Answer:
Mercantilism
Explanation:
Mercantilism is the belief that a country should always run a trade surplus. The European powers (Portugal, Spain, France, The Netherlands, and Britain) of the seventeenth and eighteenth century had colonies from where they extracted resources in order to enrich the mother country and keep the trade surplus.
For this same reason, the power prohibited intercolonial trade, since it could reduce the mother country's trade surplus, or even, turn it into a deficit.
