In Seven Years’ War in 1763
In Seven Years’ War in 1763, English who living in America are now has more land and therefore money. The British government want to pass the Stamp Act, that place a stamp on the documents, newspapers, cards, and more instead of giving money back to British. Unfortunately, it turns out the colonist were not so keen on this because the tax was high because they had no direct representation in the parliament that had levied the tax. Also about the Crown keeping large number of British troops in the colonies even after the end of the Seven Years’ War. But in the end, the British backed down and repealed the Stamp Act. The repeal inspired a line of commemorative teapots, thereby beginning America’s storied tradition of worthless collectible ceramics. In the end, British tried to put taxes on the Americans in the form of the Townshend Acts. These lead to further protests and boycotts and most importantly, more organization among the colonists. Also the Boston Massacre, which its sum total of five dead was perhaps the least massacre massacre of all time. In 1773, a bunch of colonists dumped million dollars worth of tea into Boston Harbor, in protest of British government decisions that actually would have made British tea cheaper.
Secondly, the ways that colonists protest unfair taxation. The English Crown benefits tremendously from the import of consumer goods to the American colonies, and one of the most effective ways American colonist could protest taxation without representation was by boycotting British products. The protesters created Committees of Correspondence, which spread information about who was and was not observing the boycotts. And these committees also could coerce non-compliers into compliance, which they were creating and enforcing policy, like government does.
Most of the writers and signers of the Declaration of Independence were men of property. Basically the white guys who controlled the land and its production before the American Revolution were the same white guys who controlled it after the American Revolution. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” (159) In contrast, some of the American population were slaves of African descent who were held as property and were not treated as equal to whites.
Morgan thinks John Locke as a major Enlightenment thinker, formulated his version of inalienable rights as life, liberty, and property. And that’s much more traditional than arguing, for instance, that property should be held communally. More moderate Enlightenment thinkers, like Locke and Adam Smith, happened to be British, and the real radicals were French. And the founders of the United States, were far linked to those British Enlightenment thinkers than to the French.
