...CHAPTER 3 America in the British Empire ANTICIPATION/REACTION Directions: Before you begin reading this chapter, place a check mark beside any of the following seven statements with which you now agree. Use the column entitled “Anticipation.” When you have completed your study of this chapter, come back to this section and place a check mark beside any of the statements with which you then agree. Use the column entitled “Reaction.” Note any variation in the placement of checkmarks from anticipation to reaction and explain why you changed your mind. Anticipation Reaction _____ 1. _____ 1. _____ 2. _____ 3. _____ 4. _____ 5. _____ 6. _____ 7. The British government usually left American colonists to make their own laws pertaining to local matters. American colonial trade was severely crippled by British trade laws. The European Enlightenment had little influence on the thought of American colonists. Because they were part of the British empire, colonists were constantly involved in England’s imperial wars with France and Spain. Parliament taxed the American colonists as a way to express its authority over them, not because it needed. the money. Colonists protested the Sugar Act and Stamp Act as violations of their rights as Americans. Colonists protested the Tea Act because it threatened to raise the price of tea. _____ 2. _____ 3. _____ 4. _____ 5. _____ 6. _____ 7. LEARNING OBJECTIVES After reading Chapter 3 you...
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...The American Revolution in the eyes of most Americans has to do with “taxation without representation”. This period is known as the “Short Term Imperial Crisis” and lasted from 1762-1775. There were a series of events that led up to the start of the American Revolution starting with the end of the 7 Years War between Britain and France. The British Empire was in severe debt following the victory over France and they wanted to begin taxing the colonists. By taxing the colonists, the British government set in motion a series of events that would ultimately begin the American Revolution. From 1763 to 1767 there were a series of taxes placed upon the colonists in order to increase British revenue. The first of these taxes was the Revenue Act in 1763. The Revenue Act simply stated that the British throne now had the power to tax the colonies. This led to the Sugar Act in 1764. The Sugar Act placed taxes on goods such as sugar, molasses, and rum. It also gave customs officials Writs of Assistance that allowed them to board merchant ships at will and search for any of these goods if they were untaxed. If the officials found anything, the merchant was taken to court in Britain, not America. This was the beginning of the British impeding colonial rights. The Stamp Act of 1765 was a tax on anything with paper that required a stamp. Although this act did not destroy the American economy, the colonists were upset that this act was a clear demonstration of the throne acting on its own interests...
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...Franco- Britain Conflict on Subsequent Events “The global struggle between the French and British Empire influenced certain key events in history from 1750 to 1805. These events including the French and Indian war, by the seven year war, the American Revolution, the French Revolution and it's impact on American domestic and foreign policies, and the Louisiana purchase and it's consequences.” Colonial era diplomacy focused on the European balance of power. The competition between the French and the British often influenced the course of events in the North American colonies. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1750-1775 For almost three centuries, the European colonial powers of France and Great Britain, maintained...
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...Seven Years’ War Paper Your Name Goes Here Axia College of the University of Phoenix Shauna Donovan HIS 115 Many factors led up to the Seven Years’ War and in this paper I will describe the social and political backgrounds existent in eighteenth-century America, explain how the diverse backgrounds and views led to the Seven Years’ War and explain how the outcome of the Seven Years’ War affected me and America. All of this will be explained as you read along in this paper. In the seventeenth-century before I was born, “the colonies were becoming overrun by various, very different immigrant groups” (Davidson, J., 2006). Famine, warfare, and religious persecution forced many non-English groups to flee their homes in Europe to the American colonies. This immigration quickly increased the population and made the colonies greatly diverse in backgrounds. This diversity in backgrounds caused the colonies to be divided along the cultural lines. The colonists divided themselves according to ethnic, regional, racial, and religious differences (Davidson, J., 2006). “Since many of these immigrants had no way to pay for their trip to America, they arrived in the colonies already signed into indentured servitude” (Davidson, J., 2006). The population increase had a significant impact on the lifestyle of colonists in the eighteenth-century. “At this time the birth rate also increased with women typically giving birth to between five and eight children” (Davidson, J., 2006)...
