What Offered The Greatest Opportunity For Profit And Prosperity Once The Revolutionary War Ended?

As a result of the Revolutionary War’s success, the greatest opportunity for profit and prosperity came to the colonists due to the end of British Mercantilism.

But wait! the question is, what was this British Mercantilism?

Years and centuries before the American Revolutionary War of independence, the British Parliament had been creating and imposing some laws on the 13 American colonies. 

Indirectly, they created these laws mostly to prevent colonists’ economic development.

In other words, these rules provide a convenient business environment for British businesses.

All those rules and regulations were meant to protect British companies’ businesses and merchants from competition in the American colonies.

In no way, it benefited the 13 colonies’ local business people; contrary, it ruined their probabilities.

Once the Revolutionary War ended and established colonists’ own rule in the 13 colonies, this system completely changed.

Now, it opened a new opportunity for local businesses to make more profit and prosperity with a better system of equality and democracy.

What Is The Concept of British Mercantilism?

Though Great Britain was a global superpower from the 16th to 18th century, but it was a small island country with limited natural resource option.

They introduced Mercantilism policies to increase wealth by exporting raw materials from its colonies around the world to their mainland.

These colonies were mostly from India, America, and other Asian, African regions.

By exporting all these raw materials to Britain, they used to manufacture various products.

But again, bringing back, they sell their ending products to the colonies.

Because of these reasons, Britain’s dependency started increasing over colonies, along with their development.

To keep this dependency going on, they introduced the ‘Mercantilism’ policy, through which they designed an economic route map to control colonists’ economic matters. 

Using mercantilism policies, they protected or monopolized their mainlands’ businesses in their colonies worldwide.

How Did The British Mercantilism Policy Lead To The Revolutionary War?

In 1773, to create a monopoly over the tea markets in the 13 colonies of North America, the British Parliament passed an act named the ‘Tea Act 1773‘.

Under the rules of this act, they privileged their East India Company to monopolize the 13 colonies’ whole tea market.

The act threatened colonies’ small business owners, who were already associated with the tea business for a long time.

Therefore, dissatisfaction was widely blown against the inequal decision of the British Parliament.

On December 16th, 1773, as an angry response to the new Tea Act, 116 patriots under the leadership of Samuel Adams from Sons of Liberty executed the Boston Tea Party incident.

This rebellious incident led the company to a huge economic loss; it also challenged Great Britain’s authority over the 13 colonies.

In the following year, 1774, to punish the colonists for their doing, the Parliament again passed a series of 5 punitive laws, which were none other but the Coercive Acts.

Due to those acts’ vengeful nature, colonists named them ‘Intolerable Acts‘.

From September 5th to October 26th, 1774, 12 of the 13 colonies met in a meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to counter the British Parliament’s hostile decision.

After this meeting, the relationship between Britain and the 13 colonies went into the lowest point of all time.

Finally, on April 19th, 1775, the Battles of Lexington and Concord broke out.

The event fully led the entire struggle to the great Revolutionary War of America’s independence.