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American Revolution


This new act required colonists to sell certain goods only to England, such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton so a British middleman could get a cut of the profit. This created a huge disadvantage because colonial merchantmen now had to go hundreds of miles out of their way just to sell to another country. This forbade the colonists to import or export to other countries; thus colonists lost profit. Everyday hard cash was being drained from the colonists and into the pockets of greedy Englishmen.
             Early America's economic situation with Britain was perhaps the leading cause of the revolution. The colonists generally prospered financially up to about the year 1660. Quality of life declines when you have less money. Colonists would have stayed on good terms with the British as long as they had money in their pockets and a healthy lifestyle.
             Technically the colonies were part of the British Empire but they were not directly represented in Parliament. Most early American colonies had set up systems of proprietary self-government. In the 1760s England past a series of acts to tax goods and restrict colonists' rights. This angered most colonists who cried out, "no taxation without representation." However, England's excuse for this was that every member of Parliament represented all British subjects including those in the colonies. Later Parliament became more restrictive in 1774 by passing the Coercive Acts to punish the colony of Massachusetts. Among other things it shut down individual town governments and the colonial legislature.
             This powerful difference between the views of the mother country and the views of the colonists, who in affect had no real political representation, further contributed to the unrest and angst stirring in colonial blood. Colonists were being suffocated by a political tyranny imposed on them for arbitrary rationales designed to control their behavior and crush the political spirit of freedom and self-government.


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