Seventeenth century: The rise of distant trade
A visitor to the British Isles in the year 1600 would not have found major centres of global trade to rival the bustling commercial hubs of Asia, such as Macao, Surat, Nagasaki, Malacca, or Aceh, nor the more established European ports like Seville, Lisbon, Venice, Hamburg, or Antwerp. London, while growing in significance, had not yet developed into the global trading powerhouse it would later become. The British Isles were still peripheral to most of the major maritime trade routes that connected Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, with limited direct involvement in the spice trade, the import of Eastern luxury goods, or the colonial ventures initiated by Spain and Portugal following their "Voyages of Discovery" in the late fifteenth century.[1]
During the later Middle Ages, European trade centred on two key regions: the Mediterranean, where Italian merchants, particularly from Venice and Genoa, dominated commerce, and the Baltic Sea, where the Hanseatic League—a federation of German-speaking merchants from cities like Hamburg, Cologne, Lübeck, and Danzig—controlled much of the trade between Northwest Europe, Northern Germany, and Scandinavia. England, with a less-developed economy than many of its continental neighbours, relied heavily on imports to meet its needs for manufactured goods and services, which it paid for by exporting large quantities of primary products—the immediate fruits of farming, fishing, and mining. Even into the sixteenth century, woollen textiles were the only British manufactured goods produced in substantial quantities, as most other products consumed domestically—including non-woollen textiles, glass, paper, pottery, and cutlery—were imported from more industrially advanced areas of Northwest Europe, particularly Holland, Germany, and France. Even so, most British woollen cloth destined for export remained undyed, with the valuable “finishing” processes conducted by skilled craftsmen abroad. Furthermore, British merchants and ships handled only a portion of the nation’s trade, much of which was managed by German merchants from the Hanseatic League, which held extensive privileges and operated out of the Steelyard, a self-governing enclave within London. Italian merchants also maintained a significant presence, controlling the trade between England and the Mediterranean.[2]
In the closing years of the sixteenth century, and the early years of the seventeenth, several pivotal changes foreshadowed the major transformations ahead, although their full impact would take decades—or even centuries—to be fully realised. First, in 1598, Elizabeth I expelled Hanseatic merchants from the Steelyard in London, effectively ending their influence and privileges in England. The Steelyard was closed, and its property seized by the Crown. This action followed Elizabeth’s earlier expulsion of Italian merchants from Southampton in 1571, marking the end of an era when foreign merchants controlled much of Britain’s overseas trade. These expulsions were driven by advocates of preferential rights for native merchants, who were beginning to assert greater influence in European trade. Leading these efforts were the Merchant Adventurers (established in 1407) who sought direct markets for English cloth in Dutch and German trading towns, and the Eastland Company, founded in 1579 under a charter from Elizabeth I, which aimed to boost trade between England and the Baltic region, including present-day Poland, Sweden, Denmark, and the Baltic states.[3]
The second set of changes that hinted at the major transformations to come was the establishment of new trading companies aimed at extending England’s trading interests beyond Europe and into Asia and the Middle East. The most significant of these were the Levant Company (founded in 1592), which sought trade with territories under Ottoman control, and the East India Company (charted in 1601), which focused on trade with the lands east of the Cape of Good Hope. These ventures emerged in a landscape shaped by the declining fortunes of Mediterranean and Iberian maritime powers, who had long controlled Europe’s access to Asian luxuries. Vasco da Gama’s 1498 voyage to India had signalled the waning of Venetian influence in the spice trade as Portugal established direct sea routes to Asia, bypassing the Venetian trade networks in the Mediterranean. By the late sixteenth century, however, Portugal faced its own crisis. The death of the heirless King Sebastian at the Battle of Alcácer-Quibir triggered a succession crisis, ultimately handing the Portuguese crown to Hapsburg Philip II of Spain. This union entangled Portugal in Spain’s long war with the Dutch, who were striving for their independence from the Hapsburgs, straining Portuguese naval strength in the Indian Ocean. Simultaneously, conflicts involving Spain, Portugal, Venice, and the Ottoman Empire disrupted Mediterranean trade and created openings for new players. Initially, English merchants focused on occasional forays to the Aegean islands and Syrian ports, seeking commodities like currants, spices, and silk. However, these efforts were often hindered by attacks from Barbary Corsairs. It was not until Charles II’s “Treaty of Peace between England and Algiers” (1662) that English ships secured safe passage, aided by “Mediterranean passes”, issued by the Admiralty, which granted ships immunity from Barbary pirate attacks. The registers of these passes survive as a treasure trove of primary source material on English maritime routes, trade cargo, ship sizes, and crews.[4]
