Although the American Revolution took place in the late 18th century, historians trace its deep origins back to the mid-17th century. One must examine the differences in philosophies as well as the social and economic tensions between Britain and the colonies. Americans had a different mindset than the British because of religion in some cases and slave-ownership in others. Additionally, many Americans thought of themselves as Englishmen, but the British did not. Not only did these more abstract ideas lead to revolution, but so did concrete antagonisms between the Crown, Parliament, and the American colonies. Much of this tension was caused by the Navigation Acts of the 17th and 18th century, as well as the relaxed standards of enforcing these …show more content…
acts from 1713 to 1763. The collective difference in mindset as well as the strained relations caused by the Navigation Acts, Britain’s mercantilist relationship with its colonies, and the period of salutary neglect directly caused the American Revolution. When people think of American freedom, they typically do not think of the transatlantic slave trade. However, slave-ownership in the southern colonies played a vital role in the mindset of many colonial Americans on the subject of British rule. Many planters, or plantation owners, lived in the southern colonies such as Virginia and South Carolina. These men had great standing in American society because of their economic wealth and thus their political power in colonial assemblies. All of their power could be attributed to one commodity, not tobacco, not spices, but slaves. Planters observed this relationship between their ownership of slaves and power, and they began to associate freedom with rank in society. In the southern colonies, free men ruled over slaves, therefore planters took immense pride in their freedom. These men saw the dejected state of those in servitude, and they knew they could use their great influence in the south to keep themselves from similar bondage. Alternatively, slavery was not common in the north, yet revolutionary fervor still thrived. In the northern colonies, ideas of liberty were shaped by an arguably more benign source than slavery, that of Protestant Christianity, following the First Great Awakening and the rise of pietism. In Medieval Europe, Roman Catholicism dominated the religious scene, and the Roman Catholic Church was highly political in nature. Government and religion in this time were inseparable. Henry VIII later split from the Roman Catholic Church to found the Church of England, but this new Church still had support from the government. Protestantism, which had no seed in government, was immensely popular in the American colonies. In the 1730s and 1740s, a movement known as the Great Awakening (it would be the first of five Great Awakenings) swept through Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Along with this wave of Protestantism came the idea of pietism. Pietism is a concept of faith in which the worshipper looks within to determine his or her relationship to their respective deity. This meant that many people stopped looking to authority figures for their faith, and focused on themselves. Ignoring authority is, by definition, dissent. Therefore American Protestantism was founded in dissent, as demonstrated by the etymology of “Protestant”. Furthermore, American born priests such as Jonathan Edwards inspired by pietism and Enlightenment era thinking began to endorse “born again Christianity”. In short, Christians were baptized and thus born again into the Church. When one was born again, he or she was equal to everyone else that had been baptized in the eyes of God. Both pietism and baptism led Americans to be very self-aware about their liberty. Another reason that they thought of themselves as equal to Englishmen was that many thought of themselves as Englishmen. Many American colonists thought of themselves as Englishmen because they traced their ancestry back to the British Isles, but the liberty they received from the British government was not “English” liberty in the traditional sense; it was perceived liberty because the colonists had no representatives in Parliament.
For British citizens, liberty came about through the question of taxes. British citizens had the ability, through representatives in British Parliament, to effectively moderate the taxation of their wealth. Americans did not feel as though their liberty to affect taxation was being carried out to its fullest extent, but the British felt that the system in place was adequate. After all, the Americans did have representatives in Parliament, so there were officials theoretically officials sharing American views in Parliament. Conversely, Americans felt their views were being actively denied voice because of an intentional flaw in the system. The colonists were not represented by other colonists. British officials represented Americans in the House of Commons and were not really fighting for any American beliefs. These representatives were lame ducks put in place by the British government to satiate American appetite for liberty. However, ideas regarding liberty and representation could only carry a revolutionary fire so far, and concrete offenses spread the flames across the …show more content…
colonies. Deep origins of the American Revolution existed not only in abstract social and political concepts, but also in the form of concrete economic tensions due to mercantilism, the wealth philosophy in place at that time. Mercantilism is an economic system which is designed to support the nation that established it. Colonies and commerce are wealth in a mercantilist system, which led to many tensions between America and Britain. First, a country needs to constantly be exporting goods in order to keep a favorable trade balance and maintain wealth. In practice, this meant that Britain had to use American land as a producer of wealth while giving the colonies minimal reimbursement. Second, a country can only have finite wealth in a mercantilist system in the form of land, which leads to competition. Britain fought many colonial wars in the 17th and 18th century, and to fund these wars cost the empire much money. The government acquired this money through taxation of its colonies. Mercantilism is inherently unequal, as it is for the benefit of the government. Finally, it requires a system of regulation so that the commercial relationship between a mother country and its colonies is always in the favor of the mother country. In the British Empire, these regulations were known as the Navigation Acts. Parliament passed the first Navigation Act in 1660, and it regulated how goods could be shipped out of British territory. It stated that only British owned and built ships with British captains and a three-fourths majority British crew could ship goods to and from British territories. This further restricted American economic growth past the normal bounds of a colonial relationship by ensuring only Britain could profit from its colonies. The Navigation Act of 1672 established a Customs service in British colonial ports. Certain goods (mainly valuable spices) could only be shipped to Britain or between her colonies, and Customs officers were assigned to regulate these goods and punish smugglers. Another act, passed in 1696, subjected not only American ships, but also American warehouses and homes to what colonists saw as unlawful search and seizure of goods by Customs officers. The British saw this law as necessary because Americans had become adept at smuggling in response to previous Navigation Acts. However, British Customs officers were extremely corrupt because they were rewarded a certain percentage of all goods confiscated. The Navigation Acts certainly strained relations between Britain and her colonies, but even larger rifts began to form from 1713 to 1763, during a period of salutary neglect of these Acts.
