7 - Atlantic trade and British ports

Summary

As Capitalism and Slavery suggested, and as modern research has confirmed, Atlantic trade was crucial for the development of Britain's west coast outports and had a significant impact on the metropolis (E. Williams, 1944: 60–4, 73–5). Virtually all ports around Britain participated in transatlantic commerce to some degree. On England's south coast Plymouth, Poole, Southampton and Cowes served as customs points for goods from the Americas intended for re-export markets in Europe. Bideford, Barnstaple and several other small Devon ports imported tobacco down to the mideighteenth century (Price, 1973, vol. I: 590–4; 1996b; Jackson, 1983: 190–1). Lancaster developed a minor role in the slave trade that stimulated its economic development (Elder, 1992). Even ports on the east coast of Britain, such as Hull and Newcastle upon Tyne, had a smattering of merchants who conducted transatlantic voyages. Yet all these ports engaged in such traffic on a relatively small scale: they lacked the demographic growth, geographical location, processing industries or industrialising hinterland necessary to stimulate Atlantic trade and shipping on a large scale. By 1775 the smaller ports, such as Falmouth and Lancaster, had largely dropped out of transatlantic trade as it became more complex, specialised and subject to economies of scale. The larger ports that flourished in long-distance commerce were maritime centres where transaction costs could be kept low.