In 1763, the American colonists were excited as they expected to gain honor and prestige after helping win the French and Indian War with the British. However, the British had a different perspective of the future as the war had doubled it's national debt. As Britain started raising taxes in the colonies, the colonists believed that it was not reasonable because the colonists had helped passionately with their money and effort. They believed it was unfair. As their more peaceful measures in the early stages of this debate did not work well, they began to think of war as a final option. War was not decided upon in a single day; the accumulated sequence of events led them to declare war. Eventually, the war between Britain and the colonists occurred in 1774. The American colonists were justified in declaring independence from England because widespread enlightenment ideas justified their independence, colonists had to pay unfairly charged taxes, and important decisions that were related to colonists' lives were made without colonial representation. .
First, their declaration of independence was justified by the enlightenment ideas that were spread at the time. Colonial protests and the war were based on liberalism of the Enlightenment. Writers such as John Locke from England and Baron de Montesquieu from France argued that people had divinely given natural rights including liberty, life, and property liberty, and property. They also believed that government existed for the good of the people, to protect these rights. Therefore, according to these ideas, people now could protest to the government that took away those unalienable rights. These new ways of thinking supported the idea that people should protest or abandon any government that failed to protect these rights. When the colonists felt that their rights were threatened, they acted according to these principles to gain back their rights.
