The correct answer is A) Most European colonies were based on agriculture.
European economic systems in the American colonies in the 1500s and 1600s were different from existing economic systems in Europe in that most European colonies were based on agriculture.
Since Cristopher Columbus arrived in the Americas on October 12, 1492, the Spanish colonists admired the impressive amount of raw materials an natural resources that this new land had. Spaniards, then the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch, and the English, started to take these raw materials to Europe. For instance, the Dutch and the French were very interested in the fur trade. The English settled in North America for the first time in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, and produced cash crops such as tobacco that was a success. The middle colonies of New York, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, were known as the "Breadbasket of America" for the good crops they produced.