ension was almost in the nature of a
revolution. As far back as the reign of Elizabeth most of the imports
into England were brought in English vessels by English importers, and
the goods which were exported were sent out by English exporters. The
goods which were manufactured in scattered villages or town suburbs by
the domestic manufacturers were gathered by these merchants and sent
abroad in ever increasing amounts. The total value of English exports
in 1600 was about 10 million dollars, at the close of the century it
was some 34 millions, and in 1750 about 63 millions. This trade was
carried on largely by merchants who were members of those chartered
trading companies which have been mentioned as existing already in the
sixteenth century. Some of these were "regulated companies"; that is,
they had certain requirements laid down in their charters and power to
adopt further rules and regulations, to which their members must
conform. Others had similar chartered rights, but all their members
invested funds in a common capital and traded as a joint stock
company. In both kinds of cases each company possessed a monopoly of
some certain field of trade, and was constantly engaged in the
exclusion of interlopers from its trade. Of these companies the
Merchants Adventurers, the oldest and one of the wealthiest,
controlled the export of manufactured cloth to the Netherlands and
northwestern Germany and remained prominent and active into the
eighteenth century. The Levant, the Eastland, the Muscovy, and the
Guinea or Royal African, and, greatest of all, the East India Company,
continued to exist under various forms, and carried on their distant
commerce through the whole of this period. With some of the nearer
parts of Europe--France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy--there was much
trading by private merchants not organized as companies or only
organized among themselves. The "Methuen treaty," negotiated with
Portugal in 1703, gave free entry of English manufactured goods into
that country in return for a decreased import duty on Portuguese wines
brought into England.

[Illustration: Principal English Trade Routes About 1700.]

The foreign lands with which these companies traded furnished at the
beginning of this period the only places to which goods could be
exported and from which goods could be brought; but very soon that
series of settlements of English colonists was begun, one of the
principal inducements for which was that