Like most other things in life, the push towards colonial empires was powered by a greed for wealth. During the timeframe of this paper, mercantilism was the predominant economic theory. This theory states that the power of a country is directly proportional to the amount of wealth stored within its treasury. This wealth was acquired through trade. Towards the end of the 15th century, Spain was searching for a way to replentish its treasury, which had been wiped out by war. In an attempt to recover this wealth through expanded trade, Spain sent an expedition to find a fast trade route to the far east, where Marco Polo had encountered miraculous items of wealth one hundred years before.

Unlike previous explorers who had se

Though there are a near infinite number of factors that led up to the difficulties that overburdened the Atlantic governmental link, the most major is probably the French-Indian War. This war was started when the Royal Governor of Virginia angered the wrong people while purchasing land. The result was a seven-year world war between the colonial powers of France and England. In the end, England won. However, in the process they spent 140 million pounds, about 400 million US dollars today. This expense, naturally, placed a large strain on the English treasury. At the time the war ended, Mercantilism was still the predominant economic theory. This theory states that the more money a country has in its treasury, the more powerful that country is. Although England had, for the time, established itself as the world's colonial leader, it still believed that it must refill its treasury to regain its status as a full world leader. Clearly, the fair thing to do was charge the people wh!

The Americans, in a bold move, passed the Virginia Resolutions, a set of their own laws that nullified the Townsend Acts. Parliament decided to end the irreverence displayed by the American colonists and passed the Coercive Acts. The Coercive acts banned all public assemblies in Boston, held soldiers above the law, blocked all shipping in the port of Boston, and demanded that Colinists quarter soldiers. Relations had broken down nearly completely.

The English were very successful in their colonization efforts. Their success came for many reasons. One of the main reasons was the general attitude behind English settlement, the attitude that they were settling to stay no matter what the obstacles. Also, the English prisoners and political outcasts who were being dumped on other continents proved to be quite tenacious. Despite the success of English colonization and the reasons for that success, it was too good to last. In the end, the American colonies would be the first to break away; their distance from England too far to allow effective government by the crown.

It is important to keep in mind that the Spanish did not see the American Colonies as the future home for many of its citizens, they were simply there to extract wealth and ship it home to fill the Spanish tr

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Approximate Word count = 1525
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)