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The mercantilist policies of the British were pretty much what got them into such a mess during and after the Seven Years’ War, which is not much of a surprise, in all honesty. After all, the Navigation Acts the British passed for their colonies were hardly nurturing toward the colonial economy. They were inhibiting more than anything else, and the colonists knew it. Perhaps that roused some anger in them, but the worst was yet to come, as they would see soon enough. With the war came more tension, and with more tension came more attention, and with that came many more intelligent, observant, and stubborn men willing to stand up for themselves (and gradually the people around them as well).
ReplyDeleteFor support I believe I will reference something that Americans despise to this very day: taxes. Taxes, taxes, taxes; the British lavishly imposed them. Despite popular belief (or at least, mine before I found this out), the British didn’t always tax their colonies the most. Before and during the Seven Years’ War, taxes for the good of Great Britain were imposed at their highest upon the actual citizens of Great Britain itself. The people overseas were not required to pay much of anything compared to the bucketloads that the British residents shelled out. After the Seven Years’ War, debt came to be a tricky issue, and it was then that Parliament seemed to get its act together and realize: the colonies had money to be tapped. Naturally with their mercantilist minds, they decided that it was about time the colonies shelled out the mega dough. And so, they started taxing the colonies more in comparison to their settled-in-the-Motherland counterparts. How would that cause a mess? Well, it cannot really be considered rocket science, can it? The colonists were trying to get away from Britain, and all of a sudden the beast returns demanding cash? Anger and skirmishes ensued. One of them became more than a skirmish: The American Revolution.
Since two supporting details are required, here’s the second. I mentioned the Navigation Acts before and how they limited the economy of the colonies since they made Britain the middleman in all kinds of trading circles. It was this kind of mercantilist thought that created a social barrier between the colonists and the British overseas. The colonists were British, technically speaking. But they weren’t British. Get it? The British thought that the colonists were “below them”. They were scrounging for life over across the ocean, barely anything in comparison to the shining country that brought them about; the shining country with its remarkable navy and endless army and not to mention beautifully functioning mercantilist economy! It was this social separation that brought the colonists to become a different entity from the British; a new people, if you will. In a sense, the first Americans. That played a really huge role. Without that separation, the distinction between colonists and British natives would never have been made. They would have remained the same, and they would have remained under the same king. They would have been equals instead of inferiors. They would have fought alongside their British cousins in battle and they would have gotten something to show for it; an officer’s position, a comrade’s appreciation. But none of that was shown between a British man and a colonial man. And that was what really set up the structure of the big American Revolution.