The final and most significant development was England’s gradual rise as an imperial power. Historically, England had been a “latecomer” to European colonisation in the New World and Asia. Its early colonial activity in the seventeenth century focused on un-claimed territories in the Caribbean and North America. Initial settlements included Barbados (1627), St. Kitts (1623), Nevis (1628), and Antigua (1632), with early mainland ventures in Virginia (1607) and Maryland (1632). In New England, pilgrims founded Plymouth Colony in 1620, followed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and by Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1636.[5]
In Asia, England’s colonial foothold initially developed through the East India Company, which established strategic trading outposts in Surat (1612), Madras (1639), and Bombay (1668). These bases became pivotal for extending British influence in India and securing access to Asian markets. The East India Company also made an early move into the East Indies with a settlement in Bantam, Java, in 1602. From these footholds, England embarked on a more ambitious strategy of seizing colonies from rival powers. In 1655, it captured Jamaica from Spain, which became a critical asset for sugar production and the transatlantic slave trade. In 1664, England took New Amsterdam from the Dutch, renaming it New York, thereby strengthening its influence along the North American east coast. Additional acquisitions followed, including the Carolinas (granted in 1663, with settlement accelerating in the 1670s) and Pennsylvania (1681), awarded to William Penn as a Quaker refuge. In Asia, though English interests before 1740 focused primarily on trade, these early outposts and alliances laid crucial foundations for later expansion. Britain’s influence surged with victories over European rivals and local forces in the 1750s and 1760s, granting the East India Company tax collection rights in Bengal—a pivotal step toward the full-scale colonisation of India by the mid-nineteenth century.[6]
These colonial ventures had profound impacts on English trade, leveraging what economists call "comparative advantage". When trading with other European countries, which shared similar climates and resources, the benefits were relatively modest. For example, England exported large quantities of woollen textiles to Dutch and German ports while importing linen textiles in return. Although woollens and linens differed in properties, neither country gained access to goods they could not produce domestically. In contrast, trade with the Atlantic colonies and Asia introduced commodities that were scarce or even unavailable in England in the seventeenth century. These included sugar and tobacco, cultivated by enslaved workers on Caribbean islands and North American plantations, along with tea, coffee, and spices, and advanced consumer goods like intricately printed cotton textiles or fine porcelain.
Yet, the economic advantages of empire took time to materialise. The Atlantic plantation system required a vast expansion of slavery, involving the trafficking of millions of enslaved Africans, which relied on new trade connections in West and West-Central Africa—primarily facilitated by the Royal African Company, founded in 1672. Expanding trade with Asia also posed substantial challenges, primarily due to the limited demand for English woollen textiles, which created persistent trade imbalances. To address this, English merchants relied heavily on silver as a trading medium, with millions of pounds’ worth being shipped to Asia throughout the seventeenth century. Silver became one of the few commodities consistently accepted by Asian markets, ensuring the steady flow of sought-after goods like spices, silk, and cotton textiles to England.[7]
The establishment of the "Navigation System" played a vital role in securing and regulating colonial trade for England. The Navigation Acts, first enacted in 1651, restricted goods imported into England or its colonies to English ships, effectively barring foreign competitors and consolidating English control over colonial commerce. Later amendments, such as the Navigation Act of 1660, further strengthened these regulations by designating certain goods—known as "enumerated commodities"—that could only be exported to England or its colonies. This strategy bolstered protection for England’s expanding colonial trade network, ensuring that wealth flowed back to the mother country.[8]
Recording overseas trade
Exact figures for England and Scotland’s overseas trade are not available for each year of the seventeenth century. After 1601, annual English customs accounts were no longer recorded by the office of the King’s Remembrancer, resulting in a lack of consistent, centralised accounts for goods entering and leaving all English ports until the century’s end. The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, following over two decades of republican rule under Oliver Cromwell, marked a resurgence in trade and a renewed emphasis on record-keeping. This shift led to a new series of trade returns in the 1660s. However, these records lapsed in the 1680s, and only in 1696 did a continuous series of trade records emerge.[9]
These new customs records survive in two overlapping series housed at The National Archives (UK): the “Ledgers of Imports and Exports” (commonly referred to by historians as CUST3), which run from 1696 to 1780, and the “States of Navigation, Commerce, and Revenue” (CUST17), covering 1772 to 1808. Together, they form the foundation for examining English (and later British) overseas trade during the early era of globalisation.
