ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the level and character of English overseas trade between 1600 and the 1770s, including a trade with Portugal. It discusses the statistical sources on which such accounts have to be based. The new trading system was to be based on the exploitation of extra-European trade. In developing this trade, as other countries also recognized, there were considerable problems of organization and finance to which they all tended in the first phase of development to find a similar solution, the establishment of joint-stock trading companies. The chapter examines the connection between the course of English overseas trade and the process of industrialization. The main expansion of English overseas trade in the early seventeenth century took place nearer home. Though the Mediterranean and Irish seas were menaced by pirates, in 1609 there were said to be a thousand pirates at large off the Irish coast, English merchants were able to extend their trade with European countries.
