chapter 4 british mercantilism and the cost of …（第四章英国重商主义和成本的u2026）.pdfVIP

Page 14 Chapter 4 British Mercantilism and the Cost of Empire hree hundred years ago, nations wanted colonies in order to increase their power. According to the Teconomic thinkers of those days, colonies would help the mother country become self-sufficient and wealthy. No great nation could exist without colonies. This was the idea behind mercantilism, a forerunner of the present day idea of imperialism. England, Spain, France, and other nations competed with each other to own colonies in North America, South America, Asia, and Africa. Their competition often led to wars. The mercantilists reasoned that even wars were worth the price, because each colony would be a help to its conqueror. England needed raw materials that her colonies could supply. Lumber, wool, iron, cotton, tobacco, rice, and indigo were among the products needed in England. British manufacturers in the meantime needed markets for the goods they produced. The American colonies bought their cloth, furniture, knives, guns, and kitchen utensils from England. In addition, England’s survival as a nation depended on her navy, and the colonies were a constant source of both the timber for her ships and the men who could sail them. Since each nations wealth in those days was measured in the amounts of gold and silver it possessed, England had yet a another reason for establishing and ruling a vast colonial empire: the colonists would supply their British masters with gold and silver simply by selling their raw materials and buying England’s manufactured products. The difference between what the colonists could pay through their sales of raw materials, and what they owed because of the purchase of manufactured goods, is ca