By the mid 1700s, the American colonies were separated from their British rulers by more than an ocean. The colonists' experiences settling the New World had given them a separate identity of self-reliance and resourcefulness. Colonists managed businesses and colonial governments and formed trading partnerships with the Dutch, French and Spanish. Great Britain's policy of limited interference in the American colonies aided their prosperity, which in turn benefited Great Britain. But this policy also gave the colonists a taste of liberty, which they ultimately refused to give up.