The Mindets Of The Colonists Leading Up To The American Revolution

The mindsets of the British government and the American colonists differed greatly leading up to the American Revolution because of Britain's need to recoup some of their losses from previous wars and the cost of keeping up their vast empire. The colonist’s mindset leading up to the American Revolution was that the British had taxes on everything and the colonists felt that they did not need the British government to meddle in their affairs. This lead to popular resistance from the colonists and the eventual start of the American Revolution.

Before the American Revolution, the Seven Years’ War was the cause of significant debt for the British. The Seven Years’ War had been fought on several continents and with several empires. This lead to

The British empire knew that a war with Native Americans could prove to be very expensive for the empire, so creating a boundary would satisfy that no Native Americans would be attack by or attack and colonists. This angered the colonists because they had just fought for the British empire to be able to acquire this portion of land and without the ability to settle there, the colonists were unclear of the purpose for fighting for the land.

The other part of the mindset of Britain was to lower their staggering debt from years of colonial warfare was to establish several taxes on the colonies. The parliament began with the Sugar and Currency Acts of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765. The Currency Act was used to restrict the use of currency made by the colonies. This made it very hard for the colonists to grow the economy because of how there was a very limited amount of specie available to the colonists. This act limited the amount of trade that colonies were able to make out of the colonies themselves because this was money that the British were not making from the colonists because they were passing over a step in mercantilism. The Sugar Act was also passed in 1764 and was passed to combat the smuggling of molasses in the region of New England. The people

The Tea Act, although it greatly lowered the cost of tea, came with great resistance because if the colonists purchased the tea, they were acknowledging the ability for parliament to tax the colonies. The ability to tax the colonies was what the British needed to reduce their debt, but this is exactly what the colonists did not want because they felt that they could only be taxed by their own government in which they had representation. The Sons of Liberty reacted to the Tea Act by organizing a protest in which Sam Adams and John Hancock led a group of colonists dressed as Mohawk Indians for disguise to ships that carried tea that were stuck in the harbor without a place to unload their tea because of the boycott on tea. The Sons of Liberty went on to the boat and dumped three hundred forty two chests of tea overboard into the Boston Harbor. The British parliament responded to this by passing the Coercive Acts, known as the “Intolerable Acts” which shut down the Boston Harbor, gave control of the Massachusetts Government over to British control, allowed any british official accused of a crime be tried in Britain and for British soldiers to quarter in the private property of colonists. The Coercive Acts brought the colonies closer than they had ever been and the other colonies gathered food to send to Boston. This changed the goal of the colonists to being more focused on