WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -According to the theory of mercantilism, what was the principal purpose of the thirteen original colonies? Naval bases, raw materials and markets, workers and manufactured goods and military recruits.

Detailed explanation-2: -According to mercantile theory, colonies were to supply their mother nation with raw materials and buy their manufactured goods.

Detailed explanation-3: -Mercantilism was a popular economic philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries. In this system, the British colonies were moneymakers for the mother country. The British put restrictions on how their colonies spent their money so that they could control their economies.

Detailed explanation-4: -Mercantilism was based on the idea that a nation’s wealth and power were best served by increasing exports and reducing imports. It’s characterized by the belief that global wealth was static and that a nation’s economic health relied heavily on its supply of capital.

Detailed explanation-5: -The mercantilist goal was to maximize a nation’s export surplus-the balance of trade, which was equated with the future prosperity and power of the realm-and the means were cheap production inputs, that is, cheap raw materials (for which colonies proved useful) and cheap, and therefore poor, labor at home.