Rice & The Navigation Acts

Note:  Rice was made an enumerated good under the Navigation Acts in 1704

Exportation direct to the ports south of Cape Finisterre were not allowed until after 1766

From McCrady, Vol. I

Before the cultivation of rice in Carolina, Portugal, which was a great consumer of that article of food, had been supplied from Italy. It was the opportunity of this market that had greatly induced the people of Carolina to devote their attention to the production of this article of commerce. Their labor and industry were by degrees rewarded by an abundant increase of this useful and valuable product, and they had nearly monopolized the Portuguese market when, by an act of 3d and 4th Anne, rice was added to the "enumerated commodities," in the navigation acts, the exportation of which was restricted to Great Britain.

This act required the rice of Carolina intended for Portugal and Spain to be shipped first to England and reexported to those countries. The cost of this additional freight, with the other charges of re exportation, was estimated at one-third of its value. This cut off Carolina as a competitor with Italy and the East Indies, in the markets of southern Europe, and lost them that great trade.

Thus from Christmas, 1712, to Christmas, 1717, there were annually imported into England from Carolina and other plantations 28,073 hundredweight of rice, and from East India, Turkey, and Italy only about 250 hundredweight.

Of the amount imported from Carolina but 2478 hundredweight were reexported to Portugal, Spain, and other ports south of Cape Finisterre ; while 20,458 hundredweight were reexported to Holland, Germany, and other countries north of that cape ; leaving 5387 hundredweight for consumption in England.

It was in this matter that the navigation acts of Great Brit ain, the ultimate cause of the American Revolution of 1776, pressed most hardly upon Carolina. But though deprived of what should have been the chief market of the province, yet the trade even to the northern countries of Europe, encumbered as it was with the restriction of reexportation charges, was becoming of great value, and drawing a considerable commerce to Charles Town.

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