The Colonists and the British Crown
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the English Crown wielded a dubious level of real control over its colonies in North America, among other things because the English kings were too distracted by the political events that shook England between the mid seventeenth century and the arrival of the Hanover Dynasty in 1714.
12.6.1 The Colonial Explosion
Following the Peace of Utrecht (1713), there began, nevertheless, a long period of peace that favored colonial expansion, with the number of English colonists in America rapidly increasing. Where in 1670 there were around 85,000 colonists, by 1713 there were 360,000. The settlements had quadrupled in size by the mid eighteenth century because of massive immigration, not only English, but also Scottish, Irish and German. As a result of these shifts the English kings became more involved in colonial politics: Georgia was founded by the crown in 1733, while a number of colonial proprietors ended up selling their domains to the crown, thereby bolstering royal influence in North America.[621] It would be the full engagement of the British Crown in the affairs of its American colonies which set the stage for war between the British and French colonists in 1754.
12.6.2 The First American Intervention of the English
Crown: The War Against France
In the early eighteenth century, the French monarchy had major colonial interests in North America, located in what is today eastern Canada. The growing number of English colonists settling in the New World, sparked increasing tensions with French settlers vying for the fur market, the exploitation of the southern coast of Hudson Bay, and the fishing monopoly in Terranova and Acadia. War loomed for some time on the horizon before finally breaking out in 1754, when a detachment of Virginia militia commanded by a young officer named George Washington attacked a French post.
Though the conflict would drag on for 7 years (17541760) the two sides were very uneven. William Pitt the Elder, the most important minister in the British cabinet between 1757 and 1761, sent 30,000 troops to occupy Canada and the Ohio Valley.[622] Louis XV, on the other hand, throughout the conflict sent very few reinforcements to its American colonies. Canada was of little interest at the time to the government of his Christian Majesty and to French public opinion, as the war the country was waging in Europe against Frederick II of Prussia was considered more important. Despite being abandoned by their king, the French colonists went on the offensive, led by an extraordinary leader: Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Gozon, a.k.a. the Marquis of Montcalm, who initially managed to inflict several defeats upon the English. The overwhelming numerical superiority which the British enjoyed, however, supported by their American colonists, would prove decisive. In 1759, the British seized the city of Quebec at the pivotal Battle of the Plains of Abraham, in which both General Montcalm and his English adversary, General Wolfe, perished. The following year, Montreal also fell.[623]Through the Treaty of Paris in 1763 Louis XV had to cede almost all of France’s territories in America to England. As Spain had allied with Louis XV in the conflict with England, after the French defeat it was forced to cede the Floridas to the British crown. In compensation, the King of France ceded the city of New Orleans and the part of Louisiana west of the Mississippi to Spain—a massive territory constituting approximately one third of the present-day United States.[624]
12.6.3 The Price of Victory
England had historically allowed its colonists almost complete autonomy, but this would change in the wake of the war against France, which had forced Britain to make considerable outlays to cover the costs of the war effort. The crown decided to make its investment worthwhile by implementing an interventionist policy for the first time in America.
This effort, however, came some 150 years late, as the colonists had become accustomed to a virtually autonomous government. George III largely ignored this fact, as he was determined to restore royal authority in his domains, and insisted that the American colonists were indebted to the crown for the war it had won against France. Beginning in 1763, then, Britain’s institutional presence began to increase in North America, paving what Dale (2004, 78-85) calls “the road to Revolution”.12.6.4 The Fiscal Origins of the Rebellion
12.6.4.1 The Tax Revolt
The need to quell an Indian rebellion gave the British government the perfect excuse to maintain a small standing army in the 13 colonies for the first time. In addition, to better control the governors of the various colonial territories, George III decided that they were to be paid directly by the Crown instead of being compensated by the different colonial assemblies, as had been the previous practice.
This obviously, augmented the cost of maintaining the colonies for the Crown, which sought to pass the expense on to the colonists. To achieve this it first severely repressed smuggling to increase revenue from customs duties. Next, the Westminster Parliament voted to levy a series of indirect taxes, collected via the Stamp Act, the first direct tax (as opposed to tariffs on imported goods) levied by the British after more than 150 years of North American settlement (McCraw 2012, 21) upon the colonists,[625] who responded by rejecting the new taxes, arguing that as British subjects, and according to the constitutional principles of the United Kingdom, they were not obligated to pay any tax which they had not approved. As the American colonists had no representatives in the British Parliament, they asserted, this body had no right to impose taxes on them (White 2012, 61-85).
12.6.4.2 Incidents in Boston (1770-1773)
The unrest created by the “tax dispute” would spark specific incidents which, when exaggerated by the press, exacerbated tensions between London and the colonists.
In 1770, there occurred what colonial agitators termed the “Boston Massacre”, an incident in which four protestors were killed by British soldiers who had been harassed in the street. In 1773, the “Boston Tea Party” took place when a group of colonists, disguised as Indians, threw some 340 chests of tea overboard from a British ship which had just docked in Boston Harbor in an act protesting the king’s plan to monopolize this key product and place a tax upon it.The incident so infuriated George III that he ordered the closing of Boston Harbor until the people had defrayed the cost of the lost tea. Through the Coercive Acts (Forman 2012, 197), or “Intolerable Acts”, as colonial critics called them, the king ordered the dispatch of additional troops to the city, authorized the quartering of soldiers in colonials’ homes, and moved to levy additional taxes on articles like lead, paint, paper and glass. In this way, the Boston Tea Party spurred the crown to endorse a series of measures which would ignite fierce resistance and generate wider popular support for revolt against Britain.
12.6.5 The First Continental Congress in Philadelphia
(1774)
The colonists of Massachusetts requested assistance from the other 12 colonies. Thus emerged the revolutionary idea of holding an assembly of the 13 colonies to propose a common position in their dealings with England. This body, termed a “congress”, gathered in Philadelphia in 1774, and was attended by delegates from all the colonies except Georgia.[626]
The congress issued a “Declaration” which, among other things, affirmed that no subject of the King of England was bound to pay taxes to which he had not consented. It was simultaneously decided that the settlers ought to amass weapons to be able to undertake an armed uprising should this prove necessary. In April 1775, when Britain’s General Gage, commanding the British troops stationed in Boston, found out that weapons were being stockpiled in Concord, he resolved to confiscate them. On the night of April 18, 700 British soldiers began marching towards the city. The colonists, however, were forewarned by the celebrated feat of silversmith Paul Revere, who that evening rode from Boston to Lexington (Miller 2010, 188-198) to alert his fellow patriots that the British were coming, allowing the two leaders of the rebellion, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, to muster the militia (minute men).
12.7