Revolutionary War Analysis

Since we learn our first history lessons, we are instilled with the belief of the lionized legacies of our founding fathers. We are taught that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and their fellow-founding fathers were heroic men fighting for a noble cause. We are supposed to ignore the fact that these men were little more than rebels filled to the brim with paranoia that used immoral tactics in war, and refused to pay their debts for the protection they had from Britain. People tend to give the colonies the heroic stance of the war, when in reality the cause of the war was a complex one with both sides displaying less than moral principles. The sides of the war were a money-hungry empire that was starving financially and

For the English government this success meant that they had eliminated their major rival in settling colonies in the new-world. For thirteen colonies, this was a bittersweet time as the war had given them major profits, and the aftermath gave them their own small debt, which was insignificant compared to England’s amount, but nevertheless, they were relieved to be out of the war and back into a peaceful setting, albeit one that was temporarily. The sense of victory would last very shortly, as Britain elected a new Prime Minister, George Grenville, who was given a colossal amount of debt because of the war. The French and Indian war had cost Britain over 129 million pounds, and 4.5 million pounds per year with interest, (due to inflation this was a massive amount at the time equaling 21 billion and 720 million dollars respectively) in soldiers and weaponry, and due to the fact that this was the first time in nearly eighty years that England wasn’t at war with any other countries, they decided to move on into internal affairs, that included taxing. According to Aronson, “…people in England would not stand for any new taxes-they were already the most heavily taxed people in Europe,”, and since Grenville wouldn’t force any new taxes on people who were already paying so much, he decided

The tea trading in American colonies imported an amount of 562, 281 pounds of tea to Britain, but smuggled 900,000 pounds to France and the Netherlands. In the January of 1773, the East India Company, another colony of England located in India, was in their own heavy financial debt with their conquest over Bengal. England decided to attempt to get other areas of their empire to help pull the weight, specifically the American colonies, by making them pay a rebate on the tariff. When news broke out that the colonies were going to be forced to give the company a little more than they were accustomed to, the Sons of Liberty were prepared to meet the threat. (Allison