ABSTRACT
The Navigation Acts gave the Glasgow merchants an assured position, though their legal privileges had to be supplemented by greater efficiency to gain predominance, particularly through the exploitation of the use of factors or the storage system instead of the old consignment method of trading. In spite of the restrictions of the Navigation Acts which excluded other nationalities, including the Scots, from trading with the English colonies, Glasgow imported its first cargo of tobacco in 1674 and a prosperous illicit trade was already built up before the Treaty of Union finally made it legal. Glasgow was a city where a changing economy was emerging and growing. The restrictions of the shallowness of the Clyde were recognised and in the 1660s, the Glasgow magistrates developed Port Glasgow as a trading outpost. Though Glasgow finally shed much of its ecclesiastical past only a half-century before Adam Smith went there as a student, its growing economic potential was already evident.
