Well hey there and welcome back to Heimler’s History. In the last video we began dealing with Unit 3 of the AP U.S. History curriculum by talking about the French and Indian War, and in this video we about to talk taxation without representation. So if you’re ready to get them brain cows milked, you know I’m ready, so let’s get to it. Now over the course of these next few videos we’re working our way towards the American Revolution, and the reason we began with the French and Indian War is because the effects of that war had lasting consequences for what ultimately led the British American colonists to revolt against that tiny island across the sea, which is to say, Britain. So as I mentioned in the last video, the French and Indian War, and the Seven Years’ War of which it was a small part, was exceedingly expensive to wage. And so in order to pay for it, the British sought to clamp down on the American colonies and require them to help bear the financial burden. Now, to the British government, this made all the sense in the world. This group of American colonies belong politically to us, these people are British citizens, this war has won them massive amounts of land east of the Appalachians: of course they’re going to pay their taxes and help pay for all of this. But it wasn’t that simple to the American colonists, and here’s where I introduce you to the concept of salutary neglect. You see, it was true that Britain had political sovereignty over the American colonies, so they were in charge. But practically, that’s not really how it worked because at the end of the day, Britain is here and the colonies were here, and separating the two was a giant ocean. And so as a practical matter of rule, the British Parliament left many of the day to day decisions of political rule to the colonists themselves. This had some interesting consequences when it came, for example, to trade. Parliament had passed a series of Navigation Acts which restricted the trade of the colonies to British ships and British merchants. But the colonists thought of this more as a suggestion than a law and engaged in large scale smuggling and illegal trade with other nations as well. And the thing is, the British really didn’t enforce these laws with any umph. And this is what we call salutary neglect and it led the colonists to believe that they were more independent of the British than the king and Parliament believed them to be. And that situation went on for a long time. But now that Britain was in serious need of some cash, they were like: salutary neglect? SHUT IT DOWN. So in order to regain control of the colonies, British Prime Minister George Grenville implemented a three-pronged plan. The first part of the plan included stricter enforcement of current laws like the Navigation Acts, which, as I mentioned, colonists had routinely avoided through smuggling. Second, Parliament decided to extend wartime provisions into peacetime, and here we got the Quartering Act of 1765. This law kept British soldiers stationed in the colonies in order to enforce the British clamp down, and just for funsies, it also meant that colonists were responsible for providing housing and food for these soldiers. And baby, the British are just getting started. Next came the Sugar Act which imposed taxes on coffee and wine and various luxury items, and also enforced the existing taxes on molasses. And then they imposed that most odious of taxes: the Stamp Act of 1765. This was a tax on all paper items produced in the colonies like newspapers and playing cards and legal contracts and on and on. And then to further add to the turd salad that was the British imposition of new taxes, Parliament also passed the Currency Act which prohibited colonial assemblies from printing their own paper currency. And that was a big deal because it effectively meant that while at the same time the British were demanding more tax revenue from the colonists, the money supply was also being restricted. Like, okay, can you start to feel the restriction here? It’d be like if your parents had no rules about who you dated and then all of the sudden they were like, “yeah you can’t see him any more” “It’s not a phase, dad, I LOVE HIM.” Like, all of the sudden as the era of salutary neglect passed away, the colonists were feeling altogether suffocated by all these new demands and restrictions. And this rise in taxes was especially odious to the colonists because Americans were experiencing declining wages with a corresponding rise in unemployment. And so take all this together and it sparked a debate among colonists whether it was right and just to impose taxes on the colonists who had precisely no representatives in Parliament. And this is where we get the famous phrase no taxation without representation. Like, somehow, somewhere, the colonists had gotten the crazy idea that they were involved in a social contract with their government and had natural rights that could not be violated. And where would they get such foolish ideas? Oh, the Enlightenment. Thanks, John Locke. Thanks, Rousseau. Thanks, Voltaire. Thanks Kant. Honestly, if you asked me to name anymore Enlightenment thinkers, I just Kant. Anyway, as the colonists started protesting all this taxation without representation, British official argued right back: Oh no, you don’t understand, you all ARE represented, but it’s virtual representation. To which the colonists responded, “Yeah, you’re headed the right way for a virtual