Mercantilism 83agents in London to present the colonial point of
view before board members. The most famous
colonial agent was Benjamin Franklin, who repre-
sented Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey, and
Massachusetts at various times during his long
career. In general, however, colonial agents were sel-
dom able to exert much influence on British policy.
The British never developed an effective, central-
ized government for the American colonies. By and
large, their American “subjects” ran their own affairs.
This fact more than any other explains our present
federal system and the wide areas in which the state
governments are sovereign and independent.
Mercantilism
The Board of Trade was concerned with commerce as
well as colonial administration. According to prevail-
ing European opinion, colonies were important for
economic reasons, chiefly as a source of raw materials.
To obtain these, British officials developed a number
of loosely related policies that later economists called
mercantilism. The most important raw materials in
the eyes of mercantilists were gold and silver, which,
being universally valued and relatively rare, could be
exchanged at any time for anything the owner desired
or, being durable and compact, stored for future use.
For these reasons, how much gold and silver (“trea-
sure” according to mercantilists) a nation possessed
was considered the best barometer of its prosperity
and power.
Since gold and silver could not be mined in sig-
nificant amounts in western Europe, every early
colonist dreamed of finding “El Dorado.” The
Spanish were the winners in this search; from the
mines of Mexico and South America a treasure in gold
and silver poured into the Iberian peninsula. Failing
to control the precious metals at the source, the other
powers tried to obtain them by guile and warfare
(witness the state-supported piracy of Francis Drake).
In the mid-seventeenth century another method,
less hazardous and in the long run far more prof-
itable, called itself to the attention of the statesmen of
western Europe. If a country could make itself as self-
sufficient as possible and also keep its citizens busy
producing items sought in other lands, it could sell
more goods abroad than it imported. This was known
as having “a favorable balance of trade.” A country
with an unfavorable balance was obliged to make up
its shortage by “exporting” its gold and silver.
Mercantilists regarded colonies as a means of acquir-
ing precious metals by helping the mother country
generate a favorable trade balance. Colonists thus
were to supply raw materials that would otherwise
have to be purchased from foreign sources or
colonists were to buy substantial amounts of manu-
factured goods produced in the mother country.
Of the English colonies in the New World, those
in tropical and subtropical climes were valued for
their raw materials. The more northerly ones were
important as markets, but because they were small in
the seventeenth century, in English eyes they tookSea Captains Carousing in Surinamby John Greenwood, a late eighteenth-century oil painting, describes the effects of alcohol—one man guzzles
his rum punch straight from the bowl, another vomits onto the floor, while a third pours his punch onto an insensate colleague. Greenwood
implicitly denounces as well the trade in sugar (rum) and slaves in which these captains were engaged.
Source: John Greenwood, Sea Captians Carousing in Surinam, 1758. St. Louis Art Museum, Purchase.