As If An Enemy's Country Summary

Why did the American colonists lead a revolution? In the Colonial Era, the British parliament allowed the American colonies a small degree of self-governance including colonial legislatures or assemblies for which they could choose their representatives. Once they had a taste of this power, every move against it unleashed discomfort, resentment and feelings of being treated unfairly, which resulted in a rebellion. Gordon Wood, professor of History at Brown University, in his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, states “Because monarchy had these implications of humiliation and dependency, the Anglo-American colonist could never be good monarchical subjects” (12). Therefore, the idea of a balanced government allowed the North American

Richard Archer, in his book As if an Enemy's Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution says, “A standing army during peacetime…rather than protecting the population and promoting imperial interest, its purpose was to enforce the will of the power” (xiii). Moreover, colonists did not like the limitations over the western land imposed by the King to avoid future conflicts with the Native Americans. Ian Barnes illustrates this situation saying “[M]any Americans saw their aspirations as different from and counter to Britain’s” (Barnes 42). However, it was the Stamp Act, established by the British government in 1765 (even when it was not the first statute imposed by the crown) that drove the Americans to react and resist such reform. The Stamp Act demanded that a variety of articles such as “legal contracts, land deeds, liquor licenses, newspapers and play cards” shall have stamps in order to be legal (Jones et al. 151). The lack of representation of the colonists in the British parliament that had levied the Stamp Act led them to organize a resistance and to attack public servers designated by the crown. So the rebellion continued, and for every act that the British Empire released, more organization among the Americans emerged. They called themselves the Sons of Liberty (Jones et al. 151). This group raised the fever of freedom, giving hopes to

The boycott on British tea did not continue; after a while, the “purchase of the England tea resumed” (Jones et al. 152). The parliament took this action as acceptance of the Tea Act and their right to collect taxes from it. Soon they began to project future revenue, which made the Sons of Liberty to retake their tactics. The protesters knew that vessels loaded with England tea had arrived at the Boston Port. The spirit of rebellion united a band of 150 men of all social strata to scheme a sabotage. Dressed like Native Americans, they had a “Tea Party” dumping the entire loads of tea overboard. All of these actions led the crown to declare more oppressive acts, but at this point it, was obvious that no act imposed by the empire would be accepted by the