smackbottom.” But to the British this made sense. The members of Parliament, even though none of them came from the colonies, represented not necessarily locations, but rather the interests of all the British classes, of which the American colonists were part. But colonial leaders were like nuh uh, and argued that the only people who could truly represent their interests were those who were from the colonies. So to be clear, there was a big discrepancy between how the British understood representation, which is to say, by classes of people, and how the Americans understood it, which is to say, by location. So back in the colonies there were a few organized groups that started to give voice to these protestations, namely, the Sons of Liberty, the Daughters of Liberty, and Vox Populi. And these groups included in their ranks all manner from folks like merchants and traders and artisans. And they sprang up especially in response to the Stamp Act. And one of the results of this more organized resistance was the gathering of the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 which included 27 delegates from nine colonies. And their basic goal was to petition the British Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act because taxation without representation amounted to tyranny. But it’s going to be very important for you to know that even though I began by saying all of this is leading up to the American Revolution, the congress made its petitions by acknowledging that they were loyal subjects of king and country. So revolution is not yet on the table. These folks just wanted to get what they were owed AS BRITISH CITIZENS. And as a result of these petitions, Parliament actually repeated both the Stamp Act and the Sugar Act in 1766. But in a delicious moment of irony, they simultaneously bit their thumbs at the colonists by passing the Declaratory Act which affirmed that Parliament had the right to pass whatever law they wanted in the colonies. So the Americans counted that a victory, but that turd salad got a couple of croutons put on it in 1767 with the passage of the Townshend Acts, which levied taxes on items like paper, tea, and glass which were imported into the colonies. And upon its passage, the colonists erupted in highly organized protests to boycott these goods. And this had the effect of uniting the colonists from all classes. Everyone seemed to be willing to participate in the boycott, especially women who were responsible for purchasing most of the goods for their households. So instead of buying manufactured cloth from England, women spun clothes by hand for their families. Instead of purchasing British tea, they concocted their own herbal teas. And so the tension between Britain and its colonies in North America was continuing to mount, and, you know, I bet its only going to take one spark to blow this whole thing up. And yes, I’m right about that, and here’s where we talk about the Boston Massacre in 1770. So one night a group of boys and young men began harassing a group of British soldiers, the number of which had been growing steadily in Boston. They began to throw snow balls and stones at the soldiers, and from there the accounts get a little dicey. Someone fired a gun, and that led the British soldiers to fire their own guns into the crowd. And when the shooting ceased, eleven colonists had been shot and four were dead. And this event, understandably, enraged the colonists. But the soldiers were put on trial, and were defended by none other than future president John Adams, and as it turned out, Adams, who shared the American distrust of the British, successfully defended these men, and six out of eight were acquitted. Even so, most Americans in their rage over the massacre, judged it a massive miscarriage of justice and further evidence of increasing British tyranny. Another act of colonial resistance you should know about is the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Earlier that year Parliament passed the Tea Act which was a tax on tea and provided exclusive rights to the British East India Company to buy and ship tea to the colonies. Now, this angered colonists who were used to dealing in smuggled Dutch tea, and so in December of that year about 50 members of the Sons of LIberty disguised themselves as Indians and dumped 45 tons of British tea into the Boston harbor. And in case you don’t know the value of 45 tons of 18th century imported tea, it’d be something like two million dollars in today’s currency. So it was a big deal. In response to this outrage, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774 which closed down the Boston Harbor until all that lost tea was paid for. And just to further crank up the heat, they went ahead and passed yet another Quartering Act, and these pieces of legislation taken together became known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts. And so colonial leaders who identified themselves as Patriots spread the news throughout the colonies rapidly, and many colonists began to arm themselves and gather into militias and vowed to protect themselves from further British tyranny. And that’s where we’ll leave it in this video, we’ll see what happened next time. Okay, that’s what you need to know about Unit 3 Topic 3 of the AP U.S. History curriculum. If you want even more help on this Unit and all the units, then you can grab my me to keep making these videos, then you can subscribe and I shall oblige. Heimler out.