Why did some american colonists engage in smuggling and piracy?

Because it was an ingenious way to avoid regulations. From 1696 to 1725, the Board of Trade sought to impose more efficient  royal control over the colonies. But colonists continued to resist. They lobbied  against the various Navigation Acts, challenged them in court, and  resisted them by smuggling, bribery, fraudulent bookkeeping, and even violence.  The fifty or so British customs officials struggled to police hundreds of  American vessels operating along a thousand miles of jagged coastline.

- encouraging nationalism

- returning to conservative political policies

c

the articles of confederation placed most of the power on the feds