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...in Imperial British policies played a big part in the coming American Revolution. However, the rich elites of America sought to rebel against the British for their own purposes. The rich did not enjoy the fact that the British began imposing new taxes on their products, and they saw it as a way to cut into their profits. The British implemented such taxes on the colonies because they were in turn losing profits due to underground smuggling and trading outside the ranks of the mother country. The British were losing control of the colonies to the more educated well-off men, which used the power of persuasion to sway the lower class of colonists to gain an upper hand over the British. Even though the lower classes of people were doing fine under British rule, the rich Americans knew if they were not onboard then the liberty the rich wanted would be unattainable. This led to many rebellions against the British, but not all of which came from the elite. With that being said, the rich educated men of America used forms of propaganda to bring people to their side. Promises of liberty and equality sounded good to the people. The common folk saw a way to receive more rights under a local government rather than Imperial British control. The Molasses Act was put into place by the British to defer trade with the French for sugar, but this tax did not stop the smuggling of the main product to make rum from outside vendors so it quickly lost its power. “This hurt the British West Indies...
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...Most Americans nowadays like to think that they have the American Revolution pretty well figured out. Conventional wisdom starts the saga in 1763 when Britain, saddled with debt at the close of the Seven Years' War, levied new taxes that prompted her American colonists to resist, and then to reject, imperial rule. Having declared independence and defeated the British, American patriots then drafted the constitution that remains the law of the land to this day. With George Washington's inauguration as president in 1789, the story has a happy ending and the curtain comes down. This time-honored script renders the road from colonies to nation clear, smooth, and straight, with familiar landmarks along the way, from Boston's Massacre and Tea Party through Lexington and Concord, then on to Bunker Hill and Yorktown before reaching its destination: Philadelphia in 1787, where the Founders invented a government worthy of America's greatness. Those Founders are equally familiar. Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, Sam and John Adams, Patrick Henry and Alexander Hamilton: in the popular mind this band of worthies, more marble monuments than mere mortals, guides America towards its grand destiny with a sure and steady hand. "[F]or the vast majority of contemporary Americans," writes historian Joseph Ellis, the birth of this nation is shrouded by "a golden haze or halo."(1) So easy, so tame, so much "a land of foregone conclusions" does America's Revolution...
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...America’s Independence, Carol Berkin has discussions about the various roles women had during the American Revolution. As we see the fight for independence was not fought alone by men. The actual fight was with the women. They went to almost exhausting attempts to do their part as well. These women overlooked their own welfare as well as the safety of their children. While being strong and breaking free of beliefs and stereotypes about what was conceived to be behavior that a woman portrays. Although it was not at all for the women. The women in the book did indeed struggle, different groups of women struggled in different or more forceful ways. Berkin talks about different major...
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...War of Independence or a Revolution? It should be understood that without understanding the causes, course, and consequences of the American Revolution, one cannot grasp the history of the United State. The American Revolution was the political commotion during the end of the eighteenth century. The thirteen North American colonies united to break free of the British Empire and become a new nation; The United State of America. A revolution can be defined as, the change in power or the constitution stirring in a relatively short period of time. Aristotle described revolution as complete change from one constitution to another (Sinclair 190). And this is precisely what happened two centuries ago in the United State. But the question needed to be answered is, was the American War of Independence really a war for independence or a revolution? The American War of Independence (1775–1783) was a climax in the political American Revolution rather than just a war for independence, ideologically influenced by the Enlightenment philosophers and writers of the Great Britain. Benjamin Rush remarked in 1787, "The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed." 2 This drama staged in the Pennsylvania State House in summer of 1776 remains the only most important chapter in the archives of American Revolution. Although, the political atmosphere in France...
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...The Colonial Period and the Fight for Independence David C. Nard Hist 316L – Spring 2015 From the time the nation's first settlers established the colony of Jamestown in 1607 to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, 169 years had passed, meaning settlers established 13 colonies across the eastern seaboard and prospered as farmers, shipbuilders, and merchants. But they were not free, and were bound by British rule on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. For more than one and a half centuries, colonists fought for and perpetuated a system for self governance, but outside forces kept threatening their way of life and liberty. Throughout the Colonial era, settlers of the New World fought against British governing rule and desired self-government. However,...
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...The British colonists of mainland North America had great hopes for the future in 1763, when the Peace of Paris formally ended the Seven Years’ War. Since the late seventeenth century, their lives had been disrupted by a series of wars between Britain and the “Catholic Powers,” France and Spain. Now, however, a triumphant Britain took title to Spanish Florida, French Canada, and all of Louisiana east of the Mississippi. With the British flag flying over so much of the North American continent, the colonists looked forward to a time of uninterrupted peace, expansion, and prosperity. Deeply proud of the British victory and their own identity as “free Britons,” they neither wanted nor foresaw what the next two decades would bring—independence, revolution, and yet another war. Independence The Seven Years’ War had left Great Britain with a huge debt by the standards of the day. Moreover, thanks in part to Pontiac’s Rebellion, a massive American Indian uprising in the territories won from France, the British decided to keep an army in postwar North America. Surely the colonists could help pay for that army and a few other expenses of administering Britain’s much enlarged American empire. Rather than request help from provincial legislatures, however, Britain decided to raise the necessary money by acts of Parliament. Two laws, the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act (1765), began the conflict between London and America. The Sugar Act imposed duties on certain imports not, as in the...
