The Battle over Technology within the Empire

This chapter discusses the fight over the transfer of technology during the colonial era. The nature of the economic and technological relationship between England and its North American continental colonies was transformed over the 170 years of colonial rule. The chapter reveals that while in the initial stages of colonization, the metropolis allowed, and at times even encouraged, skilled artisans to migrate to the New World in the second half of the eighteenth century. As some branches of the colonial economies began to compete with their British counterparts, the Board of Trade tried to put the brakes on industrial development in North America by restricting the transfer of technology across the Atlantic. The chapter also discusses that in the initial stages of settlement, the governments of Britain's North American colonies followed their European counterparts in trying to encourage the development of local manufacturing by a variety of legislative means.

Ancient history · Battle · Colonialism · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Empire · Geography · Legislature · Political science · Settlement (finance) · Variety (cybernetics) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law