The “Ledgers of Imports and Exports” provide annual lists of commodities traded between England and a range of countries, regions, federated states, and colonies—sometimes grouped, such as “New England” or “Virginia and Maryland”. In the eighteenth century, English customs officials recorded exports in two ways: quantities and values. A variety of measures were used for quantities, making direct comparisons difficult. Just taking the case of textiles and clothing, measures included parcels, dozens, pieces, yards, ells, goads, and pounds avoirdupois. In addition, each commodity entering or leaving English ports was also assigned a value, a more useful measure to compare between commodities or over time. It is important to recognise, however, that the value was not based on the market price of the commodity at the time, but on what was called the “official price”, which had been fixed, in most cases, in the early eighteenth century. Although this approach to record-keeping does not provide the historian with trade figures in prevailing market values, it does offer some advantages in that it allows the construction of long-term series of trading volumes free of distortions of changing prices.
However, complications arise: the “official” values were not always consistent, and customs officials occasionally reviewed and adjusted the standardised rates. Additionally, some newly traded commodities—such as cotton velvets, which first appeared in the records in the 1760s—lacked assigned official values and were recorded “at value”, reflecting their current market price without noting the quantities exported. Despite these limitations, most historians view the official values as a reasonably accurate approximation of actual trade values up until the 1790s, after which wartime inflation during the French and Napoleonic Wars significantly undervalued trade expressed in official terms.[10]
Further limitations of customs records are apparent to historians. The customs bureaucracy was relatively small, and record-keeping practices could vary by port. Furthermore, the records do not capture smuggled goods, such as tea, which faced extremely high import duties until 1784. Customs records cannot fully capture multilateral trades, such as the Atlantic slave trade, which spanned three legs: from English ports to Africa, from Africa to the Americas, and from the Americas back to England. Customs data capture only the outward leg to "Africa" and the return from the Americas, omitting the “Middle Passage”, a segment where British ships transported enslaved people but bypassed British ports. Consequently, these records lack crucial details on the human toll and specifics of the transatlantic slave trade.[11]
Several other features of these records deserve attention. Goods are organised into three main categories: imports (goods arriving from overseas markets), exports (goods departing for foreign destinations), and re-exports (goods initially imported from overseas and then exported to a third market). Additionally, CUST3 separates London’s trade from that of the “outports”—an aggregated total of all other ports in England and Wales. This distinction has allowed historians to underscore London’s central role in England’s overseas trade throughout the eighteenth century, as well as to explore the growing competition it faced from provincial merchants.[12] The “States of Navigation, Commerce, and Revenue”, while lacking a separate breakdown for London and the outports, broadens its coverage by including Scottish trade from 1790 and Irish trade from 1801.
Hence, the customs records established from the late seventeenth century onward provide invaluable, if imperfect, insights into the development of English and later British overseas trade. Although inconsistent in the early years and complicated by factors like standardised "official" values, omitted smuggled goods, and incomplete coverage of trades like the Atlantic slave trade, these records form a robust foundation for analysing long-term trade patterns. They underscore London’s dominance in overseas commerce while also revealing the growing influence of provincial and, eventually, Scottish and Irish merchants, thus reflecting Britain’s expanding economic reach during the early era of globalisation.
