THE AMERICAN AND FRENCH REVOLUTION The revolution between the French and Americans were being forced by liberty and equality. Both wanting to obtain freedom by the high ranking monarchs. Differences were mainly visible between these two revolutions, such as the Americans wanting to get some sort of freedom from the taxes and laws that were forced buy Great Britain. Great Britain was a strong and powerful “group”. Whereas the French wanted a revolution to be freed from the monarchs that were implementing things in France.
The war between Britain and France ended with the victorious British deeply in debt and demanding more revenue from the colonies. The Sugar Act, Currency Act, Stamp Act, and Quartering Act were all designed to make the colonies(which were in fact deeply indebted to England)carry some of the load for and provide support to their mother country. Unfortunately these legitimate acts were made illegitimate by the fact that they were demanded without representation. A popular phrase before the revolution was in fact, “No taxation without representation.” When the colonies applied for representation in Parliament they were ultimately brushed aside.The colonial leaders called continuosly for a boycott of English goods and the British sent troops in the city.These troops shot and killed five men in the Boston Massacre.The colonies responded with the Boston Tea Party and the fight went on until the win of the U.S. The enlightment ideas also helped American people in their revolution with thinkers such as John Locke and
The English Parliament passed the Sugar Act in 1764, which taxed imported sugar, lumber, dye, coffee and wine, making merchants raise their prices on these goods. The colonists understood this process and knew that it helped in regulating commerce. What they didn’t appreciate was the March, 1965 Stamp Act, an Act that made colonists pay for any stamp on a printed document, and in the beginning, almost anything made of paper, even playing cards. The colonists were not pleased with this Act and viewed it as a way to raise money for Britain. The Sons of Liberty, a group formed to protect the rights of colonists, led protests and rallied against the new Act, sometimes with violence and destruction.
Was considered the |substantial resentment towards the colonists among English leaders, who were not | | |beginning of open hostilities between Great Britain and the colonies. |satisfied with the financial and military help they had received from them. This set in | | | |motion more plans to give over more control of the colonies to the government which would| | | |lead to the American Revolution. | | |Passed in 1764, the British placed a tax on sugar, wine and other important |Commonly regarded as a prelude to the American revolution, the Sugar Act and the Stamp | |Sugar Act |things. This meant that trading with Britain would mean they would not be able |Act were designed to increase British tax revenues.
Revolutionary Americans resented the economic restrictions, finding them exploitative. They claimed the policy restricted colonial trade and industry and raised the cost of many consumer goods. In his 1774 pamphlet, "A Summary View of the Rights of British America, " Thomas Jefferson asserted the Navigation Acts had infringed upon the colonists' freedom in preventing the "exercise of free trade with all parts of the world, possessed by the American colonists, as of natural right." Yet, as O. M. Dickerson points out, it is difficult to find opposition to the mercantile system among the colonists when the measures were purely regulatory and did not levy a tax on them. The British mercantile system did after all allow for colonial monopoly over certain markets such as tobacco, and not only encouraged, but with its 1660 regulation was instrumental in, the development of colonial shipbuilding.
The French and Indian War was fought by the British and the French. This war caused many issues between the American colonies and Britian because of the things the British were doing to the Americans during the war. Economically, the British were doing things ideologically, and politically, as well. After the war, the British were trying to find a way to get back all the money they spent on the war. The English did not have much money aand it did not help the British much.
This law kept money in the empire but hurt the pockets of the wealthy colonists mercantilist that depended on the shipping trade. Then when the French Indian War ended the King made them keep the treaties that had been made with the Indians and refused the rich merchants the right to expand and claim more land. The war had also left England in debt as most wars do, so England called on the colonist to pay taxes to help with their own defense. They did not single the American colonist out they asked this of all of their subjects in all the colonies under English rule. So in 1767 England passed the Townshend Acts which included the Revenue Act of 1767, the Indemnity Act, the Commissioners of Customs Act, the Vice Admiralty Court Act, and the New York Restraining Act.
Americans felt that since they had no representation in Parliament, and that there were decisions being made for them without proper representation, that they were slaves to the forceful word of the British crown. Even some countrymen in Great Britain felt that the Americans were being treated unfairly. Lord Camden believed that Americans were not being given their natural born rights as men. “My position is this – I repeat it – I will maintain it to my last hour, - taxation and representation are inseparable: - this position is founded on the laws of nature,” (pg.95, Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, Brown). It seems there was a miscommunication, because Britain was treating the Americans different from other British and also wanted to keep major control in anyway, like restricting trade from any other country (like France and Spain).
Britain was like a splinter in the American people--limiting, but not completely impairing despite any of its efforts; the noticeable agitation was there in America, but the root of the problem wasn't "taken care of" until the physical American Revolution--physical being that there, too, lorded among the people an inner Revolution in each one of them. Various movements of Britain, the mother country of America, brought attention to its selfishness over time and thus the American people began to see their own potential as an individual country. Being people from Europe as they had recently made their voyage to America, the colonists relied on Europe for certain things (i.e. technology) as they had not yet adapted to the new-found land and lifestyle.
The Creoles possessed some power, but real authority remained tantalizingly out of reach, residing only in the hands of the peninsulares. The peninsulares' power over all other Latin Americans was an important source of frustration for each social class, but it was especially infuriating to Creoles, since many of them were educated in Europe and well-versed in Enlightenment thinking. They believed in the democratic ideals of fair representation and equality, values that conflicted with the very foundation of the hierarchical Spanish colonial system. Just as those Enlightenment ideas had led the bourgeoisie to revolt in Europe during the French Revolution, they caused the Creoles to revolt in New Spain during the Latin American revolutions. However, at the same time, the Creoles were also motivated by power in a way that was much less reflective of Enlightenment values of equality.