The Growth of English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Book excerpt: Originally published in 1969, this book discusses the growth of foreign trade between 1600 and 1775 which brought about a commercial revolution in England. English merchants developed the exchange of manufactured goods for primary products such as tobacco, sugar, cotton and silk. A notable feature of these years was the American orientation of English overseas trade. This expansion of commerce made a decisive contribution to national economic growth. Its implications for the economy as a whole and the process of industrialization are reviewed at length in the substantial introduction.