A few additional laws were passed during this period, but neither those nor previous acts were very well enforced. The Navigation Acts were only in place to keep mercantilism profitable for the British Empire, but around 1713, it became profitable for both Britain and her American colonies. Parliament decided to actively relax enforcement of the Navigation Acts because enforcement was expensive, angered the colonies, and was not useful at this time due to the prodigious success of mercantilism. Unfortunately, salutary neglect came to an abrupt end after the Seven Years War in 1763. This war cost the victorious British massive sums, so they again had to tax their colonies relentlessly to reduce the national debt. Britain passed another Navigation Act in 1764, which required taxes both of material and wealth from the colonies. At this point, very little could be shipped out of the colonies, even if it were being shipped to London itself, without being heavily taxed. For many Americans, this end of salutary neglect was a deciding factor in the debate over whether the colonies’ relationship with Britain was
beneficial. To put it briefly, American independence had its origins long before many of those who fought for it were even born. Convictions of slave-owners in the southern colonies showed how much they valued liberty. Religious ideology in the northern colonies changed the way many thought of the individual and of liberty. The vast majority of Americans felt that their liberty was being falsified by British Parliament on the issue of taxation. Then, the Navigation Acts made the Americans powerless to a mercantile system in which only Britain could be successful. Salutary neglect gave many colonists hope that mercantilism could be mutually beneficial, but any hopes of reconciliation were dashed following the extreme taxation after the Seven Years War. Revolution was inevitable well before the first shots were fired, and even before the Boston Tea Party.
For example, the Navigation Acts of 1660 and 1663 specified a number of key trade related rules. First, they specified that all colonial trade had to be carried on ships owned by British or colonial traders. Secondly, all colonial goods bound for North America had to pass through certain English ports, in order to be taxed and monitored. Finally, enumerated goods such as sugar were to be shipped only to English ports. Despite these laws existing, the government in London did not enforce them strictly up until 1763. This policy is often referred to as ‘salutary neglect’ and it had the effect of introducing a perceived sense of autonomy and self-determination in the North American colonies. Following 1763, the British government began to enforce the Navigation Acts British lawmakers began to introduce more Acts which further restricted and monitored colonial trade and increased taxes. To the parliament in London this was just enforcing and building upon old laws, an opinion that was not shared by the
The relations between England and the British North American colonies could always be considered precarious. Prior to 1750 British essentially followed a policy of benign neglect and political autonomy in the American colonies. (Davidson p.97) The colonies were for the most part content with benign neglect policy, relishing in a “greater equality and representative government”(Davidson p.95) within the colonies. Competition among European Imperial nations began to effect British policy toward North America colonies causing rapid shifts from 1750 to 1776. During this period, the British Empire made a series of policy decision that sealed the fate of the British North American colonies and lead to the American Revolution.
From the time period 1775-1800, the American Revolution would impact the United States in political, social and economic ways.
During the War for American Independence, 78 men were commissioned as general officers into the Continental Army by the Continental Congress. Many of these generals commanded troops with differing levels of competence and success. George Washington is typically seen as most important general, however throughout the war a number of his subordinates were able to distinguish themselves amongst their peers. One such general was Nathanael Greene. At the end of the Revolutionary War, Greene would become Washington’s most important subordinate, as demonstrated by Edward Lengel’s assessment of Greene as “the youngest and most capable of Washington’s generals.” Washington and Greene developed a strong, positive and close relationship between themselves. Greene began his life in the military after having been raised a Quaker. With limited access to literature and knowledge in his younger years, Greene became an avid reader which equipped him with the knowledge necessary to excel as a general during the war. Through his devoted study of military operations, firsthand experience and natural abilities as a soldier, Greene became an excellent military commander. He would become known for his successful southern campaign, during which, he loosened British control of the South and helped lead the war to its climax at Yorktown. Throughout the war, he was involved in a number high profile battles where he built a reputation of being an elite strategist who also understood unconventional warfare, logistics, and the importance of military-civil affairs and had a natural political/social acumen. The thesis of this paper is that Greene’s proven reputation of being a soldier, strategist and statesman would cause him to become the second greates...
