The colonies had a radical reaction towards England after England taxed, used military action against the colonies, and the American colonies wanted their own government. After the French and Indian War, England ended up in major debt. England decided to tax the colonies to help pay for the debt that they accumulated. England believed in mercantilism, which is the idea that the colonies exist to benefit the mother country. With this idea it justified the taxes that England started to enforce on the colonies.
When they won the French and Indian War, England had to make a few reforms. King George III declared the Proclamation of 1763, which forbid American colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains in an effort the stabilize relations with the Native Americans. However this angered many colonists who had land grants there and in turn, the Proclamation Line was ignored. This was the start of a series of disagreements between the two lands, as the American citizens began to gain a stronger taste for independence. Enlightenment writers such as John Locke, who patented the idea that it
There was some friction in the economic relationship between Britain and its American colonies. After the war, the British were left in a large debt. This caused them to strictly regulate trade and put taxes on commonly used goods, like playing cards and paper for the Stamp Act, as well as sugar importations for the Sugar Act. The colonists protested against these acts, leading them to begin a non-importation movement in which they would stop buying goods from Britain. The British were pressured into
The Battles of Lexington and Concord in the spring of 1775 marked the beginning of open hostilities between the Colonies and Britain. These battles were the culmination of difficulties between England and the American colonies. The Colonists were fighting against the economic exploitation and political oppression of Parliament. The root cause of the revolution was the fact that Britain refused to believe that the colonies had outgrown, both economically and psychologically, their former status. Many, many things caused the revolution.
When the French and Indian War broke out between the British and the French, Britain hoped to use the colonies as an extra source of wealth to fight the war. As the area for war expanded from India to North America, the cost of the war increased dramatically. This lead Britain to impose new forms of taxes such as the stamp act which put a tax on legal documents and the sugar act which put a tax on sugar (which at the time was a commonly used product used in the colonies), and new regulations like the navigation acts, to prevent the colonies from trading with foreign nations. The colonies did not agree with Britain’s imposition of the new laws as they were not fighting the war. The colonists believed that they should have separate laws from Britain because they are not directly represented in parliament.
Then, in 1773, Parliament rewarded the company by granting it a monopoly, allowing it to handle both the shipping and the sales of tea to the colonies. While this would lower prices, English and American traders would be stripped of a great source of revenue. Hutchinson, his two sons and his son-in-law were granted exclusive rights to trade the tea in the colonies. Colonists were outraged, and Adams had a new drum to beat: If the Crown could apply this new method of favoritism to tea, it could apply it to all commodities. In late November 1773, three cargo ships carrying tea arrived in Boston Harbor.
The French however were trying to cause a true revolution, a reason to overthrown their king and remove all the inequalities there was. The American Revolution, beginning in 1776, had started with tensions between Britain and its colonist due to the debt that the Britain’s accrued from the war with the French and Indians. Up to this point the colonist had elected their own assemblies and had grown accustomed to running their own affairs. The British began passing legislation, which increased the taxation of American colonies, tightening their control over the colonists. One of the regulations that Parliament passed was the Stamp Act of 1765.
The Colonists thought if they complained loudly enough that Parliament would get rid of the taxes. But any taxes Parliament repealed were soon reinstated with other taxes or duties. England was trying to raise money to pay for the French-Indian war and was heavily taxing the Colonists. Things got really bad when the British taxed the favorite drink of the Colonist’s, tea. Tea was really popular at that time, kind of like coffee is today.
The revolutionary era for the American Colonies began around 1763 after the British removed the military threat of the French from North America during the French and Indian War, which resulted in substantial economic debt for the British Empire. The debt was due in large part to the British desire for victory, as stated by William Pitt, the acting Prime Minister during the war, “No matter what the cost, our goal is to win.”(Straus Notes. Fall 2008). As a result, the British Government adopted the policy that the colonies should pay an increased proportion, if not all the costs associated with keeping the North American Colonies secure from the French, Indians, and other nearby threats. As a result, Parliament and Prime Minister George Grenville passed the Proclamation of 1763, which stated that settlers were not allowed beyond the Appalachian Mountains as well as stationing ten thousand British soldiers strategically along the Appalachian Mountains.
The attempt to resolve these issues by the North Ministry resulted in a revolution. (The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence (2001), Library of America, 880pp) During the 17th century, the Europeans acquired a taste for tea which rival companies were created to import the tea from China. The Parliament in England, gave the East India Company the control of the importation of the tea in 1968. The Tea became very popular in the British colonies which caused the Parliament to remove foreign competition by passing a Tea Act in 1721 which required that colonies to import their tea from Great Britain and nowhere else. By law, the East India Company did not export the tea to the colonies.