The naval stores policy had affected the mercantile views in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and mercantilists’ views about the Northern Colonies had varied drastically for four decades, from 1690 to 1730, although almost all of mercantilists agreed with the importance of the economic unity in the empire. Child and Cary criticised severely the Northern Colonies as useless and harmful for the mother country in the early 1690s, when the naval stores policy was still negligible, whereas mercantilists in the early eighteenth century, such as Gee, and Defoe, argued the contribution of these colonies to the economic circulation in the British Atlantic world. In their views, in addition to the possibilities of the Northern Colonies …show more content…
The establishment of the Naval Stores Act urged mercantilists to regard forests in America as profitable, and enabled Wood to represent the more concrete advantages of American naval stores production than Pollexfen in the 1690s. In the 1720s, thanks to the increase in Britain’s import of American pitch and tar, Gee and Defoe confirmed the efficacy of the naval stores policy and enunciated a proposition to make this policy more effective. In particularly, Defoe asserted that Britain should switch the sources of naval stores and timber from the Baltic trade to Colonial America with the temporary halt of the Baltic naval stores trade, although other mercantilists supported the Baltic naval stores trade on the ground that naval stores from the Baltic trade was essential for British maritime power in spite of a huge deficit. The progress of the naval stores policy and Britain’s import of American naval stores inspired mercantilists to discuss this policy, and they focused on the Northern Colonies by emphasising the mercantile advantages. However, they had little paid attention to Carolina, which was the prominent sources of American naval stores in the eighteenth century, as Carolina was already regarded as beneficial for the mother country as sources of