영국의 무역정책 연구

A Study on the English Trade Policy. - On the Navigation Act in 1651 -

The aims of this paper are, firstly, to place the first navigation act at the starting point of the development of English Mercantilism, and then to trace her national effort to keep of commercial expansion with the building of national industry. The English trading policy in the seventeenth century is often represented by the so-called Navigation Acts. Usual understanding tents to say that interests reflected in the series of Acts are those of privileged distant traders. Closer examination of the first Navigation Act, however, shows this view is not really correct. Further studies into the activities of an influential person, Benjamin Worsley, on the process of the drafting of the Act, make it clear that it is more persuasive to look at the Act as the first step to introduce the entrepot system in English trade. The ertrepot system was developed in the Netherlands. But this leads the country into the economic decline in the following century, because the growth of national industry is prevented by her exclusive concentration into processing trade. England, by contrast, can escape from the danger through her heated debates between woolen manufactures and those main representative is the East India Company, on the other, in the first half of the century, the Bullionist blame the activities of the East India Company for draining English gold. At the end of the century, imported Indian calico is looked at as the rival commodity of the English national products Woolen fabrics. As the result of those national debates, English trading policy comes to support oversea trade only when it profits the national economy which is based on the home industry. The whole process of the building up of the protective trading policy, at the same time, prepares England for her colonialism. The essence of colonialism is a system of trading monopoly. The socio-political change in the 17th century is directed to liberating of the nation from feudal monopoly. This new trading policy made by them, however, was another form of monopoly.