Answer:
The response is Option A: gain cheap access to raw materials and crops.
Step-by-step explanation:
In the mercantilist system, the governments of the ruling colonial powers, like England, would exact taxes and tariffs and impose other ways of extracting value from the business being conducted both at home in the motherland and in the colonies in order to shore up the wealth of the state. Therefore, the colonies in this system were seen as a source for cheaper, abundant, and assured access to resources like grains, furs, wood, minerals, precious metals, and other resources. At the time the European powers were in a race to balance their powers against each other in the mercantilist system. Spain had amassed great wealth from all the gold and silver it extracted from its colonies in South America and Mexico. England aimed to build wealth from the colonies it was able to establish in North America.