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This chapter explores Ireland, which was already playing its role in later Imperial history, as part colony and part partner in Empire. Ireland’s developing position within the British Empire during the 18th century is described. It is also shown that Ireland benefited from the Imperial connection in this century. Throughout the 18th century, restrictions on Irish colonial commerce were regularly denounced as evidence both of England’s resolve to keep ‘poor Ireland poor’ and of her determination to do down a prospective rival. The worsening relations between Britain and her colonies in America had not gone unnoticed in Ireland. After 1800, the Irish of all descriptions entered enthusiastically into the business of Empire. The Empire was greatly admired and highly prized in 19th-century Ireland.

Chapter 4 of The Overseas Trade of British America explores key features of the fast-growing commercial economy of British America in an era of light regulation and salutary neglect. Buffeted by vicious Atlantic pirates and financial crisis at home, colonial trade continued to grow after the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ended British participation in the War of the Spanish Succession. Discussion touches on a wide array of topics: geography, the structure of colonial commerce, and regional economic interdependence; money (including bills of exchange), capital, credit, and debt; marine insurance and the management of risk — on land and at sea; multi-lateral trading patterns, the coasting trade, and inter-island commerce; the rise of the French West Indies and their dependence on supplies from British North America; the corrosive rivalry between British North America and the British West Indies that led to Parliament’s Molasses Act of 1733; and intimate links between colonial trade and transatlantic migration — including the large-scale movement of white indentured servants and enslaved Africans. Here, a dark shadow falls across the topic: the complicity of the overseas trade of British America in the evil of the Atlantic slave trade and Atlantic slavery.

This chapter discusses land distribution in the British American colonies. British policy in the Americas was notable for its goal of putting land into cultivation and for offering small parcels of land to immigrants to achieve the goal. The chapter starts by outlining the structure of British colonial government. It goes on to describe the role of the colonies in the broader conception of Great Britain's commerce, and the legal regulation of colonial trade and credit relationships. Unlike the companies trading in the East, which had imported goods for which they knew a market existed, the companies operating in America had to discover and develop lucrative items for export. But the types of goods that appeared to be marketable, such as tobacco and rice, required labor. Laborers were initially recruited by means of indentured servant contracts, and later coerced by slavery. By 1660, the British government monopolized trade over its colonies in America. The British colonies were united by the reach of comprehensive trade regulations enacted to advance the mercantilist goal of improving England's (and Scotland's) balance of trade. The commercial regulations were enacted in piecemeal fashion and were often the product of highly contested political debate. They are, however, collectively referred to as the “Navigation Acts.”