The American Revolution is one of the most well-known events in American history, but how is this war described in British history? Surely the tale is told differently in each of the countries due to their different viewpoints. Therefore, in the eyes of the British, how was this war started and what were to lasting effects after it ended. As with many other wars, money played a key role in the start of the War of Independence. During the 1760s the British government experienced a budget deficit and attempted to raise the American colonists’ taxes. Originally their taxes were only one shilling compared to the 26 shillings paid by British citizens (Writer, Leaf Group.). Several well-known laws were put in place to raise taxes on specific items. …show more content…
Boycotts were held against taxed goods when the laws were first out into order, and there was minimal violence until the Stamp Act was imposed. Rebels would assault those who sold goods that were taxed by the Stamp Act and even go so far as to burn down their homes. The Stamp Act was repealed to reduce the crime running rampant in the colonies, although Parliament stated they were still in control of any and all laws in the colonies (“The American Revolutionary War from The British Perspective.”). The colonists reacted as if the taxes imposed on them were robbing them blind even though they still paid less than those living in Britain. Helping pay for their country’s debt was not of importance to them, only their greed and war mongering held significance. Money only made matters more tense as time went on. The Boston Tea Party played a crucial role in starting the war. Crates of tea dumped into the Boston Harbor, Money sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and the result of this “patriotic” act: The Coercive Acts. Deemed the Intolerable Acts by American colonists, they were intended to stop the lawlessness in the colonies by …show more content…
Each time taxes were increases there was a rise in rebellion in the colonies. In order to reestablish control over the colonies Parliament attempted to exercise their authority in the colonies with no challenge to them (Writer, Leaf Group). This further angered rebels in the colonies, using the slogan “no taxation without representation” they continued to boycott taxed goods. This made no sense to Parliament, as many large cities such as Manchester had no representation, yet they did not complain or rebel against their country (“’Iron Tears’”). Resentment grew on both sides as the crown jewel of the British empire began to break away from its dependency on its mother country. Refusing taxed goods, smuggling, and going so far as to destroy British goods. When crates of tea were dumped into the Boston Harbor it was considered a horrendous act, even by some Patriots. The well-known Benjamin Franklin said, “This was an act of piracy and the Americans should repay the British for the tea” (“’Iron Tears’”). Despite the rising rebellion, the British continually attempted to control the colonies, though most attempts failed. The rebellion became rather violent around 1775; Loyalists were being attacked (“The American Revolutionary War from The British Perspective.”). The Patriots would use brutal acts of intimidation such as tarring and feathering any prominent Loyalist they could find. To tar and feather a man
The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War in the United States, was the prosperous military revolt against Great Britain of Thirteen American Colonies which joined together as the United States of America in July 1776. Originally constrained to fighting in those colonies, after 1778 it additionally became a world war between Britain and France, Netherlands, Spain, and Mysore.
Huge debts were owed to Great Britain for supplying the colonists with military support and supplies. To pay the dues, there was the establishment of the Stamp Act, the taxation on domestic goods and services. A tax on domestic merchandise brought even more anger to the colonists. The Sugar Act, the Townshed Duties and the Tea Act were also all introduced with the same fundamentals: applying tax on goods whether it be directly or indirectly, domestic or international. “British commercial regulations imposed a paltry economic burden on Americans, who enjoyed a rapid economic growth and a standard of living higher than their European counterparts” (McGaughy). Each act resulted in irritated colonists. Some even retaliated by tarring and feathering certain English tax enforcers living in the colonies.
