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American revolution cause and effect
American revolution cause and effect
Causes and consequences of the american revolution
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There are many important events in American history that could have completely altered how we live today or if America would even be a country. One such event was the American Revolution. Some say that this event was inevitable and others say it was not. The American Revolution was inevitable because Britain had poor judgement in who they allowed to come over, Britain put heavy taxes on the people, American population was growing fast, the Americans were becoming anglicized, and almost all other British colonies now have independence. These reasons made the American Revolution bound to happen.
Britain was setting themselves up for failure when they allowed the people they did to come to America. Britain allowed the ¨Sturdy Beggars¨ or people
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that did not have work due to the growing population in England to come to America. This was a bad idea. Why would Britain allow the people already dissatisfied with Britain due to not being able to get a job to come over to a new land where they had the possibility to be a land owner which would not have even been a thought back in England. These Sturdy Beggars now get to come be happy in America, who could blame them for not wanting England to have any control over them in their new homes. Britain also allowed its religiously unsatisfied to come to America. This might have been one of their biggest mistakes. By allowing the people who want to purify the religion of Britain to come to America Britain made sure there would be religious conflict with themselves and America. The Puritans wanted to rid themselves of the anglican church so they definitely are not going to want to have Britain be in charge of them forever. Britain should have made more of the loyal people go to America instead of having the most rebellious groups come. This whole situation is equivalent to letting a rebellious teenager go out and then getting extremely mad at them when then do not return by a certain time. The parent in this situation (Britain) should have known to either not allow the teen to go in the first place or just know that when they do go they will not be back by curfew. With all of these rebellious people Britain thought it would be a good idea to heavily tax them. Heavily taxing citizens is always a way to keep them happy right?
Well Britain did not realize how upset the American people would get under taxation without representation. While it is true that Americans were paying much less in taxes than the people of Britain, Americans were making a lot of money for Britain. The seven years war had just ended with Britain coming out on top. While at first this was a great morale booster, but the country soon began to realize the amount of debt that had piled up (LaBarge 1). The logical thing to do was to tax the people more. This did not go over well with the Americans. The British imposed such taxes as the Stamp Act which required all paper products sold to have a stamp on them which was like a sales tax (Cogliano 1). Other taxes included the sugar tax which made merchants pay a large tax on imported sugar and molasses. While the Americans expected to pay taxes they were fed up with going from paying very low taxes to extremely high taxes in a short amount of time. As America's population grew more and more citizens started to become mad with the …show more content…
taxes. America's population was growing rapidly and the American people knew it.
The people of the colonies had to keep moving their borders farther and farther back due to the increase in population. When there is a small group trying to control a large group it can be hard to keep everything under control and that is what Britain was experiencing. Not to mention that the large group was a whole ocean apart from the small group. Britain had only a small number of troops that they could send to America while still ensuring that there were troops at home to ensure safety. This allowed Americans to smuggle in goods without punishment from the British. This ¨Salutary Neglect¨ allowed Americans to grow accustomed to low amounts of punishment from the government (Cook 1). This made it all the worse for Britain when trying to tighten their grip on the colonies because the colonist were used to not worrying about breaking the laws and all of a sudden they start to be enforced. The Americans thought they had an unspoken agreement with the British until it was broken. As Thomas Paine said in his ¨Common Sense¨ ¨Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the common order of
nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself¨ (Paine 4). Paine clearly thought that a small island being in charge of a massive continent did not make sense. At first all of the colonist thought that it was a show of statis if they dressed and acted like English people. This led to the Americans copying the British in everything from tea to clothes. This would seem like something that would make the revolution unlikely to happen, but the English did not consider the colonist to be true english men. Americans woke up and realized that they really do not want to be like the British because the British do not consider them part of England anyway. Americans could now make their own culture which was not good for England wanting to keep America under control. As John Adams said ¨Here, again, we are to be conjured out of our senses by the magic in the words "British empire," and "supreme power of the state." But, however it may sound, I say we are not a part of the British empire; because the British government is not an empire¨ (Adams 1). John Adams like many others believed that America was not part of England. The British could not keep Americans under control much like they could not keep the citizens of their other attempted colonies under control. The British have had many colonies in many different nations. Over 50 of the nations have gained independence so why would it not be inevitable that America would eventually gain independence. If the United Kingdom can not keep 50 other nations from getting freedom than what makes America any different. The United States were really the first to gain independence, but statistics show that the U.K. can not really hold on to a nation meaning that it was inevitable that American independence would happen.
From 1754-1763, Britain fought the French and Indian war. Although Britain had won the war, they still had a lot of war debts to pay off. Britain turned to the colonies to pay off their debts by taxing them. The taxes angered the colonists because they believed it violated their rights. Benjamin Franklin had initially proposed the Albany plan of Union to unite the colonies, however this law was rejected by all of the colonial governments. It wasn't until after all of the British laws and taxes that the colonies would unite and write the Declaration of Independence.
The British colonies in America from the time they were established up until around 1763 had a policy of Salutary Neglect. Salutary Neglect meant that the British would not interfere with the colonies national or even international affairs. This benefitted the colonies, they got to experience some forms of democracy, and they also were able to experience independence in a way though they took it for granted. The British after the Seven Years War, which was fought on American soil, for the Americans protection, decided that the colonies should be required to pay for it in taxes. Britain was in debt, and their economy was in a recession, so the well off colonies tax money would have helped them considerably. The tax would only be the beginning to a long line of British policies further upsetting the colonial people.
