ports and custom houses
Rhode Island had many prominent cities during the colonial period including Newport, Warwick, and Providence. Located on a peninsula directly facing the Atlantic Ocean, Newport was the predominate port in Rhode Island. Newport was one of the major ports in the colonies that traded consistently with England. Newport and the Narragansett Bay were popular areas for smugglers to smuggle. Therefore, Rhode Island was particularly sensitive to laws implemented by Britain to control trading.
Exports and imports
Crops and grains, fish, and lumber were the major exports. Newport was one of the major ports in the colonies that traded consistently with England. Trading rum, molasses, and slaves; Rhode Island thrived on the triangular trade route. The Molasses Act of 1773, which imposed taxes on molasses from non-British companies, and the Navigation Acts angered the Rhode Island colonies. Colonial Rhode Island imported everything they could not make themselves from England. The fairness of the trade between England and the colonies was unbalanced. England benefited more so from the trades than the colonies.
Slavery
Rhode Island was a predominate slave trading colony. Rhode Island had more slaves than any other colony and slave traders from Rhode Island have traveled to Africa more than a thousand times by the eighteenth century. Of the 600,000 slaves that were traded in North America, about 100,000 of them were carried by Rhode Island's ship. Rhode Island, abolished slavery in 1652, passed a law stating black men can not be indentured for more than 10 years. The law was not effective because the need for cheap labor was to great. A group of Quakers, in 1783, petitioned to abolish slavery. The General Assembly of Rhode Island passed a law in 1784 called the Gradual Emancipation Act. The Gradual Emancipation Act stated children of slaves would be born free and slave owner could release their slaves between the ages of 21 and 40 without having to financially support them.