My goodness, you can almost smell the beginning of the American Revolution. But put your patient pants on because we still have to talk about yet another cause that led to that great confilration of liberty and independence, namely the British taxation policy. So, if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, let's get to it.
Okay. Now, if you've been around this course for more than 5 minutes, you'll recall that Great Britain did not view their North American colonists as the colonists viewed themselves. What I mean is because of the on-again off-again policy of salutary neglect, the American colonies, though they still thought of themselves as British subjects, had developed habits of local self-governance, which seemed to be a natural consequence of their rights and privileges.
But Great Britain, to put it mildly, did not share that opinion. To them, the colonists were there to serve the interests of their imperial parent and thus were in no way independent. But, you know, that conflicting opinion rarely caused much tension owing to the fact that Great Britain's distance from the colonies was so vast that they were often distracted with larger matters like, you know, taking over the rest of the world.
Oh, and by the way, if you want note guys to follow along with this video and all my videos, check the link below. Anyway, after the end of the French and Indian War, Britain was broke and exhausted and cooked up a plan to bring those rascally colonies into submission through a series of policies. And the chief architect of those policies was our boy George Grenville, whom King George appointed as prime minister.
and he got busy developing a three-part plan to reassert control and raise revenue in the American colony. First, Grenville began by enforcing existing laws that colonists had routinely flouted on account of salutary neglect. And chief among those laws were the navigation acts that restricted colonial trade to Great Britain alone and tax goods going through British port.
Second, Granville decided to continue a handful of wartime policies after the war was over. And especially stanky to the colonial nostril was the Quartering Act, which forced colonial subjects to house and feed members of the British military. And look, the colonists didn't much like feeding and housing the British soldiers during the war, but at least they could understand the need for it.
Like, we're fighting the war, and it's no good to have hangry and homeless soldiers. So, fine, I'll change the sheets. But after the war was over, why in the fresh heck do I still have British soldiers living in my house?
Well, as it turns out, the reason that they stayed was to enforce policies like the Navigation Act. And again, for colonists who had developed the habit of self-ruule and semi-independence, this was about as welcome as the Saja boys showing up right at the moment when the honeymoon is nearly sealed. But fear not, the colonists were not fooled by the imperial abs.
They were ready for a proper British takedown. Anyway, the third and most significant part of Grenville strategy was to persuade Parliament to enact a series of new policies and taxes on the colonies that would help pay down Britain's war debt. And I'm just going to mention three of them.
First was the Sugar Act of 1764. Now, this law actually decreased taxes on items like imported molasses, but it did increase efforts to collect that money since colonists had long skirted the tax by smuggling goods with other trading partners. Second, you had the Currency Act also in 1764, and it mandated that the colonies could no longer print their own money, but were required to use British money.
And if you're like, why are the colonist so saucy about that? Then all I really need to tell you is that it's kind of complicated, but the result was that British merchants benefited from this policy while colonial merchants suffered economic hardship because of it. And then third and most notorious was the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, which was attacks on paper items like newspapers and diplomas and playing cards.
Now, maybe this doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but when the colonists heard about this law, it made them want to rage quit this entire colonial relationship. And why says you? Well, says I.
Because, first of all, it was the first direct tax levied on the colonies. And that signaled a big shift from the past. And also because by the time it passed, many colonists were already experiencing economic hardship as a result of the Sugar and Currency Act.
Additionally, and this is most important, concerns were being raised that Parliament was taxing American colonists who had no representation in Parliament. And that's when the colonist summed up their grievances with the pathy little phrase, namely, no taxation without representation. Now, to understand the nature of their beef, you have to remember that because they had developed habits of self-ruule over time, colonists believed that representation must be local.
What I mean is in all the colonies, they had representative bodies that created the local laws. And those representative bodies were made up of people from the colony itself. And don't forget that the colonists had had their fill of enlightenment thought.
And so they got real testy when it seemed like they were being governed without their consent. Anyway, the point is there were precisely no colonists who were members of parliament and that did not sit well with the British subjects over here in America. Like it wasn't necessarily the taxes that most upset them.
In fact, the emphasis in the phrase is no taxation without representation. But all this colonial angst puzzled Grenville. He argued that the colonists did have representation in Parliament, namely virtual representation.
And what that meant was that Parliament represented the interest of all English subjects, whether they were living on the mainland or abroad in a colony. And so the colonists were like, "Well, Lord Granville, I hope you're ready for a virtual smack bottom because that's the dumbest thing we ever heard. " So all that to say, these policies were more than a little grievous to the colonist.
And so they united across the board to resist them. And those protests came in a variety of flavors. For example, merchants, traders, and artisans created groups like the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty who fought for the repeal of the Stamp Act.
