ENGLAND: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 1800-1850
=417. Importance of the commerce of England.=—In returning to the
study of the development of commerce in different countries we shall
take up first the country which at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, and at its end as well, held the leading position, England. An
English author has made the statement that “in the eighteenth century
foreign trade was of so little importance to the majority of the
inhabitants of England, that with one important exception (wheat) the
whole of it might have been destroyed without making any appreciable
change in the habits or wealth of the people.” This statement is an
exaggeration which can hardly be supported, but yet it suggests a truth
of great importance; English commerce in 1800 was merely an aid to the
development and welfare of the country, while it had become in 1900
absolutely necessary to the mere existence of the people.
=418. Statistics of the growth of commerce, 1800-1850.=—The period of
most rapid growth was the second half of the nineteenth century, and
this period will be reserved for special consideration a little later.
The development in the first half of the century is set forth in the
accompanying table, which gives the figures for imports retained in the
country, and for the exports of home produce, according to the system
of valuation in use in this period, with the sum of these items.
As the population doubled in this period it is apparent that foreign
commerce, which more than doubled in value, was taking a more important
place in the national economy than before. In the first quarter of
the century, when England was passing through the struggle of the
Napoleonic wars and was recovering from their effects, trade was nearly
stagnant, but it made up in the twenty-five years that followed for the
time that had been lost before. If we measure commerce not by the value
of the wares, but by their physical quantity, the increase was far
more striking; prices of many articles, especially of the manufactures
exported, fell during this period, and consequently the same bulk of
trade would be represented by much smaller figures in pounds sterling.
If we returned to the old method of measuring trade, which retained
“official” values that did not change with the movement of market
prices, and which therefore affords a means of measuring an increase in
the bulk of trade, we should find, comparing the two years, 1800 and
1849, that exports grew from 24 million to 190 million pounds sterling,
giving the enormous increase of 682 per cent.
ANNUAL AVERAGE TRADE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. (Millions of Pounds and
Dollars)
========+==========+==========+=========
| Imports | Exports | Total
--------+----------+----------+---------
1801-05 | £28 $140 | £33 $165 | £61 $305
1806-10 | 30 150 | 37 185 | 67 335
1811-15 | 29 145 | 45 225 | 74 370
1816-20 | 20 100 | 40 200 | 60 300
1821-25 | 26 130 | 37 185 | 63 315
1826-30 | 33 165 | 35 175 | 69 345
1831-35 | 36 180 | 40 200 | 76 380
1836-40 | 47 235 | 50 250 | 97 485
1841-45 | 57 285 | 54 270 | 111 555
1846-50 | 72 360 | 60 300 | 133 665
========+==========+==========+=========
=419. Change in the relative importance of different exports.=—We can
expect, by studying the details of exports in this period, to find
the branches of production in which the English were strong enough to
enable them to supply other people and to extend their commerce. Taking
the figures for 1850, we find the evidence of some important changes.
The old staple of the English export trade, woolen manufactures and
yarn, had increased since 1800 in value, and still more in quantity.
It had ceased, however, to be the standby of the English exporter;
this item formed now less than one seventh of the exports instead
of over one fourth. It had been thrust into the second place by the
rival textile cotton, which had become, as it was destined to remain
throughout the century, the leading item among English exports. Cotton
yarn and manufactures made up 28 out of a total of 71 million pounds
sterling. Among other changes in the list we note the growth of the
iron and steel, the hardware and the coal exports. Some items are
interesting because they are still so small; among those which remained
below the million-pound mark were steam-engines and machinery, pottery,
and tin plate.
=420. Development of English manufactures.=—It is apparent that this
period was marked by a rapid development of English manufactures.
Taking two manufactures, typical of an advanced industrial state, iron
and cotton, we find that the increase in production is estimated at
over tenfold or more than 1000 per cent; as the quantity of population
had merely doubled it is apparent that its quality, or the character
of its occupations, underwent a revolutionary change. It is, in
fact, in this first half of the nineteenth century that the enormous
possibilities latent in the inventions of the eighteenth century became
apparent and were realized. The great inventions were not enough, in
themselves, to transform industry. They needed to be developed by
practical business men, who could secure the necessary capital to
utilize them to the best advantage, who had the talent for organization
enabling them to build up an efficient force of laborers, who could
stimulate further technical improvements necessary to supplement the
great inventions, and who could develop a mercantile system enabling
them to buy and sell large quantities to good advantage. Some English
manufactures remained “domestic” industries carried on in the home
of the workman, but the most important advanced to the factory
system, and were thus enabled to get the full advantage from technical
improvements.