After the French and Indian War ended, England had massive debt and little revenue, so Parliament passed laws taxing the American colonists to aid in paying for the British army and navy that helped protect the colonies. Parliament passed a series of laws, including the Sugar Act and Stamp Act, which taxed goods purchased by the colonists. Colonial merchants, who did not feel they should be taxed without representation in Parliament, signed non-importation agreements promising not to buy or import British goods. There was a lot of violence committed on the customs officials who were enforcing the...
The American Revolution was caused by a series of attempts from the British to tax American colonists. After a war against France, Britain ruled an enormous overseas empire. Britain however faced war debt and was in need of money to administer the overseas empire. The crown decided that since the colonists were the primary beneficiaries of this empire, it was time to have them contribute to the empire’s revenue by paying taxes.
After the French and Indian War ended in 1763, Great Britain had nearly gone bankrupt paying for the war. The British thought it was only logical to start new taxes against the colonists. After all, to the British, they had fought the war in the name of the colonies and in what they believed was in their best interest. Many different types of taxes came and went to help pay for the debt. Over time, the
In the 1770’s the American colonists were being taxed too much by the British and they started to want their independence. Britain was taxing the colonists to pay their debts from the French and Indian War. The colonists started to fight back by tarring and feathering some tax collectors. Britain sent troops to the colonies which caused more problems.
After the Seven Year War, Britain now needed to find ways to generate money, and felt that since the war was fought on American land that they should help pay for its cost, and they decided to issue new taxes on the colonies trying to offset some of the cost of the war. One of the first acts they presented was the Sugar act in 1764, lowering the duties on molasses but taxed sugar and other items that could be exported to Britain. It also enforced stronger laws for smuggling, where if prosecuted, it would be a British type trial without a jury of their peers. Some Americans were upset about the Sugar Act because it violated two strong American feelings, first that they couldn't be tried without a jury of their peers, and the second that they couldn't be taxed without their consent.
The origin of England's dependence on the colonies began during the French and Indian war, in the 1750s-1760s. In this war, the British were quite inexperienced; their European style of fighting did not work against the guerilla-warfare fighting style of the French. The British wore bright red coats, marched in long lines, often lugging cannons around with them, while the French hid behind trees and picked them off one by one. General Braddock relied on his force of ill-disciplined American militiamen, who used behind-the-tree methods of fighting in order to fight the Indians. After many years of fighting, the British finally came out victorious. Although England emerged from this war as one of the biggest empires in the world, it also possessed the biggest debt. They had poured much money and resources into these colonies in order to keep them as their own, and it was time for the colonies to give something back to the British for protecting them from the Indians. They finally realized what a precious gift the colonies were, and how useful they would be. In this war, the British realized that the colonies were their pawns in a global game of chess. At any time, the British felt that they had the right to impose taxes on the colonies, in order to make up for money that was lost in the French and Indian War to defend them. They had the view that because they had done so much to help the colonies, that the colonies had to repay them.
In conclusion, the American Revolution was very revolutionary. It was a huge milestone in American history. The war not only gave America their own independence from the most powerful country in the world, it gave the American government the basis of how it runs today and brought about many social and political changes. Although many historians see the war as a change of power from one greedy power to another, Americans wouldn’t have a democracy and citizens wouldn’t have the rights they have.
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...
The British were trying to control the Americans entirely, with their monopoly on trade, and also thought that the Americans would do everything they demanded them to do. The colonists soon figured out Great Britain's angle on the situation. That was, they didn't understand why they were forced to pay taxes to the British, when they had no say in Britain's actions.
There were many factors that led up to the American Revolutionary War, one of these factors were the laws and acts being passed at the time. The British Parliament attempted to limit the power the American Colonist had at the time by taking away from their income. How they did this one may ask? The simple answer is taxes. One of the many taxes imposed was the stamp act. During this time the American colonies were being oppressed by the British one of the first signs of this was the Stamp Act. The act stated that almost anything written had to be stamped and tax...
The connection between Britain and the English colonies was that of the ruling of the colonies by the king of Britain, King George III and his parliament. The king’s ruling was very unfavorable for the colonists because of his tyrannic dictatorship and unjustly taxations. The mere thought of an island ruling an entire continent thousands of miles away with poor communication and lack of supervision of the colonies by the king, did not work in favor of the colonies nor for Britain. Three contributing factors for the outbreak of the American Revolution were (1) the king’s taxes, (2) neglect of the 13 colonies and (3) England’s mercantilism policy. King George III and his decisions were one of the major causes that had the English colonists fumed with anger towards Britain and this eventually led to the American Revolution.
When most people think of the birth of America, they think of July 4th, 1776, when the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence and thus severing ties with Britain. However, the true seeds of revolution were sowed many years earlier in a decade-long battle for supremacy over North America: The French and Indian War. The British defeated the French in the war, but victory created many more problems for the British such as massive debt, unity among the colonists, and increased Indian hostility. Due to these issues, the British had to set in place a series of unpopular laws to prevent further conflicts with the natives and to pay off the cost of the war, which led to a clash of views and ultimately, war. Although the American Revolution
In history things happen for a reason, everything that has happened has a purpose. Although some of these things could have been avoided and some were inevitable. In the French Revolution people fought for equality. They believed everyone should be born equal not with privileges. They argued that you have to work for success. People in upper estates were treated like royalty; they never paid taxes and never had to work a day in their lives. Although the third estate had to pay off the heavy burden of taxes the upper class caused, they had to work for their money. The French Revolution was inevitable because of unfair inheritance of status through birth, high taxes on only the third estate, and the unfair voting system in the Estates General.