Well hey there and welcome back to Heimler's History. Now 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're going to talk about 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 going to be 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 to the British American colonists'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, and these people are British citizens, and this war has won them massive amounts of land east of the Appalachians. Of course they're going to pay their taxes to help pay for all 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 how it worked.
Because at the end of the day, Britain is here, and the colonies were here, and separating them was a giant ocean. And so just 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 kind of thought of this more as a suggestion rather 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 oomph.
And this is what we call salutary neglect, and it led the colonists to believe that they were more into independent than the British 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, Solitary 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 the current laws like the Navigation Act, which as I mentioned, colonists routinely avoided through smuggling. Second, Parliament decided to extend wartime provisions into peacetime, and here we got Quartering Act of 1765. This law kept the British soldiers stationed in the colonies in order to enforce this British clampdown, and just for funsies, it also meant that the colonists were responsible for providing food and housing 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 other luxury items and it also enforced 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 supply of money was also being restricted.
Like, okay, can you start to feel that restriction that they were feeling? It'd kind of be like if your parents had no rules about who you dated and then all of a sudden, they were like, yeah, you can't see him anymore. Whatever, Dad! It's not a phase!
I love him! Like, all of a sudden, as the era of salutary neglect was passing away, the colonists were feeling altogether suffocated by 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.
So take all of this together and it sparked a debate among the colonists whether it was just and right 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 this 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? Ah, the Enlightenment. Thanks, John Locke. Thanks, Rousseau. Thanks, Voltaire.
Thanks, Kant. And honestly, if you asked me to name any more Enlightenment thinkers, I'd just Kant. Anyways, the colonists started... protesting all this taxation without representation, British officials argued right back, oh no, you don't understand, you all are represented, but it's virtual representation.
To which the colonists responded, son, you're heading the right way for a virtual smack bottom. But to the British, this made perfect sense. The members of parliament, even though none of them came from the colonies, represented not necessarily locations, but rather the interests of all British classes. But colonial leaders were all like, nah.
uh and argued that the only people who could truly represent their interest 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 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 of 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, even though I began by saying all of this is leading up to the American Revolution, the Congress made its petitions acknowledging that they were loyal subjects of king and country. So the 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 repealed 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 laws 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 and tea and glass which were imported into the colonies. Upon its passage, the colonists erupted into highly organized protest of boycott all these goods. And this had the effect of uniting the colonists from all classes. Like, everyone seemed to be willing to participate in the boycott, especially women who were responsible for purchasing most of the goods for their household. So instead of buying manufactured cloth from England, for example, women spun clothes by hand for their families.
And instead of purchasing British tea, they concocted their own herbal teas. So this tension between Britain and its colonies in North America was continuing to mount. And you know what?
I bet it's only gonna take one spark to blow this whole thing up. And yes, I'm right about that, and here's where I introduce you to 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 snowballs 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.
When the shooting had ceased, 11 colonists had been shot and 4 were dead. 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 in six out of eight were acquitted.
But 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. Now earlier that year, Parliament had 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 in the colonies. 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 American Indians and dumped 45 tons of British tea into the Boston Harbor.
In case you don't know the value of 45 tons of 18th century imported tea, it'd be something like $2 million in today's currency, so it was a really big deal. In response to this outrage, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774, which closed down the Boston Harbor until all that tea was paid for. And then just to further crank up the heat, they went ahead and passed another Quartering Act and these pieces of legislation legislation taken together became known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts. And so colonial leaders who identified themselves as patriots spread 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're going to have to leave it for now 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. And if you want even more help on this unit and all the units, then you can grab my APUSH view packet right here. And if you want to send me a signal that you want me to keep making these videos, then you can subscribe. And I shall oblige.
Heimler out.