ABSTRACT
As economic historians delve ever more deeply into the economy of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, they become increasingly aware of its considerable growth and development over time. Enjoying, as the colonists did, both the example of the Mother Country and the considerable advantages of its economic, political, and military power, they forged an economy that paralleled that of a Mother Country which was itself, by the 1770s, on the eve of an industrial revolution. British interests, noting both the fact and the nature of the emerging economic strength of the Continental Colonies, complained of colonial competition in most every sphere of activity. The considerable tensions that resulted were one of the causes of the American Revolution. 1