Eighteenth century: the global trading powerhouse
The customs ledgers provide a detailed account of England's—later Britain's—eighteenth-century transformation into a global trading powerhouse. The records indicate that, as late as 1700, England’s trade was predominantly oriented towards traditional European markets. However, by the eve of the American Revolution seven decades later, this landscape had changed dramatically. While European trade had stagnated, Britain’s Atlantic colonies emerged as its primary trading region. Historians commonly refer to this significant shift as the "Americanisation" of English overseas trade during the eighteenth century.[13]
On the import side, the North American colonies supplied a diverse array of goods that significantly contributed to England’s economic and cultural development. Luxury commodities such as sugar, rum, coffee, and tobacco played a vital role not only in their impact on labourers’ diet and energy levels, but also in shaping consumer expectations and choices. These items transformed food and drink from mere sustenance into sources of pleasure and integral components of emerging social rituals in the public sphere, involving smoking, or coffee houses. Although rice was cultivated extensively in the British colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, it was rarely consumed in Britain. Instead, most of the Lowcountry's production was destined for third markets in Europe, particularly Spain and Italy, where rice dishes were more popular and cereal harvests were less reliable than in northwestern Europe. Much of the tobacco grown in Virginia and Maryland was also re-exported, primarily to France, Holland, and Germany, rather than to the Mediterranean. Sugar’s allure in England was so profound that, despite being by far England’s largest import by value, only relatively small quantities were available for sale to other European consumers. Additionally, the Atlantic colonies provided essential raw materials for Britain’s burgeoning industrialisation, including timber, pearl ashes (potash), and dyestuffs like indigo. From the late eighteenth century onward, the Atlantic World emerged as Britain’s primary source of raw cotton, a crucial factor in fuelling the expansion of the world’s first Industrial Revolution.[14]
The Americanisation of British overseas trade also had significant implications for English exports. Even as late as 1700, one commodity, woollen textiles, still comprised three-quarters of all English manufactured exports! Other manufactured goods industries (e.g. linens, silks, cottons, metalwares, and paper) had slowly developed in England from the early eighteenth century through a process of “import-substitution”, whereby goods previously imported come to be produced at home. However, there was little prospect of these goods finding exports in Europe because Britain had for most of the eighteenth century no particular advantage in the production of these goods over equivalent producers in Europe and might find these markets protected by tariffs or outright prohibition. Only southern Europe could be coaxed into taking significantly more English manufactures in the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century, and these were mainly woollens destined for the colonial markets of Latin America rather than for local consumption.[15]
Atlantic trade presented a vastly different scenario for British exports. The American colonies were primarily agricultural and, even after over a century of settlement, produced few of the wants or needs of its resident populations. These demands included basic household items that had long been common across Europe, such as tables, pewter utensils, and cooking pots used for daily needs or “backstage” purposes, as well as “frontstage” consumer items like books, silverware, table linens, mirrors, chinaware, and tea and coffee sets: goods meant to impress visitors. At the wealthiest end of colonial society there were demands for all the trappings of the English gentry, including horses and carriages, livery for servants, and bespoke furniture produced by makers such as Thomas Chippendale. In addition, the colonists required a whole range of manufactured wares associated with the cultivation and processing of plantation “staples”, including basic tools for farming and construction (hoes, spades, ploughs, nails, and hammers), processing and manufacturing equipment (copper stills, steam engines, water wheels, and gearing), as well as coarse textiles (woollens and linens) for clothing enslaved workers. There were also requirements of trade goods (textiles, tools, weapons, as well as jewellery to exchange with Native Americans for trapped animal fur, especially beaver and deer skins). While these goods were available in many parts of Europe, the Navigation Acts protected this market for British producers, limiting European access to legitimate trade and driving much of it into contraband.[16]
