7.1 The impact of the growing empire on Britain

Question 1

Impact on working lives

Answer 1

• More trade form India, Africa and the Americas created jobs in Britain as more orders for goods were created.​
• Enslavement needed control and Birmingham was the major centre of gun manufacturing.
• Plantations needed metal tools which were all made in Britain and chains to keep the slaves enslaved were made in the Midlands. ​
• Britain exported furniture, clothing, glassware, beer, spirits, textiles, ropes, candles and pots. ​
• Somerset fisherman caught and salted fish before sending it to the plantations for the slaves to eat. ​
• Goods from abroad – tea, coffee, sugar and chocolate needed unloading from the docks which created jobs at the slave ports – Liverpool, Bristol and London​
• Trade organisations needed accountants, clerks and lawyers​
• The slave ships and the trade ships needed a crew​
• The ship building industry needed engineers and builders. ​
• Copper, brass and bronze items came from Wales, the Midlands and the north-west

Question 2

Impact on politics

Answer 2

• Coffee houses were where people, usually men, came to socialise, do business and freely exchange ideas.
• Many of the political issues at the time: the war in Ireland, union with Scotland, the RAC monopoly or the investigation into EIC corruption were the subject of intense discussion here
• The two top auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, both originated in the coffee houses. Enslaved Africans were also sold at some coffee houses

Two political parties grew in the years following the Glorious Revolution:
- The TORY party represented the landowning gentry.
- The WHIG party represented the growing class of wealthy merchants

• Those who were wealthy had political power and their wealth came increasingly from the plantations in the Americas and the Asian trade.
• New sophisticated methods of spreading information and ideas developed e.g. pamphlets and broadsheets, magazines and newspapers

Question 3

Impact on ideas

Answer 3

• As the British government, navy, trading companies and planters colonised other parts of the world, the people they colonised were dehumanised
• Africans were depicted as ‘stateless’ and therefore inferior; described as being a ‘lower’, less intelligent species and therefore not part of the ‘moral community’ of humanity
• Historians agree that European colonialism and the slave trade led to a whole ideology that classified ‘people of colour’ as lower than White Europeans
• Ideas of personal liberty were growing in Britain, the 1689 Toleration Act allowed freedom of worship to non-conformist Protestants
• While the labouring classes were looked down on and exploited, without any voice in government, ideas were spreading that they could have rights
• In 1735, the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, published Systems Naturae: he divided humanity into four ‘races’ - White Europeans, red Americans, brown Asians, and black Africans.
• He described Africans as ‘crafty, lazy, and careless’, in comparison to his description of Europeans as ‘active, acute, and adventurous’
• These ideas developed and influenced European and North Americans thinking for centuries, providing false ;scientific’ backing to racism

Question 4

Impact on consumption

Answer 4

• Asian commodities such as tea, furniture and porcelain became widely popular
• Asian styles became fashionable
• People who could afford sugar from the Caribbean slave plantations used it to sweeten the new hot drinks, tea from Asia, coffee from East Africa and chocolate from Central America
• As these commodities became more popular, demand grew.