The Spark of a Match: Colonial rebellion against British mercantalism. AP US History Free.

The concept that a nation must export goods of greater monetary value than it imports, or mercantilism, held the colonies together and built them into a unity that would soon become a nation more powerful than England itself. Mercantilist ideas shaped the policies of all major nations of Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Through the mercantile theory Britain expected the American colonies to furnish products and raw materials needed in England, buy …

…in 1775, "We have an old mother that peevish is grown; She snubs us like children that scarce walk alone; She forgets we've grown up and have sense of our own." This quote expresses the feelings of the colonists towards the British Parliament. England's failure to recognize the beginnings of a revolution was the downfall of its empire. The rebellion of the colonists against mercantilism was like a match igniting the flame of the American Revolution.