Notes
virginia department of historic resources
with the intricate and sometimes contradictory requirements of the Acts of Trade and Navigation.13 Much has been made of smuggling, evasion, and bribery—and rightly so. Such abuses, however, did not pertain to all aspects of colonial commerce. Violations were most flagrant in New England and the Middle colonies, places where trade was built on complex multilateral shipping patterns. “When I went to examine the customs houses, I found nothing but confusion and roguery,” wrote a customs inspector on his visit to Connecticut in 1707.14 No doubt he did! Violations were also rampant in the plantation colonies of the Upper and Lower South and the West Indies, but most of the produce of those regions was destined for ports in Great Britain, where the enforcement regime was far more efficient—and unforgiving—than that in British America.15 Even so, strong evidence suggests that most merchants and mariners played by the rules—at least, most of the time.16 In spite of the persistence of schemes to subvert the law, the half-century before the American Revolution saw a growing acceptance of the Acts of Navigation and—like them or not—the requirements of the customs service. On both sides of the Atlantic, the wealthiest and best connected merchants saw trade regulation as the protective armor of privilege. But such thinking had its limits. Monday’s “fair trader” might still be Tuesday’s smuggler. There was in this Janus-
The Custom House in Yorktown was constructed around 1721 by Richard Ambler, who came to Virginia from England in 1716. Ambler used the house in his duties as customs collector. faced business culture a willingness to cooperate with the customs service (when it served one’s interest), as well as readiness to act without an over-scrupulous reading of commercial statutes (when it served one’s interest).17 In other words, business as usual. Thomas M. Truxes is a Clinical Professor of Irish Studies and History at New York University. He specializes in early-modern Irish
N. S. B. Gras, “The Origin of the National Customs-Revenue of England,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 27:1 (November 1912), 107–49; N. S. B. Gras, The Early English Customs System: A Documentary Study of the Institutional and Economic History of the Customs from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: 1918), 93–94. 2 Elizabeth Evelynola Hoon, The Organization of the English Customs System, 1696–1786 (Newton Abbot, Devon, 1968), 6–7. 3 Jacob M. Price, “Glasgow, the Tobacco Trade, and the Scottish Customs, 1707–1730: Some Commercial, Administrative and Political Implications of the Union,” Scottish Historical Review, 63:175 (April 1984), 1–36. 4 Joseph R. Frese, “Some Observations on the American Board of Customs Commissioners,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, 81 (1969), 3. 5 John Entick, A New and Accurate History and Survey of London, Westminster, Southwark, and Places Adjacent, 4 vols. (London, 1766), 4:325. 6 Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, edited by Pat Rogers (London, 1971), 306, 312. 7 Alfred S. Martin, “The King’s Customs: Philadelphia, 1763–1774,” William and Mary Quarterly, 5:2 (April 1948), 202. 8 Thomas C. Barrow, Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660–1775 (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 12–15. 1
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history and the history of the Atlantic World prior to 1800, especially the role played by overseas trading enterprises linking Ireland to the larger Atlantic economy and society. He is the author of Irish American Trade, 1660–1783 and Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York. His latest effort, The Overseas Trade of British America: A Narrative History (Yale University Press, isbn 978-0-30015-988-2), is due for release on 30 November 2021.
7 & 8 William III, c. 22 Barrow, Trade and Empire, 72. 11 Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History, 4 vols. (New Haven, 1964), 4:178. 12 Dora Mae Clark, The Rise of the British Treasury: Colonial Administration in the Eighteenth Century (Newton Abbot, Devon, 1960), 17; Barrow, Trade and Empire, 72–73, 186–87, 221. 13 Alfred S. Martin, “The King’s Customs: Philadelphia, 1763–1774,” WMQ, 5:2 (April 1948), 203. 14 Frank Wesley Pitman, The Development of the British West Indies, 1700–1763 (New Haven, 1917), 194. 15 Pringle to Erving, October 16, 1739, Walter B. Edgar, ed., The Letterbook of Robert Pringle [1737–1745], 2 vols. (Columbia, SC, 1972), 1:142–43). 16 T. H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690-1776,” Journal of British Studies, 25:4 (October 1986), 490; John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985), 48–50. 17 Thomas M. Truxes, The Overseas Trade of British America: A Narrative History (New Haven, 2021), 122–23. 9
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SEA HISTORY 176, AUTUMN 2021