Trade and Commerce 1857-90: Infrastructure of Trade, products of trade and impact of Trade and Commerde on Britain and on the Colonies:

Question 1

Free Trade:

1) What is trade?

Answer 1

1) The buying and selling of goods e.g. raw materials.

Question 2

1) What is commerce?

2) What did commerce include?

Answer 2

1) Activities that facilitate the exchange of goods from product or manufactured, to markets.
2) Transporting, banking, insurance and warehousing.

Question 3

1) What is mercantilism?

2) Why was it a protectionist system?

Answer 3

1) A system whereby colonies were obliged to send their produce to Britain, buy British manufactured goods and use British ships for both imports and exports.
2) It used tariffs to regulate trade.

Question 4

1) What is Free Trade?

Answer 4

1) Trade that is left to its natural course, without tariffs, quotas or other restrictions.

Question 5

Why did free trade come to dominate economic thinking?

1) In the first half of the 19th century, why was mercantilism dismantled?
2) Why is free trade more profitable?

Answer 5

1) Adam Smith’s book, The Wealth of Nations, advocated for ‘free trade’.
2) Because wealth is indefinitely expandable, and freedom from commercial restrictions is the only way to maximise prosperity.

Question 6

1) What allowed Britain to indulge in his theory?
2) How far would Britain go to enforce free trade?
3) How were British terms enforced, during the Opium Wars?
4) What is this approach called?
5) How did free trade encourage the British to see themselves as liberators?
6) Why did Britain prefer to trade with its colonies?

Answer 6

1) Britain was the world’s foremost trading nation, meaning that it benefited from free trade, and was active in supporting it around the world.
2) They would resort to threats.
3) The British Navy was used to enforce British terms.
4) Imperialism of Free Trade.
5) Free trade promoted free labour and attacked the slave trade.
6) Due to non-colonial trade having the potential to be restricted - as during the American Civil War, where the supply of cotton was stopped.

Question 7

What were the consequences of free trade?

1) Why did many colonies continue trading with Britain.
2) Why was borrowing in London capital markets cheaper?
3) How did free trade see imperial trade and investment grow?
4) What did London and the Sterling become?
5) How did technological improvements support this growth in trade?
6) By how much did gross national product grow, thanks to free trade?

Answer 7

1) Out of loyalty and ease. Trading patterns were well established and the Empire used a common language, currency and commercial law.
2) Lenders had faith in the reliability of British possessions.
3) Because approximately 20% of Britain’s foodstuffs and raw materials came from its colonies, and 1/3 of Britain’s manufactured goods were exported back.
4) London became the world’s financial capital, and sterling became its currency of international trade.
5) There were innovations in banking and company organisation, but also improvements in shipbuilding, making it easier to sail. Telegraph lines and underwater cables bettered communications, railways quickened transports, and refrigeration allowed meat and dairy products to be imported.
6) 6.5%

Question 8

1) Was there free-trade between colonies, and what extra powers did self-governing settler colonies have?
2) What issue did the first Colonial Conference of 1887 discuss?
3) Which countries imposed tariffs on British manufactured goods, to protect their own growing industries?

Answer 8

1) There was no internal free trade, and settler colonies were allowed to adopt protective tariff systems of their own.
2) Whether there should be special trading preference between colonies, but Britain turned this down.
3) Canada in 1859, and Australia in the 1860s.

Question 9

How did the ‘Infrastructure of Trade’ Support the Development of the Empire?
> Ships and Shipping:

1) When did sailing ships reach their highest rate of efficiency?
2) What were clipper ships ideal for?
3) Why was competition fierce between these ships?
4) How long would the ship last?

Answer 9

1) 1860s
2) Transporting low-volume, high-profit goods. These would include tea, opium and spices.
3) Their times would be recorded in newspapers.
4) It had to be broken up after 20 years.

Question 10

Steamships:

1) What were steamships used for?
2) What made British iron-hulled ships more efficient?
3) From the 1850s, what happened to steam ship’s travel time and capacity.
4) What other events stimulated the construction of steam carriers?
5) By the 1870s, where were British companies sending steam engines?

Answer 10

1) Bulky and heavy goods.
2) The development of the compound steam engine in the 1850s, which used less coal, and enabled ships to trade economically with distant possessions.
3) Capacity increased, and travel time between Britain and West Africa was reduced to less than 3 weeks.
4) Opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and development of the triple expansion steam engine in the 1870s.
5) In inland regions, such as the Niger.

Question 11

Railways:

1) What did the British provide for the construction of railways, that made governments dependent?
2) What was the single largest investment of the period, in the self-governing settler colonies - Canada and New Zealand.
3) How did this help in Canada?
4) How did this help Australia?
5) How did this help South Africa?
6) What were the problems of building railways in colonies?
7) In India, which areas were connected by the railway?
8) What role did railways play in West Africa?
9) How did investment in railways provide invisible trade?

Answer 11

1) The investment, the engineers, and the rolling stock.
2) The railways were the largest investment.
3) It opened up the Prairies.
4) Enabled it to export its wheat and wool.
5) Allowed it to expand its territories and commercial interests, into the interior.
6) Disrupted long-standing ecologies and communities, and also led to the displacement of indigenous people.
7) Linked the cotton and jute-growing areas of the north, with the mills of Bombay and Calcutta. Also enabled rice to reach ports.
8) Connected the interior areas of production, to the sea.
9) The provision of services overseas, made the British money, in an invisible way.

Question 12

Canals and Rivers:

1) What were canals used for?
2) Why were canals built?
3) What had to be done to rivers sometimes?
4) When did canals start being developed on a huge scale in India?
5) In Canada, after 1867, what projects were undertaken?