Thus, by the mid-eighteenth century, England’s Atlantic exports included significant quantities of textiles other than woollens (especially linens, cottons, and silks), as part of a highly diverse range of sundry manufactures and consumer goods that were much wanted but not extensively produced in the colonies. Ralph Davis thus claimed “that the process of industrialisation in England from the second quarter of the eighteenth century [was] to an important extent a response to colonial demands for nails, axes, firearms, buckets, coaches, clocks, saddles, handkerchiefs, buttons, cordage and a thousand other things”.[17]
The trade with Asia, although growing significantly, lagged behind the Atlantic, mainly because it retained its one-way character until well into the nineteenth century. Industries in Asia, particularly in the Indian subcontinent and China, were far more advanced than those in Europe, excelling in the production of colour-fast textiles, such as printed and painted cottons known as “calicoes,” as well as fine ceramics like porcelain. The large-scale importation of these goods from the late seventeenth century is often linked to the emergence of new consumer desires in Britain, which subsequently influenced demand in the Atlantic colonies. The English woollen industry, for instance, reacted with alarm to the “calico craze”, which captivated the English population to such an extent that printed cottons were banned for wear in England by Acts of Parliament in 1700 and 1721. Another major import from Asia was Chinese tea, which gained immense popularity during the eighteenth century; it was commonly enjoyed sweetened with sugar from Caribbean colonies and served in porcelain cups imported from China or in affordable imitations produced by Staffordshire potters like Josiah Wedgwood. This evolving consumer culture marked a significant shift in British domestic life during the period.[18]
Conclusion: Towards the Industrial Revolution
The unique features of the Atlantic colonies—rapidly growing, wealthy populations with limited industry in a protected colonial enclave—allowed eighteenth-century Britain to diversify its exports away from either raw wool or manufactured woollens for the first time since the reigns of the Angevin kings. The goods provided by Atlantic colonies, together with commodities sourced from the East, transformed consumption in Britain and provided a range of goods that would support its economic development.
Britain’s status as the leading imperial power in Europe was clearly demonstrated by the Treaty of Paris that concluded the Seven Years’ War (1753–1763), which resulted in Britain acquiring new territories and trade routes at the expense of the significantly weakened French and Spanish empires. While Britain’s colonial power had facilitated its expansion in overseas trade, the later eighteenth century brought an additional advantage: the Industrial Revolution. From the 1780s onwards, mechanised, factory-based production allowed Britain to produce manufactured goods more cheaply than their European counterparts and eventually even producers in Asia, where unit labour costs were substantially lower than in western Europe. This was to usher in a further set of profound changes in the structure of British overseas trade as well as Britain’s place in the global economy.
Initially, factory production in Britain was predominantly focused on textiles, marking a significant shift in the country’s export profile from a diverse assortment of goods to a pronounced dependence on a select few commodities. Among these, the most transformative was cotton. While it was a minor industry in mid-eighteenth-century Britain, cotton experienced remarkable growth after the canonical inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton, eventually emerging as the nation’s foremost export commodity by 1800. This dramatic shift not only redefined Britain’s economic landscape—fuelling industrial expansion and urbanisation—but also had far-reaching consequences for global trade dynamics. The increasing dominance of British cotton exports influenced market structures, disrupted traditional industries worldwide, and contributed to the interconnectedness of economies, setting the stage for a new era of globalisation in the nineteenth century.[19]
[1] Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (Oxford University Press, 1991); T.H. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611: A Study of Their Trade and Commercial Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); François Gipouloux, The Asian Mediterranean: Port Cities and Trading Networks in China, Japan and South Asia, 13th–21st Century (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011); Jeroen Puttevils, Merchants and Trading in the Sixteenth Century: The Golden Age of Antwerp (Routledge, 2015); Maria Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean: 1 (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Cuauhtémoc Villamar, Portuguese Merchants in the Manila Galleon System: 1565–1600 (Routledge, 2020).
