Hod did the colonist fight british restrictions on trade?

Answer 1

WELL, since you're asking the question you're probably already aware of how England was all into Mercantalism which is basically the belief in which colonies exist to support the mother country. The idea was that the colonies could only purchase goods from England, thus, helping the mother nation and damage trade with rival nations such as France, Spain, and the Netherlands. However, in the beginning, England was very, very lax about this policy in the beginning.

Distance was one reason for the laxness. The American colonies were miles and miles across the Atlantic Ocean-- the English simply did not have enough time to make sure they colonists were behaving and purchasing exclusively British goods. Sure, there was a board of trade in the colonies that was supposed to supervise it but they let the colonies get away with a lot of things. The colonists were very aware of this and decided to conduct trade with other nations behind England's back. In all honesty, the colonists probably wouldn't have made much of a fuss over trading with other nations but the instant England said, "Don't" it spiked the colonists interest. Think of it like this: As soon as your parents told you to not date that boy/girl, you suddenly became 10 times more interested in them. The colonists saw that the prices for some things were cheaper and began to purchase goods from the other countries.

England eventually decided to buckle down and became stricter on trade. This resulted in many colonists going back to English goods but many still did not want to spend extra money on those goods so they made their own. Who wants to pay hundreds of dollars on a fancy, decorated chair when you can go out and cut one of the hundreds of thousands of trees in colonial America and make your own chair? Others continued to trade with the French, Spanish, and Dutch-- via smuggling.

The above forms of resistance that are considered pre-Revolutionary era, before acts such as the Townsend and Intolerable acts. The below results are in response to the acts that were passed:

In short, we basically just continued doing what we had always done only we were a bit more obvious about it. After awhile it was kind of like, "Who gives a care about what England sees?" They stopped purchasing British goods, continued to smuggle items, and even found alternatives for British goods. For example, after the tea tax was passed, many Americans turned to coffee or tried to make their own teas using roots, berries, etc.