The Georgian Period in the British Empire

The Georgian period of the British Empire is defined by the rule of the Hanoverian kings who were all named George. The Late-Georgian era spans from 1763, with the reign of George III, George IV and William IV to the crowning of Queen Elizabeth in 1837. The Georgian era was a time of British expansion throughout the world. During this period mercantilism dominated British and Western European economic policies. British Imperial trade was governed by The Navigation Act of 1651, which restricted colonial trade for almost 200 years. But it was in 1763, with the end of the Seven Years War that the modern age of imperial colonialism had truly begun.

Mercantilism sparked the creation and expansion of colonies and caused wars between many of the large European countries. Mercantilism is a system were the mother country benefited by forbidding its colonies from trading with countries outside the mother country and its other colonies. Raw materials were worked domestically and finished goods were sold inside the mother countries’ colonies, excess goods were exported to supply more gold to the mother countries economy.

Great Britain employed mercantilism in the so-called triangle trade. Ships from Liverpool would take textiles, rum and finished goods to Africa. Then on the West African coast, these goods would be traded for men, women and children who had been captured by slave traders or bought from African chiefs, in exchange for finished goods. It often took a long time for a captain to fill his ship. The slavers would often spend three to four months sailing along the coast, looking for the fittest and cheapest slaves. There was often violent resistance by Africans against slave ships and their crews. They were attacks from th...

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...t of any other European country. The American colonies declared and won independence from the empire. Great Britain outlawed the slave trade effectively ended the triangle trade. The doctrine of free trade eventually replaced mercantilism.

The triangle trade accounted for over 2 million slaves sold to plantations in the British West Indies and 500,000 slaves to North American plantations. This was a dark time in British and American History from which many argue, the countries have still not fully recovered to this day. Slavery was the worst aspect of several forms of exploitation of colonies and colonist by the British Empire through its mercantilism and discriminatory taxation and regulation of its colonies, which in the end was doomed to fail and be replaced by a system that treated colonies and colonists with at least slightly more fairness and equality.