The Evolution of the British Economy: Anglo-Scottish Trade and Political Union, an Inter-Regional Perspective, 1580-1750.

Abstract

The Evolution of the British Economy: Anglo-Scottish Trade and Political Union, an Inter-Regional Perspective, 1580-1750.
Matthew Richard Greenhall

This thesis examines the nature and extent of Anglo-Scottish trade over the course of regal and political union between 1580 and 1750. It assesses whether the Unions of 1603, 1654 and 1707 had a tangible impact upon Anglo-Scottish coastal and cross-border trade between north-eastern England (north of the Tees) and southern and eastern Scotland (east of the Moray Firth). It considers how industrial similarity between the Tyne, Wear and the Forth affected the trade between them and how these related to wider networks of domestic and overseas commerce. In doing so, it offers a marriage between the study of Anglo-Scottish political and economic relations, whilst demonstrating the need for an economic arm of the New British History which acknowledges regional variation. It concludes that the regional economies of north-eastern England and southern and eastern Scotland moved from a position of carboniferous-based competition in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, to one of increasing integration and complementary trading in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries, something hastened by the Parliamentary Union of 1707. It identifies an immediate change in the level and nature of trade following the Unions of 1603, 1654 and 1707, particularly in relation to the variety of commodities traded and the logistics of commerce. It also determines that political Union was only one influence amongst many over Anglo-Scottish trade and that the differences in the English and Scottish customs systems, fiscal protectionism, and the presence of international war, were all important external factors. In offering an analysis of early-modern trade, it also assesses the usefulness of both English and Scottish ports books for the economic historian, and the important role played by the customs system in state formation and the regulation of commerce.