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...The Burning of Gaspee was more than a conflict in American History it was an incident that sparked the fire that began the American Revolutionary War. In order to understand this theory you must first understand what events caused the burning of Gaspee. Years Prior to the Burning of Gaspee Great Britain had obtained a huge amount of debt defending the American Colonies. The British felt that the colonist should be paying for their fair share, they needed more money to run their expanded empire. Great Britain decided that they would tax the colonist to pay off their existing debt. The colonist became very angry with this. The British tried to enforce new policies and taxes which the colonist evaded by smuggling. The American Columnist had grown...
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...idea was to put off future rebels by showing them how any rebellion would be punished. Participants of rebellions were often publicly killed ‘by progressive mutilation, slow burnings, breaking on the wheel. * Lead to suppression of abolitionist expression in the Caribbean and dissuaded some against abolition. * The Abolitionist movement in the Caribbean really didn't grow until the 1840s and 50s, so from the Berbice/Coffy Revolt (1763) to the uprisings in Haiti (1791), there was relatively little abolitionist sentiment in the Caribbean. * Some would argue what the rebellions actually did was scare slave owners in the Caribbean, and lead to a series of legal reforms and slave codes designed to make revolts more difficult. * Slave owners through-out the region suffered massive destruction of property and loss of lives. Positive Effects of slave revolts in the Caribbean * Antislavery movements grew stronger and bolder, especially in Great Britain, and the colonial slaves themselves became increasingly more restless. * The impact of the Haitian Revolution (1791) was both immediate and widespread. The antislavery fighting immediately spawned unrest throughout the region, especially in communities of Maroons in Jamaica, and among slaves in St. Kitts. * Most important, in the Caribbean, whites lost the confidence that they had before 1789 to maintain the slave system indefinitely. In 1808, the British abolished their transatlantic slave trade, and they...
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...The American and French Revolutions occurred roughly 14 years apart. On the surface, they presented many similarities, such as the guarantee of liberty, but important distinctions also appeared. The primary documents written from each revolution will demonstrate how the papers produced during this period show that the American Revolution fought a system of government while the French Revolution struggled against a hierarchical society. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress of what would become the United States of America approved its first major document: the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration outlined the grievances against the British while also providing details on the universal political values that they believed in, which supported the grievances of the writers, including issues such as taxation without representation, absolute rule, and for destroying the American colonists’ ability to trade. A key phrase of the Declaration noted that the government was legitimate if it had “consent of the governed,” which highlighted the failure of the British colonial government to fairly represent the people they governed in the 13 colonies and the divine right that the king claimed as the legitimacy of his reign. Indeed, Jefferson argued that a government that did not have the consent was not a legitimate government, and...
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...crusade and discuss the extent to which it accomplished its objectives. Why did it succeed or fail? Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History; Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives; Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades 2. How did anti-Semitism manifest itself in medieval Europe? Kenneth R. Stow, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe; Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages; Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century 3. What was the position of prostitutes in medieval society? Ruth Mazo Karras, Common Women; Leah Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society; Margaret Wade Labarge, A Small Sound of the Trumpet: Women in Medieval Life 4. Why did the French choose to follow Joan of Arc during the the Hundred Years War? Kelly DeVries, Joan of Arc: A Military Leader; Bonnie Wheeler, ed., Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc; Margaret Wade Labarge, A Small Sound of the Trumpet: Women in Medieval Life 5. Discuss the significance of siege warfare during the crusades. You may narrow this question down to a single crusade if you wish. Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Siege; Randall Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare in the Twelfth Century; John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade 6. Why did the persecution of heretics increase during the high and later Middle Ages...
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...How the colonist responded to the new acts. The Colonist fought on their Liberties although they did not persuade the crown to reverse the decision. The colonist protest against the taxes before the act passed. The colonist used violence to protest against the acts and many killed in the riot. In 1764, the Sugar Act was a cut in taxes on molasses and sugar when imported from the West Indians (Schultz) The 1765 Quartering Act arranged for British military personnel to give food and shelter at the expense of the American settlers. The Quartering Acts are a direct connection to the causes of the American Revolution (Schultz). The Stamp Act was legislated in 1765 but it did not go into effect until November 1, 1765 to give colonists time to...
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