ABSTRACT
The policy of the Lords of Trade continued by the Board of Trade and Plantations tended directly to foster the co-operation of the agents with other persons connected with the islands. Thus in 1696 agents of Barbados were summoned together with the merchants to discuss the question of convoys. The frequent association of the Jamaica agents and the merchants trading to the island in the last years of the seventeenth century has perhaps a special significance. The agents, appointed in 1693, were themselves merchants. In the seventeenth century there was but little cooperation between agents and planters of the various islands. In the middle period of the eighteenth century when the agency disputes in the islands had been settled, when year after year the islands and their representatives at home, at the height of their influence in British politics, the islands were fortunate in their possession of zealous and influential agents.
