Structural changes in Scottish foreign trade in the early seventeenth century

 

Jennifer C Watson, University of Edinburgh

(J.C.Watson-1@sms.ed.ac.uk)

Supervisor: Professor Ian Blanchard

 

The late sixteenth-century recovery, which had brought the protracted late medieval decline in the Scottish overseas export trade to an end, as described by Martin Rorke at the 2000 Bristol conference, continued to run its course during the opening years of the seventeenth century.  Successive phases of currency debasement, in 1558-1562, 1576-1580 and 1593-1597, had seen Scottish overseas exports increase.  Successive recalls of the coinage had brought each cyclical upswing to a halt, precipitating a short-term crisis.  Yet measured across cyclical peaks between 1558/62 and 1593/97 the Scottish overseas export trade increased by almost one-third.[1]

            Unfortunately, with the institution of a new customs regime in 1597 the collection of the national customs was put at “tack” (leased) and for some fifteen years, which encompassed both the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the subsequent Anglo-Scottish “free trade” experiment of 1605-11, the picture is obscured.  An examination of successive leases, however, at least suggests that the cyclical upswing of 1593-97 continued until 1603, before another recall of the coinage once again precipitated a short-term crisis.[2]  It was not until 1609/14 that trade recovered and marginally surpassed its previous cyclical peak (Figure 1).[3]  These years, however, marked the end of one era and the beginning of another as the nation’s overseas trade began to rapidly grow, increasing by some 85 per cent during the years 1610/14 –1620/24.[4]  Thereafter, following another short-term crisis during the late 1620s, it increased again, attaining a level during the years 1630/34 which was twice that of the years 1610/14.[5]

            As in the late sixteenth century, moreover, the main catalyst behind this growth came from “new” exports.  During the years from 1558/62 to 1593/97 the trade in minerals (coal and salt) and victuals (corn) together with re-exports had accounted for 90 per cent of the total increase in Scottish overseas exports and had established these wares with a 10 per cent share of total overseas exports (Figure 2).  Subsequently, from 1593/97 to 1609/14 the trade in these “new” export wares, and for the first time, linen yarn and cloth, gathered momentum, until by the later date they comprised about a quarter of total Scottish overseas exports.  Then, even as Scottish overseas exports doubled during successive cyclical trade booms of 1609/14-1620/24 and 1630/34, a new, more balanced, pattern of trade began to emerge.  During these years both “old” wares, particularly wool, fells and woollen cloth, and “new” wares - coal, salt, victuals and linen yarn and cloth - made roughly equal contributions to the growth of Scottish overseas exports.  By the latter date the “old” wares comprised about two-thirds and the “new” wares one-third of the nation’s overseas trade, each supplying very different markets in a completely transformed trading pattern.

            In 1610/14 the distribution of Scottish overseas exports (Figure 3) retained much the same form as the previous one hundred years.  The premier destination remained the Low Countries marts, accessed via the Scottish Staple at Veere in Zeeland, through which passed, as before, the nation’s wool and wool fells, hides and skins.  These “traditional” wares, however, now comprised only some 5 per cent of total Scottish exports sold at the Staple.  Ships sailing thence carried predominantly the “new” products of the late sixteenth century – coal (22 per cent) and victuals (7 per cent) – together with cheap plaiding (66 per cent) which during the late sixteenth-century boom had displaced wool and fells as the primary woollen export.  As a century earlier there sailed in consort with the Stapler’s fleet other vessels, which passed on to Scandanavia or through the Sound to Baltic ports. These carried much the same wares as the Staplers. “Traditional” wares again played only a minor role in this trade (7 per cent) which was again dominated by the “new” products of the late sixteenth century – coal/salt (14 per cent) and victuals (33 per cent) – together with cheap plaiding (45 per cent).  In the southerly trades, France and Spain were also the recipients of the “new” products of the late sixteenth century – coal (20 per cent) and victuals (68 per cent) – and plaiding (10 per cent).  Nor, finally, was the Scottish seaborne trade to England, which now ranked second to the Netherlands in the nation’s export trade, significantly different.  The “new” products of the late sixteenth century – coal and salt (16 per cent) and victuals (5 per cent) – together with cheap cloth and plaiding (68 per cent) again predominated, but now with a completely new export ware - linen yarn (7 per cent).  In Scotland’s seaborne trade yarn still played a minor role in the early 1610s.[6]

            Yet in the aftermath of the Union of the Crowns and the ephemeral Anglo-Scottish experiment in “free trade”, yarn began to pass south by other routes, as with the suppression of cross-border “reiving,”[7] overland trade across Scotland’s southern border by way of the East, Middle and West Marches increased rapidly to around 33 per cent of total exports (Figure 3).  By the second decade of the seventeenth century some 215 dozens of linen cloth passed legally overland to England annually,[8] together with 6,761 cattle,[9] 4,853 sheep and lambs,[10] 163 horses[11] and 436 bolls of grain.[12]  A new age was dawning:

(1) Scotland’s seaborne trades, which have attracted most historians’ attention, by this date contributed little more than two-thirds to the nation’s foreign trade.  Almost a third passed southwards overland.

(2) As a result England became Scotland’s biggest customer absorbing about half (55 per cent) of her total exports.

(3) The goods supplied thence, moreover, were completely new export wares – small quantities of linen yarn and cloth and large numbers of livestock.

During the subsequent growth phase from 1610/14 to 1630/34 the balance shifted once more towards the seaborne sector of the export trade with the Netherlands-Baltic commerce increasing both absolutely and as a proportion of the whole (Figure 4).  An increasing number of vessels sailed for the Veere Staple carrying much the same products as before, but in much greater quantities.[13]  “Traditional” wares – wool, fells and hides and skins - continued to constitute only some 1 per cent of total Scottish exports sold at the Staple.  Ships sailing thence carried predominantly the “new” products of the late sixteenth century – coal (7.5 per cent) and victuals (1 per cent) – but overwhelmingly transported cheap cloth and plaiding (90 per cent).  Those ships travelling on to the Baltic carried a similar array of wares, although “traditional” hides, skins and leather enjoyed a more prominent position (14 per cent) alongside victuals (6 per cent) and cheap plaiding (70 per cent). A burgeoning volume of Scottish wares passed to the Netherlands and Baltic hinterland beyond.  Returning, the ships increasingly brought with them substantial quantities of flax and hemp[14] which as a result of the acute devaluation of the Baltic currencies during the “Kipperzeit und Wipperzeit”[15] had become increasingly cheap.

            Transformed into linen yarn and cloth by cheap domestic labour, these raw materials provided the basis for a “new” Scottish industry and export trade, one that focused overwhelmingly on one market – England.  By the late 1620s, even amidst the turmoil of the contemporary short-term trade crisis, some 7,562 linen cloths and 63,078 lbs of yarn were exported from Scotland[16] - or respectively some 4¾ and 8¾ times more than in the early 1610s. In the overseas trade to England at least at this time linen products (59 per cent of the total) certainly did reign supreme.  Yet in spite of this undoubted importance, the exceptionally rapid growth of linen yarn and cloth exports proved insufficient to compensate for the decline in the livestock trades as Scotland was drawn into the contemporary English trade crisis.[17]

 

Yet this was but a passing interlude, and with the subsequent recovery of the overland livestock trade during the 1630s and the overall growth of Scottish exports, the patterns of trade observable in the early 1610s reasserted themselves but at a much higher level than ever before.