Summary Of A People's History Of The World By Chris Harman

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Part 6 Chapter 1 American Prologue "A People's History of the World" by Chris Harman This chapter gives us details about how the United States came to be. It’s not the entire story of the Revolutionary War, but rather the ‘prologue’ to that story. Before even any ideas about rebellion came into anyone’s head, the general American public thought of themselves as British. They existed within separate colonies, each with its own base of power. The colonies prospered independently and their population was growing. Along with a population increase, there were also economic increases. With growth like this, it pushed American and British trading companies go into overdrive, and the people over on the British side began to feel threatened by America’s big success, while the colonists were thinking that the British weren’t meeting their needs. Both had problems with the other, and that could be what prompted these rebellions. But there must’ve been other factors too.…show more content…
One would be the fact that Britain had just won a war against France and was imposing high taxes on the colonists in order to pay for it. But the colonists who had to pay the taxes didn’t have a say in any negotiations regarding these high taxes, and resented that fact. All of the colonies were in the same boat when it came to taxes and representation, and the first group to join together across all of the colonies was the Sons of Liberty, a group that acted almost like a political party and was comprised of mainly the middle class. They stood for the boycotting of trade and had a lot of anger towards the rich British, which sort of added fuel to the fire. Protests arose, and led to the Boston Massacre, where five protestors were killed. After this, the British decided to settle back for a while and withdrew all added taxes except for the one on
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