The collapse of the Kent Island partnership left the rival venture in Maryland well-placed to secure control of the fur trade in the upper Bay after 1640. But the prospect of commercial expansion was dashed by the onset of a protracted crisis that threatened the survival of the colony. Civil war in England plunged the Chesapeake into a ‘time of troubles’, marked by disunity, division and conflict. Surprisingly, the interconnections between English events and the development of the North American colonies during the 1640s and 1650s have rarely been examined in detail, though a recent study argues that they contributed to the establishment and greater definition of an English Atlantic, facilitated by more extensive intercolonial communication. But political turbulence across the colonies, manifest in rebellion or insurrection, was intensified within the Bay by the divisive legacy of the 1630s. Thus, the rapid collapse of royal authority revived the opponents of Baltimore. Seeking to exploit these unsettled and potentially favourable conditions, Claiborne made repeated attempts to recover trade and territory which merged with wider ambitions for the reformation of the region. Colonial rivalry was accompanied by widespread native unrest and dislocation, intensified by the impact of hostilities in the north between Huron and Iroquoian groups. Conflict with the Powhatans in Virginia was paralleled by the outbreak of war with the Susquehannocks in Maryland. During a period of barren confusion much of the fur trade in the upper Bay was diverted to Swedish and Dutch outposts in the Delaware. Colonial traders remained active, despite the rivalry and conflict, but these years represented a turning point in interethnic commerce and exchange. Though masked by the turmoil of war and rebellion on both sides of the Atlantic, the collapse of metropolitan interest in fur trading enterprise, combined with a narrowing of colonial opportunities within an embryonic and expanding plantation culture, cast a shadow over the function of native trades. In these circumstances the commercial interruption of the civil war enabled the Dutch to increase their trade in the Chesapeake. The response of the new republican regime in England was to impose regulation over colonial trade and shipping, which pointed towards an exclusionary, imperial direction.

Commerce, conflict and competition during the early 1640s

Commercial enterprise in the upper Bay operated under the constraints of weak economic and political structures characteristic of a small colonial outpost.