Because the establishment of the United States required independence from a commercial empire, historians have often identified the American Revolution with liberal political economy and a repudiation of Old World mercantilism. But in The Privileges of Independence, John Crowley argues that the colonies' successful revolt did not mean they wished to end their privileged commercial dependence on Great Britain. From the 1760s through the mid-1790s, in fact, Anglo-American political economists grappled with the transition from a de jure to a de facto economic dependence of the new states on their former mother country. - Jacket flap.