for a short time and had a small sphere of influence, and only focused on mercantilism and free trade. Different periods of economic thought dominate, and the expansion and maintenance strategy of Britain's overseas economic interests is also different.
With the opening of new shipping routes, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and Britain successively embarked on the road of expanding colonial trade. In this context, mercantilist ideas arose. For more than a hundred years from the 16th century to the first half of the 18th century, mercantilism became an important theoretical support for British foreign trade. Thomas Meng was one of the most influential mercantilist thinkers of the colonial period. In On the Trade between England and the East India Company, he argued: "It does not matter whether a commodity is imported from any country in any country's trading area as long as total exports exceed total imports."
The revised and retitled Britain's Wealth from Foreign Trade explicitly states that export surpluses are an important way to obtain wealth. The UK paid great attention to the total amount of precious metals imported during this period; Trade methods such as resale at high prices and entrepot trade are the main means of obtaining wealth when Britain conducts foreign trade. Mercantilism also actively advocated colonization and the monopoly of colonial trade.
Colonization was conducive to importing the gold and silver of the colony by the metropolis and increasing its total precious metal imports; By monopolizing colonial trade, the colonial power could make the colony a supplier of raw materials to the colonial power. An example is the Navigation Act, which made it possible for Britain and its colonies to transport goods imported into Great Britain and its colonies, or by ships of the country of origin.