=421. Introduction of machinery.=—It is in this period that the
knowledge and experience necessary to the proper handling of machinery
spread from narrow circles to broad groups of men. The market for
machinery was thus established, and the manufacture of tools and
machines underwent a corresponding development; in 1836 it was
“difficult to point out any leading mechanical process, the details
of which have not been, by this means, simplified, and the article
produced brought nearer to perfection.” Inventors from other countries
sought British shops to perfect their devices, and British factories
in which to introduce them. Some of the best textile machinery of this
period was invented in the United States and other countries, but was
first put to practical use in England.
=422. Steam power and railroad transportation.=—It is in this period,
also, that the steam-engine became a practical force in English
manufactures. The steam-engine had been introduced in Birmingham in
1780, but the number of engines in that rising center of manufactures
was in 1815 only 42 and in 1830 still only 120, while in the nine years
following the number rose to 240, or doubled. In 1835 the textile
factories of England employed only a little over 50,000 mechanical
horse-power, and of this total nearly a quarter was still obtained from
water-wheels. The beginnings of transportation by steam railroads can
be dated, as said before, from about 1830.
=423. Gradual development of the cotton manufacture.=—The statement in
a previous paragraph, that time was needed to develop the inventions
before they could be made to serve the interests of manufacturers
and merchants, is borne out by the history of the most important
manufacture, that of cotton. Most of the basic inventions in cotton
machinery were made in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
As early as 1812 a man, using the improved appliances, could produce
200 times as much as could be got from the old spinning-wheel. Yet
it was not until 1820 or 1830 that cotton-spinning machinery had
been practically developed and introduced on such a scale that the
yarn exports began to show the full strength of this new force; while
power weaving came even later, and the exports of cloth increased most
rapidly in the second quarter of the century. Other processes connected
with the textile manufacture present the same history. Cotton printing,
for instance, had been practised in the eighteenth century, but in 1800
only 32 million yards a year were printed, while in 1830 the figure had
risen to 347. The growth of the cotton manufacture was reflected in
the development of towns like Manchester, Bolton, and Liverpool, which
increased immensely in population.
=424. Character of the import trade.=—It will be instructive to glance
now at the other side of England’s commercial balance sheet, and
observe the wares imported about the middle of the century. In 1854 the
values were as follows, in round millions of pounds sterling: total
152.3, of which the chief items were grain 21.7, raw cotton 20.1,
timber 10, sugar 9.6, raw wool 6.4, tea 5.5, raw silk 5.3. While it is
not safe to make a direct comparison between these values and those
given previously to show conditions about 1800, a striking change is
apparent in the relative rank of the items. A great growth in the
importance of the imports of breadstuffs is noticeable. We shall see
a little later that the English in this period gave up the attempt to
produce their food at home, and resigned themselves to depending on
foreign countries for supplies which they could purchase with their
manufactures. Wares like sugar, tea, coffee, and tobacco had declined
in relative importance. The actual amount of these commodities imported
for consumption at home had increased much more than would appear from
a comparison of the figures, and their use was constantly extending
among the common people; but they were now overshadowed in trade by
other items. The chief group of imports was formed of raw materials for
the English textile manufacture. The cotton imports, had, of course,
grown immensely; the home supply of wool, which had been almost
sufficient for manufactures in 1800, needed now to be supplemented by
large imports from abroad; silk had taken the third place on the list
of textiles away from flax and hemp.
=425. Increase in importance of trade with distant continents.=—If we
attempt to trace the changes in the direction of English trade in the
first half of the nineteenth century, we find, in the maze of figures
presented for study, some facts standing out as evident and important.
The trade with other countries in Europe grew steadily, but grew slowly
as a rule, and did not keep pace with the progress which English trade
was making in other parts of the world. Most of the continental states
looked with jealousy on England’s industrial development, and checked
the free exchange of commodities by severe restrictions. We must look
outside of Europe for the field of expansion of English trade. Africa
still remained unimportant from the commercial standpoint, but America,
Asia, and Australia dealt in increasing measure with the British
merchant.
=426. Great importance of the trade with the United States.=—The United
States was, far and away, England’s best customer, taking, near the
beginning of the century, when the ports of the continent were closed
by Napoleon, as much as one third of the total English exports, and at
the middle (1849) nearly one fifth. “It affords strong evidence of the
unsatisfactory footing upon which our trading relations with Europe
are established,” wrote an English author in 1838, “that our exports
to the United States of America, which with their population of only
twelve millions are removed to a distance from us of 3,000 miles across
the Atlantic, have amounted to more than one half of the value of our
shipments to the whole of Europe, with a population fifteen times as
great as that of the United States of America, and with an abundance of
productions suited to our wants, which they are naturally desirous of
exchanging for the products of our mines and looms.” The United States
paid for the wares by an export mainly of raw materials, and especially
of cotton.
[Illustration:
_Longmans, Green & Co., New York_
]
[Illustration:
THE WORLD
1902
_The British Possessions are
colored Red_
] During most of this period England drew three fourths of her supply
of raw cotton from the southern States.
