MERCHANT SHIPPING IN THE ECONOMY OF THE LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

T THOUGH ships sail in the service of trade, trade statistics are poor indicators of the calls made by trade upon shipping. During the seventeenth century English foreign trade was not only growing rapidly but also changing its character, dealing increasingly with remote markets and sources of supply, and handling ever greater quantities of such cheap commodities as timber and coal. In these circumstances the shipping industry had to grow much faster than did the value of trade; and by I 700 it was making very heavy calls on the nation's resources of capital and manpower. It is proposed here to explore the complex nature of the demands of trade for shipping services in the last decades of the seventeenth century, and to examine the influences in the English economy of the expansion of the shipping industry which these demands called forth. I