Answer 12

1) Trading purposes, and they were also the focus of explorers quests.
2) To avoid hazardous stretches of water, and to provide waterways were there weren’t any.
3) They had to be straightened, diverted or deepened.
4) 1857
5) Canals were deepened around St Lawrence and the Great Lakes Seaway system, and the Welland Canal was built to overcome height differences, between lake Eyrie and Ontario.

Question 13

What goods did Britain get from its colonies?
> Agricultural Goods:

1) What were Canada’s, Australia’s and New Zealand’s vast tracks of land used for?
2) What did tropical colonies such as South Africa produce?
3) Why was the production in these areas small, and how much money did native farmers make?
4) What were Indian coolies used for?
5) What plantations were there in Kenya and Tanganyika?
6) What plantations were there in Ceylon?
7) What plantations were there in India?
8) What plantations were there in Mauritius?
9) What plantations were there in Malaya?
10) What plantations were there in the Solomon Islands?
11) What plantations were there in Fiji?

Answer 13

1) The production of cheap foodstuffs and raw materials, that were available at a lower price than in Europe.
2) Goods that weren’t available in Britain - sugar, coffee, cocoa, groundnuts, copra and palm oil.
3) Production was just an addition to local subsistence farming, and farmers would sell at low prices.
4) They would be transported to work in the West Indies for a fixed period of time, in exchange for their transport. Paid low wages, for unpleasant work.
5) Sisal
6) Coffee
7) Tea
8) Sugar
9) Rubber and palm oil
10) Coconuts
11) Sugar

Question 14

1) By how much did the value of raw cotton grow, from 1854 to 1876?
2) By how much did the value of tea grow, from 1854 to 1876?

Answer 14

1) From 1,642,000 to 5,875,000.

2) From 24,000 to 2,429,000.

Question 15

Mineral goods:

1) What was exploited from Nigeria?
2) What was exploited from the Gold Coast?
3) What was exploited from Sierra Leone?
4) What was found in Northern Rhodesia?
5) What was found in Southern Rhodesia?
6) In 1886, what was discovered in South Africa?
7) What happened as a result of tin mines closing down in Cornwall?
8) What else was later discovered in the area?
9) When was gold discovered in New South Wales?
10) By 1866, how much money worth of gold was Victoria producing?
11) When did this begin to run dry?
12) Where was more gold found?

Answer 15

1) Tin
2) Gold
3) Diamonds
4) Copper
5) Coal and Gold
6) Gold, which prompted a gold rush to the previously poor Transvaal Republic.
7) 30,000 British skilled miners came to the Transvaal, increasing British ambitions.
8) Diamonds, which led to the creation of the Kimberly Diamond Syndicate in 1890.
9) 1851
10) £124 million worth of gold, 1/3 of the world’s production.
11) 1860s
12) In New Zealand in the 1860s, and in Western Australia in the 1880s.

Question 16

Industry:

1) Why was there limited development of industry in the colonies?
2) What led to the destruction of the Indian textile industry?
3) How were underdeveloped areas propelled to modernise?
4) How was their independent economic development curbed?

Answer 16

1) They had small internal markets, and couldn’t compete in a world market with British manufacturers.
2) When there was a large local demand, Indian mills could not compete in price with British imported textiles.
3) By British capital and technology.
4) The British controlled and exploited their economies.

Question 17

Chartered Companies before 1857:

1) In the 17th century, what was the world’s leading economy?
2) What company was established to gain access to India’s merchandise and markets?
3) What were chartered companies?
4) How did attitudes change by the 19th century?
5) In 1841, what did Lord Palmerston say on this topic?
6) What caused the end of the East India Company?
7) Where did trading companies remain influential?

Answer 17

1) India
2) The royal chartered British East India Company.
3) They were government-recognised commercial organisations, that were given monopoly rights over a territory’s resources. In exchange they has to administrate the area.
4) Free trade was considered the best means of assuring Britain’s global economic leadership.
5) ‘It’s the business of the government to open and secure the roads for the merchant, but no more’.
6) The advent of free trade, together with the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
7) In Africa, up until the late 19th century.

Question 18

The role of chartered companies:

1) Up until when, were chartered companies the normal means of organising trade?
2) How did policy change in the 1850s and 1860s?
3) Why did attitudes change in the 1870s?
4) Why were chartered companies revived?
5) In 1881, why did the North Borneo Trading Company receive a charter?
6) What resources did North Borneo have?
7) Why was it a strategic point?

Answer 18

1) Until the mid-1850s.
2) Trading was allowed to continue at its own pace, seeing competition as a healthy sign of capitalism.
3) European and American industrialisation became a threat, and the Long Depression was just beginning.
4) As a way of extending British trade and control.
5) So that it would administer the territory.
6) Coal, iron, copper, tobacco and also coffee.
7) It was a mid-point between India and Hong Kong.

Question 19

This charter set a precedent to others:

1) What powers was the Royal Niger Company given (1886)?
2) When was the Imperial East Africa Company made?
3) When was the British South Africa Company made?

Answer 19

1) It was allowed to trade in the lands alongside the Niger and Benue rivers, and was also allowed to expand northwards. The RNC also acted as the government for the Niger region.
2) 1888
3) 1889

Question 20

1) What was the purpose of trading companies?

2) What problems did this lead to?

Answer 20

1) To generate profits for shareholders in the UK.

2) The ruthless exploitation of local peoples and environments.

Question 21

1) What did the Imperial Federation League (1884) intend to promote?
2) Were they successful?

Answer 21

1) Colonial unity and internal imperial tariff preference. They were trying to overturn the systems of free trade that underpinned economic dominance in the 19th century.
2) They gained traction in Britain, but not as much, anywhere else.