Mercantilism, The Enlightenment, And The Great Awakening

How did the ideas of mercantilism, The Enlightenment, and The Great Awakening contribute to the found of the United States? The United States government was created because the people of the Thirteen colonies had freed themselves from Great Britain and needed a new way of governing. They had split off from Britain because of the ideas of The Enlightenment and The Great Awakening. Each of these were movements that prompted people to throw out their old unjust government and built up a new one. And each one acted as heat for a revolution which built up till the people could take no more.
Before the colonized disbanded from Britain, they were forced to follow their system of mercantilism. The mercantilism system was setup so that the colonists would farm and mine raw materials from the land and sell them to Britain for a low price. Once in Britain these raw materials would be manufactured into usable goods which could be shipped back to the colonies for a much higher price. The British also made laws mandating that all good coming to and from the colonies must be shipped on British ships only. The British also taxed everything coming in and out …show more content…
One of the main ideas of The Great Awakening was that people could practice religion themselves, and that they didn’t need the pope to tell them how to worship. They also criticized the elites of society who had told them that they were their only path to religions salvation. The people meet in large groups to practice their religions. At times these groups would become too large for their churches and they would simply go outside for mass. Without a pope or religious leader the people realized that they were the ones deciding if they went to heaven or not. This idea of deciding your own afterlife brought forth a different idea, if I can decide where I got for eternity after I die, why can’t I decide how I am governed while I’m still