And in order to collect the taxes, the Bratians raisen the Sugar Act and Stamp Act to put more restrictions on colonial trade and forced colonists to buy special stamped paper. That makes conlonist getting angry and to against the "Taxation without representation", the only thing they want to do is to elect their own colonial legislatures. Also the Proclamation of 1763, bans them from crossing and going to the settlement of the west. So the colonial rebellion is reasonable, they just deserved to have much more control over their own government. For the resistance, colonies coordinate to boycott the British goods. And the matter was worsened when the British government enforced the Townshend Acts through force, it imposed taxes on imported goods from Britain, which really hurt many colonial merchants. And colonies respond that with more boycott. Although the Tea Party removed taxes on tea sold by British, but American tea still taxed. So on the December 16th, 1776 the Boston Tea Party dump 90,000 pounds of tea into the ocean to resist. But after that, British soldiers flooded into Boston, and colonists had to feed and lodge them. The Continental Congress was formed to reason the King George, in the attempt to keep the peace between Britaish and colonies, but he refused the negotiation, and sent troops to
There was another by-product of the war for Britain; her national debt more than doubled during the course of the conflict. At a time when Britain was starting to bend beneath the weight of the debt, it was only a matter of time before parliament looked to the colonies to help shoulder some of the price incurred in their defense. The Sugar and Stamp Acts were the first of many measures to tax the colonists. The Townshend Duties and the Tea Act would follow. While these measures outraged the colonists because of their monetary implications, it was the constitutional implications brought on by the Acts that were most offensive to the colonists. Until after the Seven Years War, the colonists had been left to essentially tax themselves. Now the colonists had a rallying cry, as they deplored the idea of no taxation without representation. In 1765 the Stamp Act Congress was held, and in a bid of utter defiance the representatives agreed that the colonial legislative assemblies alone had the right to tax the colonies. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, but only after agreeing to pass the Declaratory Act, which informed the colonies that Britain did in fact have the right to legislate for the
The Revolutionary War started in April of 1775, with the battles at Lexington and Concord. This war would mark the beginnings of the United States as a nation, fighting against the most powerful fighting force at the time, the British Army and Navy. This conflict would go on for a brutal 6 years until the final British surrender at Yorktown on October 17, 1781. In the end, both sides have lost tens of thousands of men, but how did it all start? The Conflict has its star with the rising tensions between the colonists and the British crown in the aftermath of the French-Indian War in 1763. The financing of the war had caused Britain to be in heavy debt after mobilizing troops to defend colonies. To offset this debt Britain began taxing its colonies, introducing the Townshend and Stamp acts. This act of taxation would anger the 13 American colonies as this was seen as an attack against their rights and to protest this, colonist boycotted and protested, but were met with the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. Tensions would rise, and the Boston Tea Party would begin on December 16, 1773. This would lead to the deployment of British troops in Boston and the eventual start of the war. But after all, it may not justified. The Revolutionary war cannot be justified only by a resentment of taxes on imports and a distrust of an Empire that had only finished fighting a war to defend its colony.
The level of resentment between the 13 Colonies and the British was enough to spark a revolutionary war and it did. The outrage over taxation without representation was only intensified when the town of Concord got word that the British were coming to confiscate their weapons and their gunpowder. According to Forsht (2011) author of the Boston Tea Party the British fought several costly war of which they wanted the American Colonies to pay by stamping them for printed materials such as newspaper, magazines and playing cards. Forsht (2011), stated that the American colonies had no representation in parliament yet they were being taxed by a government in which they had no voice. This was all going to change on the night of 19 April 1775.
The American Revolution (1775-1783) was a war between England and the colonies which were settled earlier by the English. There were many factors and events that led to the American Revolution. The Revolution was mainly an economic rebellion that was fueled by taxation without representation following the French and Indian War. The English Parliament was more often than not considered cruel and unfair by the colonists. With conflicts over trade, taxes and government representation, the colonies were at a starting line of a revolution that would later transform into the basis of the United States of America.
The French and Indian war caused debts among the British. The British realized that during the war the income from the colonies was insufficient (document F). After the war, the British needed certain ways in which to gain revenue. They imposed taxes on the Colonists. These taxes, in turn, caused a stir among Americans. The Stamp Act was a tax imposed on the colonists without representation (document H). Their liberties as English citizens were being denied. Radical Whigs would go as far to say it
When colonists were required to actually start paying their taxes to Britain, they became outraged causing Parliament to repeal the Sugar Act. Additionally, the Stamp Act was the first direct tax on the colonists. By requiring a tax to be paid on nearly every colonial document, colonists could not bear the oppressive Stamp Act. This act was also het with heavy opposition and it would set the volatile scene for Britain’s next laws and acts that would ignite “The Boston Massacre.” The most prominent taxes that were placed on the colonists right before “The Boston Massacre” were the Townshend Duties. This law taxed paper, lead, paint glass and tea. Colonists were furious with Britain’s various taxes, provoking boycotts and high tensions. (Arrison) With opposition increasing in the colonies, the British Parliament felt it was necessary to place British soldiers on watch in the colonies under the Quartering Act. However, the soldiers’ presence was not the only annoyance the colonists would have to suffer. The colonists were responsible for providing for the soldiers’ necessities. This included providing shelter that in most cases was shared between the colonists and the soldiers. Most notably, the soldiers were often unruly, drunk, and pugnacious and treated as low-paid civilian servants. (Gilje) Personally, if I was a colonist forced to surrender my own space for disrespectful
The level of resentment between the 13 Colonies and the British was enough to spark a revolutionary war and it did. The outrage over taxation without representation was only intensified when the town of Concord got word that the British were coming to confiscate their weapons and their gunpowder. According to Forsht (2011) author of the Boston Tea Party the British fought several costly war of which they wanted the American Colonies to pay by stamping them for printed materials such as newspaper, magazines and playing cards. Forsht (2011), stated that the American colonies had no representation in parliament yet they were being taxed by a government in which they had no voice. This was all going to change on the night of 19 April 1775.
