Mercantilism and Empire.

On the eve of the American Revolution, London was the metropolitan center of an empire that included Ireland, India, Ceylon (present- day Sri Lanka), the African Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), Newfoundland, Hudson Bay, Nova Scotia, Quebec, the thirteen American mainland colonies, east and west Florida, several Caribbean islands, and Belize in Central America. These colonies were important economically to Britain as sources of raw materials, foodstuffs, and semifinished goods. By the mid 1770s Britain imported more than £5 million worth of goods annually from its North American and West Indian colonies, which in turn served as markets for the processed and manufactured products that Britain exported. This arrangement —whereby colonies furnished resources to and markets for an imperial power—was part of a system known as mercantilism. People in the eighteenth century assumed that the world had a limited supply of wealth. The goal of nations...