Navigation Acts

Navigation Acts, English legislation protecting trade with overseas colonies, introduced under Cromwell and re‐enacted following the Restoration. Although the first act (1661) gave equal status to Irish and English vessels, the second, in 1663, restricted exports to the colonies to goods shipped from English ports. Ireland was, however, allowed to export horses, victuals, servants, and (from 1705) linen. An act of 1671 forbade the direct import into Ireland of sugar, tobacco, and other named colonial products. This expired in 1681, but the ban on imports was renewed in 1685 and in 1696 was extended to all colonial produce. Imports of unenumerated goods were again permitted from 1731.

Recent assessments suggest that the impact of the acts on Irish economic development was limited: the exceptions made permitted a flourishing export trade in linen and provisions, while Ireland in any case lacked the resources to develop a large trade in colonial consumer goods. Contemporaries, however, saw the acts as a major grievance. Following the free trade agitation of 1778–9 a British act of 1780 permitted Ireland to trade with the colonies on equal terms with Great Britain. An act of 1793 permitted Ireland to re‐export colonial products to Great Britain itself. A new British Navigation Act of 1786, taking account of the independence of the United States, was quietly replicated in an Irish act of the following year, side‐stepping the constitutional sensitivities that had wrecked the Commercial Propositions.