ABSTRACT
Colonial businessmen and legislators, for instance, quickly discovered that their prosperity was linked to the carrying of trade: the more colonial shipping involved in the import and export of goods at colonial ports, the higher the level of economic benefit for everyone. English maritime policies during the colonial period of American history had their origins in the very policies that gave birth to the colonies themselves. Colonies played an important part in the world-view of English mercantilism. English maritime policy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries varied in its impact upon the colonies depending upon local circumstances. The colonies became for the mother country a source of supply for commodities that the English had to import from outside the empire, transferring a trade that had enriched foreign merchants and shippers to English hands. The lack of adequate shipping would have significantly disrupted the trade of the empire on both sides of the Atlantic.