=427. Trade with other distant countries.=—Other American countries
were good customers of the British manufacturer; Brazil, for instance,
bought more from England in 1849 than did England’s nearest neighbor,
France. Among other independent states China deserves mention. Trade
with that country had been included in the monopoly of the East India
Company until 1834, when it was thrown open to British merchants in
general; the trade grew rapidly thereafter, but suffered from the
restrictions imposed by the Chinese until, as a result of the so-called
Opium War of 1842, the English secured the cession of Hong-Kong and the
opening of a number of ports.
=428. Trade with British dependencies: India.=—In 1850 between one
fourth and one third of the exports of the mother country were sent to
British dependencies. Among these British India, almost a continent
itself if we consider its area, its population almost equal to that
of Europe, and the complexity of its peoples, took the leading place.
British India alone took about one tenth of the English exports. So
long as the trade with this country was controlled by the East India
Company it remained small; and the company declared that because of
the backwardness and peculiar customs of the natives it could not
be increased. The privilege of trading with India was granted to
individual merchants in 1793, but under such burdensome restrictions
that it led to slight results; and the nineteenth century opened
with the Indian trade still but a small item in England’s total. In
1813, however, the trade was at last thrown open, and the effect was
immediately manifest; in the first year of the new policy private
merchants exported more than did the company, and soon they had
developed the trade to an extent undreamed of by the monopolists. India
proved to be just the country which English merchants were seeking as a
market for the expanding cotton manufacture. In the eighteenth century
protection was demanded in England against the competition of Indian
textiles, but soon the tables were turned, and manufacturers in India
complained that they were being ruined by the importation of English
cotton goods; about 1850 British India took more cotton manufactures
than any other country, and nearly one sixth of the total exports of
this most important commodity of England.
=429. Colonies in North America and Australasia.=—Next in importance
to British India came the two groups of the North American and the
Australian colonies. The colonies on the continent of North America
were, in spite of their political allegiance, a far less important
market than the republic on their southern border which had declared
its independence in 1776. They supplied, however, a fairly steady and
a growing demand for English products which put them in sharp contrast
with the West Indian colonies. These island colonies had been, in the
early part of the century, the field of rich returns in trade, but
their productiveness depended on a system of slave plantations, and
when slavery was abolished in them in 1833 their commerce declined
rapidly.
Thanks to the wide extent of her colonial dominions, England could
hope to gain in one part of the world if she lost in another, and the
development of the Australian colonies in this period promised to
atone for any decline in the West. The British flag was first raised
in Australia in 1788. The young colonies were out of the track of the
trade of the time, and seemed of such small importance that one was
made a penal settlement, but the natural resources, especially the
fitness for sheep-raising, induced a steady growth of population, and a
considerable trade, even before the gold discoveries in the middle of
the century.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. What do we mean when we speak of the “importance” of a country’s
commerce? The reader who reflects upon this question will find that
at least three different standards are taken to measure importance.
(1) Mere bulk or value. The commerce of the British Empire would be
called the most important in the world, because it is larger than
that of any other state. (2) The needs of the people of the country.
A considerable number of Englishmen would starve without commerce. In
this sense commerce is even more important to the miners of Alaska,
for they would practically all starve without it. (3) The needs of
other countries for the exports of a given country. In this sense the
United States has perhaps the most important commerce in the world,
because it supplies so much of the world’s need for cotton, copper,
foodstuffs, etc.
Endeavor to find examples, in this book or in others, of the different
uses of the word; apply it in different uses to different countries.
2. Treat the statistics in sect. 418 as suggested previously, by
graphic representation. How did British commerce compare in growth
with world commerce? Did England keep her share in the world’s trade?
Try to find in English history reasons for the ups and downs of trade,
and for its gains and losses in comparison with the world’s trade.
Beware, however, of hasty conclusions; many pitfalls are concealed
in commercial statistics. In the table in the text, for example, the
early figures are those of total exports and imports of merchandise,
including wares simply passing through English hands to foreign
customers; the figures for 1816 and the following years show only
exports of British produce and manufacture, and imports retained in
the country. This change in the method of measurement, rather than
the crisis following the Napoleonic wars, explains the drop in the
figures. This last method of measurement will be followed in later
tables.
3. The following list gives the value, in millions of pounds, of all
items over 1.0, in total exports of 71.3. Coal, etc., 1.2, cotton
yarn, 6.3, cotton manufactures 21.8, haberdashery and millinery 1.4,
hardware and cutlery 2.6, linen manufactures 3.9, iron and steel 5.3,
woolen yarn 1.4, woolen manufactures 8.5. (If various other items were
grouped we could add: copper about 2., silk about 1.)
