During the 19th century, Britain imported hundreds of commodities from all over the world. Ten of the most important were cotton, wool, wheat, sugar, tea, butter, silk, flax, rice and guano. Below are graphs depicting the number of mentions of each of these commodities by decade and pie charts breaking down the number of mentions of each commodity by continent.
The Trading Consequences relational database and visualization tools represent extraordinary new research opportunities for historians and historical geographers. A large amount of data is presented at a glance, allowing researchers to pursue obvious lines of further inquiry as well as more obscure connections that might otherwise have been missed.
The visualization component is also complemented by the ability to follow up curious or novel relationships with a read of the primary sources that populate the visualizations. Both in terms of what is commonly understood about these trade items, but also in terms of new research questions, the Trading Consequences database and visualization tools provide exciting insights — even at just a glance.
A couple of notes should be borne in mind when reviewing the graphs and pie charts below. First of all, the sources are all in English. The provenance of the sources means the statistics related to mentions tend to privilege places in Britain and North America.
Because most of the sources were created in Britain and North America, they also tend to privilege the consumption end of the commodity chain. Second, the main corpus of documents used to populate the database relate to the years Several collections of documents include sources from earlier and later dates, but mentions related to years before and especially after are unreliable.
A decline in the number of mentions after reflects the smaller number of documents after , not necessarily a decline in the significance of a given commodity. For a little context, below is a graph depicting the top twenty commodity imports to Britain ranked by value during the second half of the nineteenth century. Some commodities, such as wool and wheat are consistently in the top twenty. Others, such as guano, appear just once. In England and Wales had a population of 4.
Domestic industry flourished, with many workers pursuing dual occupations on a seasonal basis in industry and agriculture. English society contained a flourishing and more extensive middling sector than any other western country, including the Dutch Republic. This provided a strong platform for commerce with, and settlement in, far-flung territories. The long 18th century was the period in which Britain rose to a dominant position among European trading empires Merchants sent out ships to trade with North America and the West Indies, where England had established a network of colonies, following on from the permanent settlement of Virginia in and the acquisition of Barbados in Some , people had emigrated from England across the Atlantic by the end of the 17th century.
Exports to the colonies consisted mainly of woollen textiles; imports included sugar, tobacco and other tropical groceries for which there was a growing consumer demand. The triangular slave trade had begun to supply these Atlantic colonies with unfree African labour, for work on tobacco, rice and sugar plantations.
It was based around the activities of the Royal African Company, with headquarters in London. Trade and settlement also occurred in Asian waters. This was mainly based around the activities of the East India Company, a large joint-stock company based in London. The ships of the East India Company fleet traded mainly in bullion, textiles and tea with Bengal. Overseas commerce was conducted within the mercantilist framework of the Navigation Acts, which stipulated that all commodity trade should take place in British ships, manned by British seamen, trading between British ports and those within the empire.
Despite these developments, in Britain was still a vulnerable competitor for stakes in overseas colonies and trade - her rivals were the trading empires of France and the Netherlands, as well as Spain and her client state, Portugal. Population growth increased rapidly after c. Agricultural productivity, proto-industrialisation, the growth of manufacturing and new mineral technologies, along with the arrival of factories, had helped the economy to industrialise.
Dual occupations had largely been superseded by specialised, regular working conditions. Trade and colonisation had also proceeded apace. In most foreign commerce, by volume and value, was still conducted with Europe, but during the 18th century British overseas trade became 'Americanised'.
By , North America and the West Indies received 57 per cent of British exports, and supplied 32 per cent of imports. After the Royal African Company's monopoly was rescinded in , the British became the largest and most efficient carriers of slaves to the New World. Private merchant houses provided the capital for this business activity, and Jamaica, the largest British slave colony, was also the wealthiest colony in the British Empire.
By Britain possessed far more land and people in the Americas than either the Dutch or the French - who were the two main northern European rivals for international power and prestige. The East India Company's trade also still flourished at this time, and greater settlement by the British in Bengal occurred after c.
The loss of the thirteen mainland American colonies in the War of Independence was a major blow to British imperial strength, but Britain recovered swiftly from this disaster, and acquired additional territories during the long war years with France from to Various Indian states were also subjugated.
Thus, commercial groups should support the empire, while industrial groups should oppose it. It follows that greater colonial industrialisation, by making the industrial groups more influential, should make a colony more rebellious.
Within India, more industrialised districts should lend greater support to the anti-imperial movement. We measure support for the anti-imperial movement in India at two key dates in its history: and In the summer of that year, the INC run an internal survey asking local party members how in favour they were of civil disobedience against the British see Indian National Congress, We observe the responses of up to local party members, scattered all over India.
Our first measure of anti-imperial feelings will be the average response of INC members in a district. Figure 2 illustrates the considerable geographical variation across INC members in supporting the start of further civil disobedience. Fifteen years later, the INC had become the mass political party that would eventually lead the country to independence In , a provincial election was held, the first to be run on a significant franchise, and also the first to be contested by the INC with full force.
The result was a landslide for the INC, which formed governments in the majority of provinces see India Office, Our second measure of anti-imperial feelings will be the share of seats won by the INC in a district.
We find that districts that had industrialised more because of the WWI trade shock featured stronger support for civil disobedience in , and were more likely to elect an INC representative in These are large effects. Industrialisation levels, per se, did have a large impact on support for the anti-imperial movement. Our results suggest that colonial trade did limit industrial growth in India, as shown by the fact that its interruption in led to a period of faster industrial growth and a persistently higher level of industrialisation.
At the same time, colonial trade did help to keep India under control, as shown by the fact that its interruption in led to stronger support for the anti-colonial movement in the s and s.
To the extent that our results can be generalised, they have three important implications for our understanding of the economics of colonial empires.
First, while colonial trade may have had some positive implications for the colonies — amongst which the modernisation of some parts of their economies — it likely hurt their long-run industrial growth. Second, our results provide a new way to rationalise the wide range of anti-industrial policies including imperial preferences that, sooner or later, all imperial powers adopted in their colonies. We can think of two main reasons why the imperial powers might have knowingly wanted to discourage industrialisation in the colonies.
The first and most obvious is that it would imply greater competition for their industries. Our results suggest an additional mechanism.
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