Final answer:
England anticipated colonial cooperation with its economic policies through mercantilism in return for salutary neglect, benefiting from the trade of raw materials and manufactured goods while loosely enforcing regulations to promote a favorable balance of trade and overall economic growth.
Step-by-step explanation:
In return for allowing salutary neglect, England expected colonial cooperation with its economic policies. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, England relied on the theory of mercantilism, expecting the colonies to provide raw materials for British industry at lower prices, who would then manufacture goods and sell them back to the colonies at higher costs. This formed a favorable balance of trade. However, England did not enforce these regulations strictly, leading to an era known as salutary neglect, which allowed colonial economies some freedom in trading, albeit still under the expectation that they would primarily support the British economy.
The Navigation Acts were laws that emphasized this economic strategy by only allowing British ships to engage in trade with the colonies, ensuring that trade benefits would flow back to England. Yet, this laissez-faire approach provided colonial merchants the opportunity to participate in maritime trade more freely than they otherwise would have, benefiting particularly New England. Despite the Navigation Acts, England loosely enforced them and allowed a degree of autonomy that permitted informal trade practices to emerge among the colonists.