[2] George Daniel Ramsay, English Overseas Trade During the Centuries of Emergence: Studies in Some Modern Origins of the English-Speaking World (Macmillan, 1957); Walter E. Minchinton, The Growth of English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Methuen, 1969); C. G. A. Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500–1700: Volume 2, Industry, Trade and Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
[3] George Daniel Ramsay, “The Undoing of the Italian Mercantile Colony in Sixteenth Century London,” in Textile History and Economic History: Essays in Honour of Miss Julia de Lacy Mann, ed. Kenneth G. Ponting and Richard George Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973), 22–49; Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611: A Study of Their Trade and Commercial Diplomacy.
[4] James C. Boyajian, Portuguese Trade in Asia Under the Habsburgs, 1580–1640 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Nabil Matar, British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563–1760 (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Rupali Mishra, A Business of State: Commerce, Politics, and the Birth of the East India Company (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018); Alberto Tenenti, Piracy and the Decline of Venice 1580–1615 (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2022); William A. Pettigrew, Global Trade and the Shaping of English Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024).
[5] Kenneth Morgan, Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
[6] K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company: 1660–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
[7] Kenneth G. Davies, The Royal African Company (London: Longman, 1957); H. V. Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833 (Cambridge University Press, 2005); William Andrew Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672–1752 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
[8] Charles McLean Andrews, British Committees, Commissions, and Councils of Trade and Plantations, 1622–1675 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1908).
[9] George N. Clark, Guide to English Commercial Statistics: 1696–1782; with a Catalogue of Materials (London: Royal Historical Society, 1938); Ralph Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1660–1700,” The Economic History Review 7, no. 2 (1954): 150–66; Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter, “‘Introduction,’” in English Overseas Trade Statistics, 1697–1808, by Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter, with an Introduction by T. S. Ashton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960).
[10] Ralph Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1700–1774,” The Economic History Review 15, no. 2 (1962): 285–303; S. D. Smith, “Prices and the Value of English Exports in the Eighteenth Century: Evidence from the North American Colonial Trade,” The Economic History Review 48, no. 3 (1995): 575–90.
[11] Davis; R. C. Nash, “The Balance of Payments and Foreign Capital Flows in Eighteenth-Century England: A Comment,” The Economic History Review 50, no. 1 (February 1997): 110–28.
[12] Christopher J. French, “‘Crowded with Traders and a Great Commerce’: London’s Domination of English Overseas Trade, 1700–1775,” The London Journal 17, no. 1 (1992): 27–35; Peter Maw, “Provincial Merchants in Eighteenth-Century England: The ‘Great Oaks’ of Manchester,” The English Historical Review 136, no. 580 (August 18, 2021): 568–618.
[13] Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1700–1774.”
[14] Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972); Carole Shammas, The Pre-Industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); R. C. Nash, “South Carolina and the Atlantic Economy in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” The Economic History Review 45, no. 4 (November 1992): 677–702; Richard B. Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775 (University of West Indies Press, 1994); Joseph E. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Lorena S. Walsh, Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Giorgio Riello, Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
[15] Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1700–1774”; H. E. S. Fisher, The Portugal Trade: A Study of Anglo-Portuguese Commerce 1700–1770 (London: Routledge, 1969).
[16] Thomas M. Truxes, Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York (Yale University Press, 2008).
[17] Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1700–1774,” 296; Peter Maw, “Yorkshire and Lancashire Ascendant: England’s Textile Exports to New York and Philadelphia, 1750-1805,” The Economic History Review 63, no. 3 (2010): 734–68; Chris Evans, “The Plantation Hoe: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Commodity, 1650–1850,” The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 1 (2012): 71–100; Nuala Zahedieh, “Eric Williams and William Forbes: Copper, Colonial Markets and Commercial Capitalism,” The Economic History Review 74, no. 3 (2021): 784–808; Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson, Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution (John Wiley & Sons, 2023).
[18] Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century,” Past & Present, no. 182 (2004): 85–142; Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
[19] Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2009); Robert C. Allen, “Why the Industrial Revolution Was British: Commerce, Induced Invention, and the Scientific Revolution 1,” The Economic History Review 64, no. 2 (2011): 357–84; Peter Maw et al., “After the Great Inventions: Technological Change in UK Cotton Spinning, 1780–1835,” The Economic History Review 75, no. 1 (2022): 22–55.