In Colonial America the 13 Colonies were restricted in what they could do by British laws. The laws that England made specifically for their different colonies around the world were called “Navigation Acts” and they would often limit what the colonies could do, though in 1651 the Acts started to get worse and worse, resulting in the people of the colonies disliking their English rulers more and more until the Revolutionary War.
The first of these Acts was the 1651 Act that was introduced during Oliver Cromwell’s reign, and it restricted all English trade to English ships, but since the colonies ships were considered English ships this wasn’t too bad of a restriction, it just limited imports from the rest of Europe. However, in 1660 when Charles II reclaimed his throne he repealed this act. This was thought to be good, until he reissued it as the Act of 1660, which now defined an “English ship” as having at least ¾ of its crew be Englishmen. This was a good deal worse than the first version of the Act, since so many of the colonists were from other countries. The same Act also added the rule that nothing from the colonies could be shipped to any country other than England. This was by far the worst part of the Act, since the colonists made a great deal of their business shipping to countries other than England, like France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Denmark, anywhere else in Scandinavia, and even other colonies in Africa.
The Act of 1663 didn’t restrict the colonies however, it instead restricted all of Europe. They said that any goods going from Europe to the 13 Colonies had to first go through England and be carried on English ships manned by a ¾ English crew. Anything else was considered illegal and the colonists would be arrested for buying the goods from such a ship. This caused an extremely high increase in smuggling and piracy.
The colonists suffered through these for a time and got continually better at smuggling and piracy, until the 1733 Molasses Act that required a huge tax on the sugar coming from the French islands in the Caribbean. The tax was so high that nobody in the colonies could afford it except for the richest governors, who wouldn’t do it because they had ties in England and often grew their own sugar. The Molasses Act was meant to help the English sugar sellers since they could charge even more for their lesser, European sugar. It was designed to expire in 1763, but it returned as the Sugar Act in 1764. Though none of the colonists acknowledged the Act, continuing to smuggle and steal, they understood entirely that England didn’t care about them.
The colonists had their own currency that was independent from the English money supply, but it was generally just as acceptable as a British pound. However, due to the 7 Years War the Americans had inflated their money, losing its value. The English merchants were offended by this and asked for an Act that would give them the money that they wanted. Since these merchants lived in England and were rich, they got the Currency Act of 1751 which stated that the colonists had to pay with gold, silver, or British currency, not their own. This was then extended in 1764 to make it so that the already heavy taxes were only payable in British pounds. This obviously throttled the colonists. While the Currency Acts were lessened in 1773, it was still a major eye-opener to the colonists that the government was not their friend, which nicely set up the American Revolution.
School Essays 