One facet of this unique system involved the numerous economic differences between England and the colonies. The English government subscribed to the economic theory of mercantilism, which demanded that the individual subordinate his economic activity to the interests of the state (Text, 49). In order to promote mercantilism in all her colonies, Great Britain passed the Navigation Acts in 1651, which controlled the output of British holdings by subsidizing. Under the Navigation Acts, each holding was assigned a product, and the Crown dictated the quantity to be produced. The West Indies, for example, were assigned sugar production and any other colony exporting sugar would face stiff penalties (Text, 50). This was done in order to ensure the economic prosperity of King Charles II, but it also served to restrict economic freedom. The geographical layout of the American colonies made mercantilism impractical there. The cit...
The American Revolution has great importance on the way the United States views itself. Contrary to popular belief, Americans were not separate people subject to British tyranny. A large portion of American colonialists thought of themselves as British. There are many ideas and causes as to why the American Revolution began. Differing political traditions, both parties economic interest, trading interest of those involved in transatlantic commerce, Britain’s large debt that accumulated during the Seven Years War, mutual misunderstandings, and the Great Awakening are many of the reasons that the colonist began to revolt against England.
There are four major reasons that the rebellion of the colonists accumulated into a full scale revolution. The most indistinct of these four reasons is the old societal legacies of the colonies, namely: social, political, religious, and economic values. These deeply rooted values were ingrained and inherited from the generations of colonists, and once the British began upsetting those values, resentment set in and began to undermine the British authority. For example, many of those who came to America were of British decent; they loved being English and fancied that, as colonists, they were taking part in the building of a bigger and stronger British Empire. But to those in England, the Americans were no better than barbarians. The English did not view A...
...at the colonies bore the right to tax and legislate themselves. Additionally, an agreement was reached to once again cut off all trade until the Coercive Acts were repealed.
The british already were trying to pay of its debts. The british had to send over supplies and soilders across the atlantic and then cross American land to fight the americans. This costed the British a lot of time and money. This was crucial to the American win leading to surrender of the
It has been said that the American Revolution was a direct result of the French and Indian War. Throughout this essay, this statement can be proven by a line of supportive occurrences such as the acts, taxes, laws, and drastic events that the colonists suffered from and endured first-hand that can back-track the cause of the revolution (proving, again, that the war debts from the French and Indian War directly raised conflict that would build up through the years). Tensions immediately start to build in the colonies right after the "7 Years War", or the French and Indian War. Before hand, the American Colonies had just begun to somewhat prosper from comfort of the distant of the monarchical rule of Great Britain when everything ran right into
...heir own laws about trade (once the Constitution was written). The colonies, not Britain, could decide who they traded with and what taxes they charged; they had complete control over the system of trade.
The American Revolution was a chronicled occasion that occurred in the time of 1775-1783. The progressive war was for american provinces to get freedom from incredible Britain. Receiving the arrangement that the provinces should pay an expanded extent of the expenses related with keeping them in the Empire. England proposed a progression of direct assessments took after by different laws that were planned to show British experts. Since the provinces needed chose portrayal in the representing British Parliament, numerous homesteaders viewed the laws as ill-conceived and an infringement of their rights as Englishmen. In 1772, gatherings of settlers started to make social occasions, which would prompt their own Provincial Congresses in a large portion of the states. Over the span of two years, the Provincial Congresses or their counterparts dismissed the Parliament and viably supplanted the British decision contraption in the previous settlements, coming full circle in 1774 with the organizing First Continental Congress. In light of challenges in Boston over Parliament's endeavors to declare specialist, the British sent battle troops, took away self government, and forced direct administer by Royal authorities. Subsequently, the state's activated
“Give me liberty or give me death”. This was a famous slogan used by the colonist who werefed up with being controlled by the British and by the 1780s the colonist wanted to be a free and independent state. The “Road to the Revolution” began when these major events happened: Navigational Acts of 1660, the French and Indian War:1754-1763, Pontiac’s Rebellion & Proclamation of 1763, The Sugar Act:1764, The Stamp Act:1765, The Declaratory Act:1766, The Townshend Act:1767, The Boston Massacre:1770,The Boston Tea Party:1773, and the Intolerable Acts:1774. The colonist feel like they are being treated unfairly and want to have more of a say in government. They don't believe what the
Before the American revolution began, people were unhappy about how Great Britain, has acted towards them, and a lot spoke out such as Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry. These men were influential orators or writers in the 1700s. These writers opened the people’s eyes to how Britain was treating them, inspiring people to have a revolution. They made the war a necessity for the colonists to have. Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry made the American Revolution morally justifiable because the colonists were being unfairly treated, they tried everything in their power to make peace, and they were constantly being ignored by Great Britain; a war was the last resort.
The American Revolution fundamentally changed American society in positive and negative ways. There were political, social, and economic alterations that occurred during this time period from 1775 to 1800 that ultimately affected our country by changing it and giving us what we have today.