The Seven Years’ War (1756-63) ended a rivalry between Britain and France for control of North America, which left Britain in control of New France and Canada without a presence in North America. Winning the war affected Britain with a large debt. Since the war benefited American colonists as much as everyone else in the British Empire, the British government determined that colonists would help pay the war’s cost. Britain had controlled colonial trade with a system of restrictions on imports and exports.
This was not an issue that was faced by the natives of Great-Britain at the time, but was something that the colonies had to deal with as a constant in the colonies. The Stamp Act, The Sugar Act and The Quartering Act were all examples of the Monarchy imposing tax after tax, and the caldron of discontent began to boil. The Boston Tea party perpetrated by the Sons of Liberty, led by John Adams in 1793 was in protest which destroyed an entire shipment of tea delivered by the East India Trading company was a non-violent protest to the Tea Act. As the taxes grew, the anger grew within the colonies and spilled out on to the streets in bloody confrontation such as the Boston Massacre. "Years of conflict with royal officials , combined with a growing population of poor and under employed, had made Boston the most radical and united spot in the colonies". "
The 1773 Tea Act did cause the American Revolution in that it sparked huge opposition amongst the colonists. It was the third time that the British had tried to tax the Americans — both the 1765 Stamp Act and the 1767 Townshend Duties had been repealed due to such opposition. The Tea Act was the final straw for many colonists — the Sons of Liberty organised a huge protest in which they boarded the ships carrying the East India Company’s tea, and threw £10,000 worth of tea into the sea in defiance. This was known as the Boston Tea Party and demonstrated to the British that the Americans were not willing to accept British taxation. The slogan ‘no taxation without representation’ was frequently used, showing how the Americans felt the British, in trying to tax them, were attempting to impose a tyrannical rule. The Boston Tea Party provoked outrage in Britain, with many of the politically conscious calling for the Americans to be punished. This then led to the Coercive Acts in 1774, which aimed at isolating Boston — although it only resulted in increasing the tension between the
In this paper, I seek to build on the literature that discusses on the influence of taxation on the revolutionary war. I seek to determine ways in which taxation affected the American colonies and their response as well. I argue that the imposed taxes made the Americans resist the rule of the British government. The Americans lacked representatives in parliament, a factor that contributed to laws that exploited and suppressed the people living in the colonies. Further, I also consider other factors such as the western land policies and the lack of representation and the way in which they contributed to the declaration of the war on independence. Importantly, this paper will use scholarly materials from other historians and philosophers to show
Because of Britain?s unfair taxes and laws the colonists reacted in several different ways. Some reactions were economic, some were written, some were political and some were even violent. One reaction was to the taxes put on tea. The colonists had the Boston Tea Party in which colonists dressed as Indians and dumped hundreds of crates of tea into the Boston Harbor. (Doc#6) One form of violent protest was tarring and feathering. (Doc#2) It happened to a British customs inspector named John Malcom. He was stripped naked tarred and feathered, and dragged around town by horse drawn cart. (Doc#3) Another form of violent protest was when a stuffed dummy was hung in Boston representing a British tax collector named Andrew Oliver. Later that same night, his house was torn down in minutes by protesters. (Doc#4) A form of boycott was organized by the Sons and Daughters of Liberty. They made a poster saying not to buy anything from William Jackson, that if they did they would bring disgrace to