ssumed by the revolted colonies
after their declaration of independence. Each group had special
commercial characteristics--in itself, and relatively to Great
Britain. The islands, whatever their minor differences of detail, or
their mutual jealousies, or even their remoteness from one
another,--Jamaica being a thousand miles from her eastern
sisters,--were essentially a homogeneous body. Similarity of latitude
and climate induced similarity of social and economical conditions;
notably in the dependence on slave labor, upon which the industrial
fabric rested. Their products, among which sugar and coffee were the
most important, were such as Europe did not yield; it was therefore to
their advantage to expend labor upon these wholly, and to depend upon
external sources for supplies of all kinds, including food. Their
exports, being directed by the Navigation Act almost entirely upon
Great Britain, were, in connection with Virginia tobacco, the most
lucrative of the "enumerated" articles which rendered tribute to the
_entrepot_ monopoly of the mother country. It was in this respect
particularly, as furnishing imports to be handled and re-exported,
that the islands were valuable to the home merchants. To the welfare
of the body politic they contributed by their support of the carrying
trade; for the cargoes, being bulky, required much tonnage, and the
entire traffic was confined to British ships, manned three-fourths by
British seamen. As a market also the islands were of consequence; all
their supplies coming, by law, either from or through Great Britain,
or from the continental colonies. Intercourse with foreign states was
prohibited, and that with foreign colonies allowed only under rare and
disabling conditions. But although the West Indies thus maintained a
large part of the mother country's export trade, the smallness of
their population, and the simple necessities of the slaves, who formed
the great majority of the inhabitants, rendered them as British
customers much inferior to the continental colonies; and this
disparity was continually increasing, for the continent was growing
rapidly in numbers, wealth, and requirements. In the five years
1744-48, the exports from Great Britain to the two quarters were
nearly equal; but a decade later the continent took double the amount
that the islands demanded. The figures quoted for the period 1754-58
are: to the West Indies, L3,765,000; to North America, L7,410,000.[41]
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