preview

Relationship Between The French And Indian War Dbq

Decent Essays

Prior to the French and Indian War, there was a friendly relationship between Britain and its American colonies, due to the fact that the British had in place a policy of salutary neglect. The laws and restrictions that were in place were barely enforced, and everyone benefited from this relationship. The aftermath of the French and Indian War, however, left Britain with a lot of land and in a lot of debt. As a result of this, the British were forced to impose new laws and taxes on the colonists and enforce them more strictly. This angered the colonists and led to increased tension between Britain and the colonists, and had monumental impacts on the political, ideological and economic relations between the two parties. By 1763, the English …show more content…

For example, in 1755 George Washington had expressed that he would be honored to serve as a soldier for the British (Document C). This positive feeling, however, was not shared by all of the colonists over the course of the war. One colonial soldier wrote that the colonists and the British soldiers were not treated equally, and that they were denied some of the rights that the British had (Document D). Not only were the colonists not treated as well as the British, they felt that the New England colonists contributed to the fighting the most (Document E). The colonists felt that they worked hard in the war, and yet they felt that they weren’t being treated as well as the British soldiers; this made some of the colonists resentful of the British, which further damaged their …show more content…

Consequently, the British needed to invest money into collecting these taxes, but the cost of tax collection was four times greater than the money that they were collecting (Document F). In order to fix this problem the British imposed the Stamp Act, which mandated that all paper documents be taxed and stamped. One newspaper’s masthead actually pointed out how burdensome the Stamp Act was (Document H). This act especially irritated the colonists because this was the first tax that was not part of the price of an item. Previously, taxes were payed at ports and prices were raised to compensate for them. Now the colonists see for themselves how they are being taxed, which evoked anger against Britain. The colonists wanted the Stamp Act to be repealed, but it never was (Document G). This led to the formation of the Stamp Act Congress, created to lobby against the Stamp Act. The colonists would also try to boycott products affected by the Stamp Act, and would torment the tax collectors. These protests allowed the colonists to continue to separate themselves from Britain, and ultimately led to the American

Get Access