Beginning in the 16th century, its economic dominance was made possible, in large part, by maritime merchants and business-minded seafarers. By force, deals and persuasion, it built a vast network of overseas colonies, connecting the isle to distant shores and its people with coveted commodities, including tea from India, sugarcane from Jamaica and tobacco from Virginia. But new research suggests that a reliable web of shorter routes within Britain and with other European countries accounted for a significant majority of the nation’s trade—more than its colonies across the globe—as its empire grew between the late-16th and mid-18th centuries.
Between 1696 and 1697, for example, a whopping 80 percent of the value of Britain’s global trade was generated by European markets. The project’s findings—published in a first-of-its-kind searchable online database—chart the empire’s growth and trade according to the data stored in hundreds of thousands of pages of port books, handwritten customs records of British ships, routes, destinations and cargo from 1565 onwards. Researchers used artificial intelligence (AI) to help comb through the vast contents of the delicate parchment pages stored in the British National Archives.
They trained software to decipher port officials’ unique handwriting styles, identify idiosyncratic notations and adapt to how the spelling of certain words changed over time. Analysis of these records revealed a bustling network of more than 3,000 ports across the world, including more than 1,000 domestic ports in Britain. A plurality (426) were located in southwest Britain and another 306 were found on the southeastern coast.
But every maritime location played an important role. Those in Hull and Whitby, for example, on England’s eastern shores, were critical trading posts for exchanges with the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Coal was the most commonly traded commodity that the researchers analyzed, appearing in more than 101,000 cargo entries.
Malt, wheat, iron, wool and wine were the next-most popular goods. Over the roughly 200-year timeframe the researchers analyzed, British ships connected with 157 maritime sites in France, 68 in the Netherlands and 59 in India. Overall, of Britain’s top 15 trading partners by number of recorded maritime locations, 10 were on the continent.
Still, the more unique imports that appear in the ledgers—children’s toys from China, exotic animal skins and Venice treacle, an ancient medicine believed to cure nearly any ailment—hint at the empire’s globalizing reach. Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.
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