This certainly isn’t the book for everyone. Written a century ago, “The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution” is one of the more influential works on the subject from an American historian in the early twentieth century (Schlesinger’s son would turn out to be even more influential on the course of American politics and historical understanding).
Schlesinger argues that the impetus for the original resistance in the colonies in 1765 came from a group of disaffected, but overall loyal caste of privileged northern merchants. The hundred years ending with the Peace of Paris in 1763 had been very kind to American colonial merchants. They had been able to avoid most of the deleterious side effects associated with British mercantilism. The Navigation Acts of 1660, for instance, which called for all colonial wares to be transported by English ships and which placed some other minor restrictions on imports and exports, were not particularly heavy and were gratefully accepted, according the author. The Molasses Act of 1733 actually bolstered the colonial economy in so much as it fostered a robust smuggling business, which the British authorities, for the most part, turned a blind eye toward. Restrictions were also placed on southern colonies – indigo and tobacco, for instance, had to be traded almost exclusively with England – but these restrictions were balanced by heavy Royal subsidies and protection from frontier Indians by the British Army.
Schlesinger draws a clear distinction between the northern colonies and the southern ones. It’s a distinction upon which his entire learned and lengthy narrative turns. A primary difference was leadership. In the north, the merchant class provided both financing and political leadership to the people. In the south, meanwhile, money and leadership were fragmented, as the great plantation owners wielded political power, but were nearly all deeply indebted, literally, to bankers back in England.
The author claims that the merchants – both north and south – knew that the maintenance of the British Empire was the sturdy rock upon which their prosperity was built. The Royal Navy protected colonial trade routes, ongoing imperial conquests opened new markets for trade, and credit on liberal terms always seemed to be available from London. Schlesinger claims that one-hundred-years of uninterrupted economic growth and relative freedom from regulatory harassment had imbued the colonial merchants with a false sense of entitlement and power when dealing with Parliament. Thus, when parliamentary acts injurious to their livelihood were passed in 1763, they used domestic public opinion and propaganda to redress the situation. Their objectives, the author stresses, were reform, not rebellion.
After the French and Indian War it was clear that reform was needed in the colonies, at least from Parliament’s perspective. The current requisition system was not raising enough revenue to support the military in the colonies, while the Molasses Act went on being openly circumvented as it had been for over a generation, resulting in untold financial losses to the Crown. Parliament had to act; and it was only fair that the cossetted colonial merchants pay their fair share into a system that had supported and protected them so effectively. Resolutions against smuggling were passed; the number of export items that could only go to England was increased; the issue of local paper money in the colonies was prohibited.
The primary challenge for the northern merchants was figuring out how to enlist their southern colleagues into the struggle, as most of the new restrictions did not affect them. But then Parliament cooperated by passing the Stamp Act of 1765. Unlike the resolutions of 1764, this act of imperial overreach affected both regions equally. A common theme in Schlesinger’s work is that whenever the ties between the colonial regions looked most tenuous, blinkered British authorities could be relied upon to issue some new edict that provided fresh strength and impetus to reuniting the colonies against colonial domination.
There is every reason to believe, Schlesinger argues, that non-importation was strictly enforced on the enumerated articles in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. The reason had nothing to do with issues of a theoretical nature, such as “taxation without representation,” but merely a means to influence Parliament on commercial legislation.
By 1770, the internal situation was shifting in favor of the radicals, whose aim was political revolution. The non-importation agreements had hit the north disproportionately hard. Meanwhile, sagging colonial exports magnified the situation. In April 1770 came news that all but one duty – that on tea – had been repealed. Now the question was: would the people continue to support a costly boycott over just one tax that had been accepted in the past? Overall, the author writes, the non-importation agreements of 1768-1770 had little tangible affect in England where a bumper crop and the Russo-Turkish War more than offset any negative economic impacts.
Once again Parliament stepped in to unite the colonies where the radicals had failed. Although most of the sister colonies were against the rebellious actions in Boston in the early 1770s there were even more against the harsh British response, the so-called Intolerable or Coercive Acts. These acts fundamentally changed the nature of the conflict according to Schlesinger. Prior to 1774 the struggle had been led by the merchant class for commercial reform, a fight for a return to the status quo ante 1763. Now the struggle was led by radicals in what was simply a political dispute. Indeed, no real commercial principles were at stake with the Intolerable Acts. Moreover, commercial interests would be dramatically damaged if the radicals succeeded. Gone would be the protection of the British Navy and world markets for their exports, let alone their cherished imports. By this time, the original agitators – the colonial merchants – had some full circle back to the crown, the new loyalists. They even went so far as to offer to pay for the damages of the Boston Tea Party.
The radical Boston Committee of Correspondence drafted the Solemn League and Covenant, which aimed at repealing the punitive Intolerable Acts by suspending all intercourse with Britain. The merchants were almost totally against it.
Interestingly enough, the fateful step on the road to American independence appears to be related to the decision of the Third Congress to open trade of the colonies with the rest of the world. After Congress agreed to endorse free trade with the rest of the world, any sort of declaration of independence was a mere formality, according to the author. This nullification of the acts of navigation and trade was followed by acts relaxing the non-consumption of tea and the regulation of prices. First, all teas imported before December 1, 1774, were placed on sale. The issue of regulatory prices, particularly for staples like rice, was nearly impossible given the invisible hands of supply and demand. Thus, Congress released the price control measures, hoping that open importation would drive prices down eventually. The prices jumped higher nevertheless.
In this final attempt, the author makes it clear that the East India Tea decision was a disaster for Parliament. The events of 1767-1770 made it clear to the merchants who had fomented the original unrest that they reality of lawlessness was worse than the restrictions leveled by Parliament. If the Parliament had refrained from backing the East India Tea company it is likely that the all-powerful merchants would have backed the side of law and order – in this case, Parliament. The merchant/radical alliance was unnatural and was prone to splits, but the East India Tea provision left little room for the merchants to maneuver. While the “Common Sense” piece by Thomas Paine may have been antithetical to merchant beliefs, the April 1776 conduct of Congress (annulling the navigation acts, opening the tea trade, releasing price controls) was clearly in their best interests.
Schlesinger’s thesis is sound and well defended. The American colonies may have been far more egalitarian than anything known in eighteenth century Europe, but prosperous colonial merchants, specifically those in New England, represented a new class, the bourgeois, whose political influence far outweighed their numbers and within whose hands the outcome of decisive events were held. It would be true in 1789 France at the Estates General and proved true in the American colonies in the 1770s.
What's Tim Reading Now? 
Leave a comment