1688: The First Modern Revolution by Steve Pincus
Author:Steve Pincus
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2009-10-03T09:06:00+00:00
Tories also complained that the commitment to Continental war had deleterious effects on English foreign trade. Instead of protecting English merchant fleets, the government had committed its resources to raising Continental armies and preparing for set-piece naval battles. The results, they claimed, were disastrous. "The loss of trade and treasure by neglect of guarding the sea" contributed greatly, in the view of Sir Edward Seymour, to the "ill condition" of the nation. Seymour's fellow Tory Clarges chimed in that the "ill success of the government" in protecting trade was of dire consequences: "if trade be lost, land will fall." The Tories may have been quick to blame the decline of overseas trade on the government's war strategy, but they were not imagining things. Because of the war "no one" knows "how to steer or govern himself in any one maritime concern," observed the Whiggishly inclined Mediterranean merchants Barrington and Steele. "These times of war have cut off all intercourse by sea," agreed one of Sir William Trumbull's English informants. The French decision to attack English merchant shipping had dramatic effects. In 169o it was said that more than a thousand English ships had been taken. By 1693 that number had grown to more than fifteen hundred, with the consequence that "many merchants, grocers, drapers, salesmen, mercers, milliners" were suffering and "many thousands have quite broke." One Levant merchant heard that already by the end of 1689 the English had lost "one quarter of our navigation." These estimates have been confirmed by recent scholarship that shows a 25 percent decline from prewar levels in England's trade with southern Europe, a 6o percent drop in reexports to northwestern Europe, and a massive decline in the trade with West Indies and North America.'00
Tories increasingly complained of the conduct of England's allies in the Grand Alliance. In essence, Tories argued that England was footing the bill for Europe's war against Louis XIV. Many English people of all political stripes were in constant fear that one ally or another would succumb to French diplomatic seduction and sign a separate peace. Many also whined that the allies were not doing their part financially and militarily. But it was the Tories and their allies in Parliament who developed these concerns into a full-scale critique of Continental commitment. "Though we came into the war last yet we shall pay for all," fulminated Sir Thomas Clarges. "Our coming into the war was of more advantage to the confederates than it was to us," he explained. "The only way for you to oppose France is to strengthen yourself by sea." Clarges's increasingly reliable ally and passionate defender of the Tory Old East India Company Theodore Bathurst demanded pointedly that "we may know what sums of money have been sent to the Duke of Savoy, to the Dutch, and to the beggarly princes of Germany." Paul Foley asserted in the Commons that if the allies "had been unanimous to attack" Louis XIV "we might have brought him to our terms." The
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