Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621-1713

Epilogue. Diverging Interests: Anglo-Dutch Trade and the Molasses Act

Epilogue. Diverging Interests: Anglo-Dutch Trade and the Molasses Act In the two decades that followed the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, British West Indians’ and British North Americans’ interests diverged. The Anglo-French wars were costly for colonists, but they failed to disrupt the trajectory of colonial development, and over time the British West Indies and British North America developed ever-more distinctive economies, the first dominated by production of one leading staple, the second by a diverse blend of economic activity. Though interdependent , the regions’ growing economic divergence caused colonists’ perspectives on interimperial trade to pull further apart. Trade between British and foreign colonies in the Caribbean would remain a regular feature of life for the remainder of the century (after all, there would always be incentive to escape duties or relieve wartime shortages), but never again would it achieve the prominence it had in earlier years nor that it retained in New York. Whereas the governor of the Leeward Islands , John Hart, described a pattern of interimperial trade in 1724 that closely resembled that of earlier years, with British West Indians buying mules from Curaçao and from the Spanish, secreting in slaves from St. Eustatius, and deceiving customs officials in the process, by 1727 he reported that the importation of slaves from St. Eustatius (and thus the export of sugar to the same island) had virtually stopped because of a dramatic increase in supplies from British slavers. Even in 1724, the most significant trade of tropical produce to Dutch merchants came not from the Leeward Islands but from small islands in what are now the British 216 / epilogue Virgin Islands—Anguilla, Spanish Town, and Tortola—where quantities were limited. As long as British shipping remained sufficient, Hart maintained , Anglo-Dutch trade would no longer be a threat to the empire’s interests.1 It is clear from Hart’s reports that regulations alone were not responsible for the decline in interimperial trade, but rather it was improved attention from British traders that limited cross-national trade. Also important was the continued expansion of sugar cultivation in the Leeward Islands, a development that made planters there resemble Barbadians even more closely. Discouraged from planting tobacco because of a general slump in prices during the first three decades of the eighteenth century, and drawn to sugar because of the swell in demand that came with the peace of 1713, planters in the Leeward Islands accelerated the shift from the lesser staples to sugar that had been gradually under way since the 1660s. In all, British West Indian sugar production rose steadily from the end of the war until the 1730s. This rise was most dramatic in the Leeward Islands, which exported more sugar than Barbados in the five years between 1716 and 1720.2 In his 1724 report, Hart did not even list tobacco among the list of products exported from the Leewards, concentrating on sugar and its by-products and noting only small quantities of cotton, ginger, and indigo.3 As sugar came to dominate the Leeward Islands, a new generation of planters owning ever-larger plantations arrived and combined with the most prosperous of residents to solidify elite planters’ control over the islands’ economy and political structure. This process, which began in the 1680s, intensified after 1700 so that, by 1715, islands such as Antigua had received significant numbers of new migrants from Britain (including many from Scotland after the Act of Union in 1707) who bought large plantations. Other new plantation owners were lawyers and agents of planters who used the returns from the sale of British goods to buy land and consolidate smaller plantations into larger concerns. In St. Christopher , a similar evolution occurred where a relatively few wealthy St. Christopher planters and merchant syndicates based in London gained control of the newly ceded French lands. With sufficient capital, ties to Britain, and a lack of knowledge about the important legacy of Dutch trade in the Caribbean, new island inhabitants had less incentive to pursue interimperial trade than had their predecessors. Likewise, elite planters already living in the Leeward Islands exploited the additional disruptions and hardships war created for already struggling planters to increase their land and slave holdings. In the process, epilogue / 217 they pushed out the modest and less well-connected planters—especially those still producing tobacco on small plots—who had the most incentive...