External competition was Britain's greatest challenge in controlling the north American Atlantic trade in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
The Atlantic Ocean functioned as a trade route between Europe, Africa, and the Americas throughout the colonial era, connecting a web of individuals, unfinished items, finished goods, merchants, and sailors that brought prosperity to colonial powers. The primary motivation for European colonization of the Americas was to provide wealth for the mother country. The mercantilist economic theory of the time claimed that a country's power depended on having a positive trade balance, or exporting more goods than it imported.
During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, America was independent and more competitors are entering the water of the Atlantic Ocean, therefore, Britain faced challenges in controlling North American Atlantic trade.
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