[dragonwriter]

> The British tried hard to prevent America from establishing any industries and reduce it to just importing everything at the cost of raw resources. They got a bit distracted in the 1600s with civil war and religious strife, and in the 1700s with fighting the French; so a bit of wealth accumulated in America anyway. (Much if not most of it belonged to smugglers.)

Its kind of odd that people miss this (and particularly the first sentence) since that’s the big picture behind essentially each of the specific grievances that led to the rebellion.