The English Navigation Acts were a series of laws which, beginning in 1651, restricted
foreign shipping. Resentment against the Navigation Acts was a cause of the AngloDutch Wars and the American Revolutionary War.
The 1651 Act banned foreign ships from transporting goods from outside Europe to
England and banned third party countries' ships from transporting goods from a country
in Europe to England. These rules specifically targeted the Dutch who controlled a large
section of Europe's international trade and even much of England's coastal shipping. It
excluded the Dutch from essentially all trade with England, since the Netherlands
produced very few goods itself.
Another Navigation Act, the Staple Act of 1663, required all European goods bound for
America to be shipped through England or Wales first. In England, the goods would be
unloaded, inspected, taxed, and reloaded. This increased the cost to the colonies and
heavily increased shipping time.
A series of four acts, passed between 1662 and 1773, imposed further taxes and
restrictions on trade with England's, and after 1707, Britain's colonies.
The 1733 Molasses Act levied heavy duties on the trade of sugar from the French West
Indies to the American colonies, forcing the colonists to buy the more expensive sugar
from the British West Indies instead. The law was widely flouted, but efforts by the
British to prevent smuggling created hostility and contributed to the American
Revolution.