During the Middle Ages and Stuart period, Great Britain had large domestic supplies of timber, especially valuable were the famous British oaks.
This timber formed the backbone of many industries such as shipbuilding but not iron smelting which used charcoal derived from the wood of various trees.
From before the Industrial Revolution period the price of timber in England had been increasing as domestic quantities became more difficult to obtain.
Especially difficult to find were trees suitable to be masts, a crucial requirement for any sailing ship, and one that often had to be replaced after storms or wear.
As suitable trees take decades to grow, in densely populated nations like England any given square meter of land could, usually, be far more valuably employed by producing foodstuffs rather than timber.
Timber was thus only viable industry in sparsely populated lands such as Scandinavia, those in the Baltic Sea area, and in North America.
The Baltic countries, and especially Norway, had other benefits including superior sawmills, and often lower transport prices than distant overland travel.
Some consolation was, however, provided to the mercantilists by the employment of the timber in the merchant fleet that would later assist in bringing bullion into the land.
The dependency on Baltic timber was paramount in the minds of British statesmen in the late seventeenth century mostly because of the strategic dangers.
Besides the trade coming from Norway, the timber ships had to come through the Sound – the narrow straits separating Denmark from Sweden- a passage easily blocked by enemy navies, especially the Dutch who were geographically well placed to impede trade through the North Sea, as could, to a lesser extent, the French.
Thus beginning with the Anglo-Dutch wars of the later seventeenth century British statesmen and merchants began to look for some alternative to these imports.
The only viable alternative to the Baltic areas was North America, New England especially had vast amounts of suitable timber.
These encouragements included bounties from North American producers, and rules forbidding the export of colonial timber to anywhere other than England.
While the laws of Queen Anne's era remained in place, these were well known to be totally ineffective in curbing the dependence on the Baltic.
The American colonies still could exported little timber to England, only great masts could justify the cost of the long transatlantic journey.
Parliament, however, failed to be swayed by shipwrights, merchants or colonial timber producers who were hoping for an end to Baltic competition.
The next attempt to break Britain's dependence on the Baltic once again occurred during a great Europe wide conflict that had significant naval elements.
Out of the first ten bilateral trade treaties signed, seven of them were with Baltic nations covering all the major timber exporters except for Russia.
Burma had to cede Assam, Manipur, Rakhine (Arakan) and Tanintharyi (Tenessarim) and later the remaining coastal provinces: Ayeyarwady, Yangon and Bago.