340.
More astonishing to the men of that time than it is to us was the fact that American foreign trade fell under British commercial control again.
Whether it was that British merchants were accustomed to American ways of doing things and knew American business conditions; whether other countries found the commerce not as profitable as they had expected, as certainly was the case with France; whether "American merchants and sea captains found themselves under disadvantages due to the absence of treaty protection which they had enjoyed as English subjects";* or whether it was the necessity of trading on British capital--whatever the cause may have been--within a comparatively few years a large part of American trade was in British hands as it had been before the Revolution.

American trade with Europe was carried on through English merchants very much as the Navigation Acts had prescribed.
* C.R.Fish, "American Diplomacy," pp.

56-57.
From the very first settlement of the American continent the colonists had exhibited one of the earliest and most lasting characteristics of the American people adaptability.

The Americans now proceeded to manifest that trait anew, not only by adjusting themselves to renewed commercial dependence upon Great Britain, but by seeking new avenues of trade.

A striking illustration of this is to be found in the development of trade with the Far East.