ENGLISH SOCIETY AND ECONOMIC LIFE, COMMERCIAL

LEGISLATION

DATES

• March 1630: Edward Pocoke, oriental scholar, & future Professor of Arabic at Oxford, appointed
chaplain to the Levant Company

• 1651: Navigation Act (supposed to eliminate direct impact of Dutch merchants on English markets
= led to 1st Anglo-Dutch War

• 1652-54: First Anglo-Dutch War

• 1660: New Navigation Act

= from 1660 onward: the greater part of all consumables imported from the Caribbean & North
America entered Europe through England & (from 1707) Scotland

• 1665-67: First Dutch War

• 1672-74: Second Dutch War

TOPICS

• England’s society and economic life

- Urban growth & pop° growth: pop° of E. continued to grow steadily
o 1561: 3 million
o 1600: 4.1 million
o 1650 5,3 million
- London’s pop°:
o 1600: 200k inhabitants
o 1650: 350k inhabitants
o 1700: 575k inhabitants = biggest city in €pe
- Stuart London: biggest & fastest-expanding city in €pe under Stuarts
o drawing in ~ 6.000 newcomers from the provinces / year
o centre of a growing international network of trade
 both with the East & with colonies across the Atlantic
- Economy: largely based on agriculture

• Migration
- Internal migration to urban centers
o “Betterment migration"
o “Subsistence migration”
o Refugees (Huguenots)
- Immigration to overseas destinations
o religious & economic migrants left England
o colonies in the West Indies & North America.
= by end of 17th c.: 350,000 people emigrated from England across the Atlantic.

• Huguenots in London
 - 1681: Charles II offered sanctuary to the Huguenots
o ~ 50,000 French Protestants came to England
 after Louis XIV revoked the 1598 Edict of Nantes (Fontainebleau, 1685)
o extraordinary diversity of their manufacturing, scientific & artistic specialisms
 many skilled craftsmen, particularly silk weavers
- went to:
o Spitalfields (east London)
o Bristol canterbury
= 1700: = 5% of London's population

• merchant market economy

- 1600: series of regional economies in England
o 1688: internal eco = lrgely based on agriculture work & prod°
 Rural society
- Growing urban economies & industries
o metalware production (Birmingham)
o lead production (Somerset, Derbyshire)
o coal industry (Newcastle, Northeast)
= emergence of a single & integrated national economy

• new companies
- 1552: The Muscovy Company traded with Moscow
- 1592: the Levant Company prospered in Constantinople
- 1600: East India Company ships brought tea and silk, indigo and opium from India.
- 1668: English East India Company took over Bombay
= « a new household culture »

• new trades, new markets

- Muscovy, Spain (wine, currants)
- Italy, the Levant (carpets)
- Overseas trade:
o Exports to the colonies:
 new markets for English cloth woollen textiles + metalware
o Imports: sugar, tobacco, pepper (growing consumer demand)
o Large quantities of these products were re-exported, primarily to the continental
European market
 2/3 tobacco reexported to Europe
- The Atlantic trades:
o 1607: Virginia (tobacco), Barbados, plantation economy
o 1640s: sugar in the West Indies

• financial revolution during the Restoration

- mercantilist framework of the Navigation keeping everything in British hands (vs the Dutch)
o Created income, growth of London & other ports:
 1700: Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow (tobacco).
- Growing domestic market
- Coastal traffic, river system, roads: intensified traffic, more exchange, village
- network of markets: market economy, earlier stages, organic economy (not yet mineral)
- trust in parliamentary government
o raised money for the wars, in control of expenditure, public revenue.
- 1688: Lloyd's (insurance)
- 1694: Bank of England