The concept that a nation must export goods of greater monetary value than it imports, or mercantilism, held the colonies together and built them into a unity that would soon become a nation more powerful than England itself. Mercantilist ideas shaped the policies of all major nations of Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Through the mercantile theory Britain expected the American colonies to furnish products and raw materials needed in England, buy British goods, and not bother with ideas of self-government or economic independence. Though the colonies received direct economic benefit from the mercantile theory, they quickly came to resent it and the burdensome liabilities it possessed, therefore causing its defeat.…
