Editing Navigation Acts (section)

==Effects on American colonies==
The Navigation Acts, while enriching Britain, caused resentment in the colonies and contributed to the [[American Revolution]].{{Citation needed|date=February 2025}} The Navigation Acts required all of a colony's imports to be either bought from Britain or resold by British merchants in Britain, regardless of the price obtainable elsewhere. In the 1772 [[Gaspee affair|''Gaspee'' affair]], colonists attacked and burned a British navy ship enforcing the Navigation Acts off the coast of Rhode Island.

Historian Robert {{harvp|Thomas|1965}} argues that the impact of the acts on the economies of the [[Thirteen Colonies]] was minimal; the cost was about £4 per £1,000 of income per year. The average personal income was about £100 per year.{{sfnp|Thomas|1965}} However, {{harvp|Ransom|1968}} says that although the net burden imposed by the acts was small in size, their overall impact on the shape{{clarify|date=October 2016}} and growth rate of the economy was significant since the acts differentially affected different groups, helping some and hurting others.{{sfnp|Ransom|1968}}

Walton concludes that the political friction caused by the acts was more serious than the negative economic impact, especially since the merchants most affected were politically the most active.{{sfnp|Walton|1971}} The Navigation Acts were also partially responsible for an increase in piracy during the late 17th and early 18th centuries: merchants and colonial officials would buy goods captured by pirates below market value, and colonial governors such as New York's [[Benjamin Fletcher|Fletcher]] would commission [[privateers]] who openly admitted they intended to turn pirate.<ref name="Dow and Edmonds – New England Coast">{{cite book |last1=Dow |first1=George Francis |last2=Edmonds |first2=John Henry |title=The Pirates of the New England Coast, 1630-1730|pages=16–17|date=1923 |publisher=Marine Research Society |location=Salem MA |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c2USAAAAYAAJ |language=en}}</ref>

{{harvp|Sawers|1992}} points out that the political issue is what would have been the future impact of the acts after 1776{{clarify|date=October 2016}} as the colonial economy matured and was blocked by the acts from serious competition with British manufacturers.{{sfnp|Sawers|1992}} In 1995, a random survey of 178 members of the [[Economic History Association]] found that 89 percent of economists and historians would generally agree that the "costs imposed on [American] colonists by the trade restrictions of the Navigation Acts were small."<ref name="Whaples March 1995 140"/>

{{harvp|Rutkow|2012}} notes that timber was not one of the "enumerated commodities" included in the acts, and so New Englanders could continue the wine islands commerce in timber that began around 1642 without upsetting England. By the 1660s, the wine islands region, namely [[Madeira]], was the dominant trading partner in timber with the New England colonies.{{sfnp|Rutkow|2012}}