Causes of the American Revolution

1Why this matters

In the 1770s thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America rebelled against Britain, the most powerful empire of the day, and won. The American Revolution (about 1765 to 1789) created the United States and spread a powerful idea: that government rests on the consent of the governed and that people have rights no ruler may take away. That idea travelled to France, to Haiti, to Latin America and, in the twentieth century, to African nationalists demanding independence from colonial rule.

A colony is a territory ruled by a distant country. A revolution is a rapid, fundamental change in who holds power and how a society is governed.

2Background: the Thirteen Colonies

By 1763 the colonies, from New Hampshire in the north to Georgia in the south, had their own elected assemblies and a long habit of running local affairs. Britain controlled their trade through laws such as the Navigation Acts, under the theory of mercantilism: colonies existed to supply raw materials to the mother country and buy its manufactured goods. Enslaved Africans made up a large share of the population in the southern colonies.

3The long-term causes

1. The French and Indian War (1754–1763). Britain defeated France in North America but ended the war deeply in debt. Parliament decided the colonists should help pay for the war and for the soldiers kept in America afterwards.
2. Enlightenment ideas. Thinkers such as John Locke argued that people have natural rights to life, liberty and property, and that a government which violates them may be replaced. Colonists read these ideas and applied them to Britain.
3. A tradition of self-government. Colonists were used to taxing themselves through their own assemblies.
4. Resentment of trade controls under mercantilism, which limited whom colonists could trade with and what they could make.
5. The Proclamation of 1763, which closed the land west of the Appalachian Mountains to colonial settlement to avoid wars with Native Americans. Settlers and land speculators were furious.

4The short-term causes: a chain of crises

The central argument was about representation. Colonists did not elect any members of the British Parliament. They argued that, as British subjects, they could only be taxed by their own elected assemblies. Parliament replied that it had full power to make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever".

Worked example: explaining a slogan

Question: Explain what the colonists meant by "No taxation without representation".

The colonists meant that only a body they had elected could lawfully tax them. They elected their own colonial assemblies but had no members in the British Parliament. When Parliament passed the Stamp Act (1765), it taxed the colonists directly without their consent. The colonists therefore argued that the tax violated their rights as British subjects, whatever its size; in fact the taxes were low. The dispute was about power and rights, not about money.

Practice

Solution. The French and Indian War had left Britain heavily in debt, and it planned to keep an army in North America. Parliament believed the colonists, who had benefited from the victory over France, should pay part of the cost.

Solution. It banned settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, which colonists had hoped to occupy after defeating France. Settlers, fur traders and land speculators saw it as blocking their future.

Solution. They were laws of 1774 punishing Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party: Boston's port was closed and the colony's self-government reduced. Other colonies feared the same could happen to them, so they sent delegates to the First Continental Congress to act together.

Solution. John Locke's idea that people have natural rights to life, liberty and property, and that government rests on the consent of the governed.