Economic influence on the colonies

While reading Chapter 5, I found it quite interesting to observe how much American history was actually influenced by British economic policy. Reading about how much the colonies' economy suffered from the many taxes and duties the British Parliament enacted on the colonies during that time period, really showed how dependent the colonial economy still was on oversea goods. Additionally, I found it very interesting that the book actually went into some detail of the British perspective and the British reasoning behind acts such as the Stamp Acts, the enumerated articles etc. This is a side of the story that is often less looked at, and after reading that the British were in large debt after the war of 1812 and desperately needed tax revenue to pay interest makes it more plausible why these acts were passed by Parliament.
In general Chapter 5 of the book reaffirmed me that there is often a strong tie between economic factors or policies and political action - two things that ultimately also determine history. In this case, Britain took political action (passing the acts) to fix an economic condition (large national debt). On the colonies' side, the 13 colonies first each took steps such as protest and boycott, and then organized under the Articles of Confederation (a political action) to protest amongst other things against the economic damage inflicted upon them by the British Parliament. The correlation between economic and politics has been present throughout history, and is something we can continue to witness today, e.g. in regards to securing oil reserves and its influence on foreign policy. That shows that it is an important factor of history.