monopolize this trade. In England the somewhat greater
power of Parliament meant that the Tudor and Stuart
monarchs could not do so. This created a new class of
merchants and businessmen, who aggressively opposed
the plan to create absolutism in England. By 1686 in
London, for example, there were 702 merchants exporting
to the Caribbean and 1,283 importing. North America had
691 exporting and 626 importing merchants. They
employed warehousemen, sailors, captains, dockworkers,
clerks—all of whom broadly shared their interests. Other
vibrant ports, such as Bristol, Liverpool, and Portsmouth,
were similarly full of such merchants. These new men
wanted and demanded different economic institutions, and
as they got wealthier through trade, they became more
powerful. The same forces were at work in France, Spain,
and Portugal. But there the kings were much more able to
control trade and its profits. The type of new group that was
to transform England did emerge in those countries, but
was considerably smaller and weaker.
When the Long Parliament sat and the Civil War broke
out in 1642, these merchants primarily sided with the
parliamentary cause. In the 1670s they were heavily
involved in the formation of the Whig Party, to oppose
Stuart absolutism, and in 1688 they would be pivotal in
deposing James II. So the expanding trade opportunities
presented by the Americas, the mass entry of English
merchants into this trade and the economic development of
the colonies, and the fortunes they made in the process,
tipped the balance of power in the struggle between the
monarchy and those opposed to absolutism.
Perhaps most critically, the emergence and
empowerment of diverse interests—ranging from the
gentry, a class of commercial farmers that had emerged in
the Tudor period, to different types of manufacturers to
Atlantic traders—meant that the coalition against Stuart
absolutism was not only strong but also broad. This
coalition was strengthened even more by the formation of
the Whig Party in the 1670s, which provided an
organization to further its interests. Its empowerment was
what underpinned pluralism following the Glorious
Revolution. If all those fighting against the Stuarts had the
same interests and the same background, the overthrow of