<P> Although the colonies provided an export market for finished goods made in Britain or sourced by British merchants and shipped from Britain, the British incurred the expenses of providing protection against piracy by the British Navy and other military expenses . An early tax was the Molasses Act of 1733 . </P> <P> In the 1760s the London government raised small sums by new taxes on the colonies . This occasioned an enormous uproar, from which historians date the origins of the American Revolution . The issue was not the amount of the taxes--they were quite small--but rather the constitutional authority of Parliament versus the colonial assemblies to vote taxes . New taxes included the Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765 and taxes on tea and other colonial imports . Historians have debated back and forth about the cost imposed by the Navigation Acts, which were less visible and rarely complained about . However, by 1995, the consensus view among economic historians and economists was that the "costs imposed on (American) colonists by the trade restrictions of the Navigation Acts were small ." </P> <P> Americans in the Thirteen Colonies demanded their rights as Englishmen, as they saw it, to select their own representatives to govern and tax them--which Britain refused . The Americans attempted resistance through boycotts of British manufactured items, but the British responded with a rejection of American rights and the Intolerable Acts of 1774 . In turn, the Americans launched the American Revolution, resulting in an all - out war against the British and to independence for the new United States of America . The British tried to crush the American economy with a blockade of all ports, but with 90% of the people in farming, and only 10% in cities, the American economy proved resilient and able to support a sustained war, which lasted from 1775 to 1783 . </P> <P> The American Revolution (1775--1783) brought a dedication to unalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", which emphasize individual liberty and economic entrepreneurship, and simultaneously a commitment to the political values of liberalism and republicanism, which emphasize natural rights, equality under the law for all citizens, civic virtue and duty, and promotion of the general welfare . </P>

Who contributed to the economic development of the united states