Their members gave impassion speeches and published pamphlets arguing against British imperial policy. Furthermore, they were able to spread their messages rapidly thanks to committees of correspondence, which were groups formed throughout the colonies whose purpose was to share information about British infringements on colonial rights. But then some of those folks got even a little crazier and assaulted imperial tax collectors.
Some of them they beat and others they tarred and feathered. Unless you think that taring and feathering was just a fun way to make a tax collector look like a dumb chicken. Here's where I tell you that this tar was often very hot and created deep and painful burns on the victim.
Anyway, another example is that down in Virginia, the House of Burgesses passed a series of resolutions known as the Virginia resolves, which condemned the notion of taxation without representation. But by far the most formal colonial protest came in the form of the Stamp Act Congress, which convened in 1765. It was made up of 27 delegates from nine colonies and they formally petitioned parliament to repeal the Stamp Act because taxation without representation amounted to tyranny.
However, it is very important to remember that even at this most formal of protests, American independence was not on anyone's minds as a legitimate solution to this crisis. In fact, in the delegates minds, they simply wanted to experience the fullness of their rights as British citizens, which the current policies had diminished. Regardless, widespread boycotts of taxable goods in the colonies led Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act and the Sugar Act in 1766.
However, just to remind everyone who was still in charge, Parliament followed up with the Declaratory Act which declared that Parliament could pass any dang law that they wanted to. Like, just to be clear, we are not repealing the Stamp Act because you protested. Like, we're still in charge and we do whatever we want.
Just making that clear. Anyway, although this victory showed the colonist the limits of parliamentary power, still no one seriously thought of fighting for independence. Again, for the most part, everyone's goal was to remain a British subject without their rights being diminished.
But even though the colonists could count the repeal of the Stamp Act a victory, conditions continued to deteriorate. In 1767, Parliament passed the Towns and Acts, which was attacks on various common items like glass and paint and paper. And so that got the colonial resistance machine fired right back up.
And this time, the most effective means of protest was the boycott of British goods covered under the act. And that was pretty smart because doing so deprived Britain of the very tax revenue that they needed in order to pay off their debts. And it's going to be important for you to know that women played a significant role in the success of these boycots.
You see, since women were generally responsible for buying most of the goods for their household, it fell to them to find alternatives to imported British goods. To that end, many women spun their own clothes instead of buying imported textiles, and wearing homespun was a powerful symbol of protest. So, needless to say, the British attempts to whip their colonies into submission were uh not going well.
But then a handful of other events just made things altogether worse. The first was the Boston Massacre of 1770. Basically, a small group of Boston men angry over all the taxation policies as well as British military presence in the city began hurling snowballs and rocks at a group of British soldiers.
And then a shot was fired, probably on accident, by one of the soldiers. And at that, the rest of the soldiers opened fire as well. And in the end, five Bostononians were killed.
Now, five people killed is five too many by my reckoning, but I'm not really sure that that qualifies as a massacre. But there were some fiery patriots like Samuel Adams who had a flare for the dramatic. And so Adams and other members of the Sons of Liberty quickly spread news of this event, which they themselves called a massacre, and used it as clear evidence of British tyranny.
Not surprisingly, this event and its PR campaign raised the colonist hackled something off. And so Parliament faced tremendous pressure to repeal the town's acts, which they did with the exception of the tea tax because they were all about propping up the East India Company, whose tea the colonists were forced to buy. And speaking of taxes on tea, that leads us to the second explosive event that created even more attention, namely the Boston Tea Party.
Now, in 1773, Parliament passed a new tea act which eliminated the need for colonial merchants in buying and selling tea and gave all authority to the British East India Company. And to be clear, this law did not raise taxes on tea. In fact, it decreased taxes on imported tea.
But the colonist saw this as yet another attempt to control them and their economy. And so, they resented the heck out of it. Now, the culmination of this protest came in the form of the Boston Tea Party, in which something like 50 colonists disguised themselves as American Indians and dumped nearly 50 tons of tea into the harbor.
And in case you're not feeling the full weight of that, we're talking about destroying tea that was worth about $1. 5 to$2 million in today's money. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get an imperial power like Great Britain all kinds of huffy.
And so in response to said huff, Parliament passed the Coercive Act in 1774. Basically, these laws closed down the Boston Harbor until the destroyed tea was paid for. Additionally, the laws included a new quartering act which mandated that colonist house and feed even more British soldiers who were being sent to ensure the enforcement of the coercive acts.
Therefore, it's not hard to understand why in the colonies, this set of policies became known as the intolerable acts. Because in the colonial minds, they represented the most significant grab for power and control that they had yet experienced from Parliament. And yet again, colonial resentment was boiling over.
And I bet that resentment is going to have some consequences, but I'll save that for the next video. Okay, you can click here to watch my other unit 3 videos, or you can click here to grab my video note guides, which are going to help you cram all the contents of this course firmly into your brain fold. I'm glad you stopped by, and I'll catch you on the flipflop.
I'm La.
