Search

It is now well recognized that in the century before 1670 English traders to the Mediterranean enjoyed remarkable success selling increasing quantities of textiles, with a growing proportion completely finished, downgrading Turkey and Italy to the position of raw material suppliers, and taking over a large part of the Mediterranean carrying trade. It is also clear that after 1700 it was the Mediterranean trade, especially that with Spain and Portugal, which redeemed England's very modest trading performance with Europe. The chief interest of the activities of businessman John Oldbury and his group of business associates is that they date from the generation, which separates these two periods and therefore shed some light on the main commodity trades in Anglo-Iberian commerce in the last thirty years of the seventeenth century. Spain and Portugal were two agricultural countries ruling large colonial empires, and yet lacking sufficient manufacturing capacity even to begin to meet metropolitan demands. The success of English textiles in the area is to be accounted for by the virtually total default of indigenous industry. All English exports were of central, if not crucial, importance to the receiving economies and their dependent colonies, and it was this basic fact, which underlay England's dominant position. Iberian trade to England, on the other hand, was not equally indispensable.