Arrange these items and represent them by spaces on a line, for
help in realizing their relative importance, and for comparison
with earlier and later conditions. [See Statesman’s Year-Book for
present trade. Note that these items include only home produce and
manufactures, so foreign produce, such as colonial wares, should be
excluded in making the comparison with another period. Statistics of
this period give only quantities, not values, of foreign and colonial
merchandise exported. Values of foreign and colonial merchandise
exported are available for 1854 and the following years. In 1854 the
items over one million pounds were: cotton 2.3, indigo 1.2, wool 1.4.
Among the items under one million were: coffee .7, wine .7, raw silk
.7, tea .5, rice .5, guano .5, raw sugar .3, unstemmed tobacco .3.
What changes are suggested by these figures, in comparison with those
of about 1800?]
4. Review the substance of sections 245 ff., or read the account of
the great inventions and their effects in Rand, Ec. hist., chap. 2.
5. Mining and metal production up to 1846. [Traill, Soc. England, 6:
194-199.]
6. Coal mining. [Same, 6: 367-379.]
7. Development of the English transportation system. [Same, 6:
199-211; McCarthy, Hist. vol. 1, chap. 4; Ward, Reign, 2: 83-111.]
8. Development of the textile manufactures. [Soc. England, 6: 69-75.]
9. Study the items in sect. 424 in the way suggested for sect. 419.
10. Review sect. 412, on the tariff policy of the period in Europe;
note that the United States had a low tariff, and that trade in the
other continents was practically free.
11. The Opium War. [McCarthy, Hist., vol. 1 chap. 8; Robert K.
Douglas, China, N. Y., Putnam, $1.50, 1899, chap. 8.]
12. East India Company in the nineteenth century. [Willson, Ledger and
Sword, vol. 2, chaps. 12, 13.]
13. Commerce of British India. [William W. Hunter, The Indian Empire,
third ed., London, 1893, chap. 19; same author, The Marquess of
Dalhousie, Oxford, 1890, chap. 10.]
14. The Hudson’s Bay Company in the nineteenth century. [George Bryce,
Remarkable history of the Hudson’s Bay Company, N. Y., Scribner’s,
1900; Willson, The great company, London (N. Y., Dodd), 1900, vol. 2,
chap. 36; G. R. Parkin, The great Dominion, London, Macmillan, 1895,
chap. 8.]
15. Slave plantations in the British West Indies. [A. K. Fiske, The
West Indies, N. Y., 1899, chap. 10; James Rodway, The West Indies,
London (N. Y., Putnam), chaps. 7, 10; F. W. Pitman, Development of the
British West Indies, New Haven, 1917, chap. 1.]
16. Emancipation of the slaves and its results. [Rodway, chaps. 14,
15.]
17. Development of Australia. [Encyclopedia; Helmolt, Hist. of World,
vol. 2, p. 252 ff.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Useful references can be obtained on England, as on other countries to
be considered later, by consulting the Subject Index of the British
Museum Library for books published since 1881, and the A. L. A.
Catalogue for books in print, of a popular character.
Of the general histories of England in the nineteenth century, that
by *Spencer Walpole, 5 vols., London, Longmans, 1878-86, devotes
considerable attention to economic developments, and is worth the
teacher’s attention. Justin McCarthy, *History of our own times,
is better suited to attract the student; it is divided into short
topical chapters, and written in an interesting style. A shorter
history has been published by McCarthy in the Story of the Nations
Series, 2 vols., N. Y., 1899. The last volume of Traill’s Social
England pays but scant attention to commerce.
Of smaller books that which deserves most cordial commendation to
students who desire a description of economic progress in its relation
to political changes is Gilbert Slater, **Making of modern England,
London, 1913, revised edition Houghton, Mifflin Co., undated.
The best history of English commerce is that of **Leone Levi,
extending from 1763 to 1878; it is unfortunately, out of print.
Cunningham notices some of the important commercial changes in the
first half of the century, but devotes most of his last volume to
other topics; and the smaller manuals of English economic history pay
comparatively little attention to commercial development. *Bowley’s
small volume is a useful contribution, noteworthy for a number of
graphic charts; it is, however, too statistical in treatment to serve
the needs of the ordinary reader. Chapman’s book, like Bowley’s
an outgrowth of a successful essay written for a Cobden prize, is
confined to a special aspect of the trade with a particular country.
William Smart, *Economic annals of the nineteenth century, London,
1910-17, covering the years 1801-1830, treats commercial policy at
length and the history of commerce proper briefly. The same tendency
marks Commerce and industry, A historical review, 1815-1914, ed.,
W. Page, London, 1919, 2 volumes, of which the second, **Tables of
statistics, is a very useful compilation. Other statistical sources,
of importance to a student making a careful study of the subject,
are Porter, **Progress of the nation and M’Culloch, **Commercial
dictionary, of which various editions have been published. A revision
of Porter by F. W. Hirst, London, 1912, aims to bring his statistics
down to date.