Catalogue description Board of Customs: Papers Relating to Plantations

An act of 1672 authorised the Board of Customs to control the collection of the duty upon enumerated goods shipped in the plantations, but not brought to England. In 1686 it also became responsible for collection of the 4% duties in the West Indies, but the authority of the board to control plantation customs was never explicitly stated. When collectors of customs were first appointed in America and the West Indies, they came under the control of the board. When it first assumed responsibility for plantations, ports there were laid to the charge of the Western Department of the Secretary's Office. Later a separate Plantation Department was established within that office, responsible to the commissioners for all plantation matters.

On 8 September 1767 a separate American Board of Customs was created, with its headquarters at Boston, to relieve merchants of the delay caused by sending to London their applications in revenue matters. Its powers extended over the whole of the American colonies from Davis Strait in the north to Cape Florida in the south, and also Bermuda and the Bahamas; the collections of the West Indies were left under the English board. After the War of Independence the American board was abolished on 29 September 1784. The remaining North American territories, Canada and Newfoundland, were then placed under the English board, as subsequently were all new settlements such as those in Australia, New Zealand and other colonies. The functions of the customs service there included administration of the Navigation Laws and other legislation regulating the trade of British possessions abroad, laws governing registration of British ships and those relating to the abolition of slavery.

As a result of such measures as the repeal of the 4% duty in 1837 and that of the Navigation Laws in 1849 the necessity for control of plantation customs from London disappeared and gradually responsibility for plantation or colonial customs was transferred from the English board to the respective colonial administrations. By 1853 the imposition of imperial customs in territories abroad had been abolished, and no colonial records accrued thereafter to home customs; and by 1856 the board had ceased to have any responsibility for matters relating to customs in British possessions abroad, other than the provision of technical assistance.