this lecture is going to be broken into um a few parts but this lecture is going to cover the American Revolution and it's going to examine events surrounding the American Revolutions from the 1760s all the way to the 1780s um this isn't a particularly long unit but there's a lot of material in it so without further Ado I say we just jump right into it and I want to start with part one of this uh of this unit of of this lecture by discussing some of the causes right or the reasons why the revolution came about and it really came down to some Rising tensions between Great Britain or between England and the colonies of North America and so in part one here we're going to look at some of uh the causes right the sources of this tension how did this tension manifest itself what were some early signs of trouble between the 1760s and the year 1774 and then a part two we'll pick up with 17.75. uh so to start this unit I really we got to talk about a revolution itself uh this is the lecture that covers the American Revolution but there were other Revolutions in world history some you may be familiar with and we're going to talk about three important ones here in just one second but there's a funny thing about revolutions revolutions are often times the result of oh problems within a country or a nation that were brought on because of that nation's involvement in a big bloody expensive and destructive War meaning revolutions are oftentimes the aftermath of a nation's involvement in big bloody expensive destructive Wars because those Wars create tension and problems between the peoples of these nations and the governments of these nations uh and I'm going to show you here in a second that the American Revolution fits this same pattern but let's talk first just briefly about very famous Revolution that occurred after our Revolution known as the French Revolution of 1789 1799 now the French Revolution was an aftermath of France's involvement in something known as the French and Indian War as well as the American war of independence and both of these wars were very expensive for France and they were very destructive for France uh they were very bloody for France and they had they were in the result of alienating millions of French people from King Louis XIV who was the monarch of France and it created a lot of problems between the king and his subjects and finally in 1789 those problems boiled over right and a lot of the problems that led to the French Revolution were the direct result of France's involvement in big bloody expensive destructive Wars okay the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 which you'll learn about in the other the second American history course the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 this was where uh the Bolsheviks that were the Communists this is where communism uh took over in Russia and it established itself as the Soviet Union well in 1917 the Bolsheviks were able to seize upon the unpopularity uh of the Russian government who was a king at the time kings are Nicholas II now why was Kings our Nicholas II's government unpopular well the King was unpopular because Russia's involvement in what was at the time in 1917 the biggest bloodiest and most destructive war in human history and that was of course the Great War or World War one and that war had a tremendous effect on effect on the Russian Nation the Russian government and by proxy then the Russian people created a lot of problems created a lot of dissension and in 1917 it all boiled over in the Bolshevik Revolution we see the same Dynamic at work in 1949 when in 1949 the gentleman you see on the screen or that is Mao Zedong Mao this is he is the leader of the uh was the leader of the Communist faction in China the Chinese Revolution of 1949 this is where China fell to Communism was the direct result of China's involvement in what remains today the biggest bloodiest most destructive war in human history I'm of course referring to World War II that war created enormous problems inside China it created enormous tension between the Chinese government and the Chinese people and the Communists seized upon those problems and upon that unpopularity in 1949 were successful in overthrowing the Chinese government in what was known as the Chinese Revolution so you see my point here is that revolutions sometimes come on the heels of giant bloody destructive but more importantly sometimes expensive Wars for the Nations that wage them the American Revolution is no different the American Revolution was an aftermath of a very big very bloody very destructive but more importantly very expensive War for Great Britain and that war is known as the French and Indian War which erupted here in the colonies in 1754 and lasted all the way until 1763. now just briefly what was this war a lot of people think this was a war between the French and Indians in North America that's not true the French and Indian War was a big bloody expensive destructive war between Great Britain and France for control and dominance of North America it's called the French and Indian Warriors this is what the British called it the Indians for the most part allied with the French against the British hence the name now ultimately the British were successful in this war this was a victory for the British and it was a big one the war gave the British complete control and dominance over North America at the hands of the French meaning the war resulted in France's elimination from North America and all of its territories claimed were seeded over to the British so this was a very big victory for the British right a huge victory but it came at a cost in order to win this war in order to so thoroughly dominate the French in this War the British had to spend wildly beyond their budget the British were going to borrow so much money during this war that when the war was over they were up to their eyeballs in national debt and not only that they now had this huge vast new area of North America that they needed to secure and administer that requires forts that requires soldiers in short what happened here with the French and Indian war is while it was a big victory for the British and while it did secure the colonies for the British it put the British in a precarious position of having a massive need for money how much money now the numbers here on the screen it's dropping the Hat by today's standards but when the war was over it's clear that England is in massive debt for the time period over 122 122 million pounds of it now what does that mean it means every year guys in seven in the 1760s this was going to be accruing 4.4 million pounds in interest that's something the English can't allow to happen so when the war was over England is in this massive debt it wants to pay it off it also has all this new land in North America that it needs to secure so that the British don't cut so that the French don't come back and prevent the Spanish from getting any ideas all that costs money When The War is Over England needs money the question first became how much can we tax British citizens in Great Britain and they will raise taxes on citizens of Great Britain but it won't be enough eventually the English will arrive at a decision that it is the colonists themselves who benefited the most from the French and Indian War therefore the colonists should help shoulder some of the financial burden associated with the victory so you see what I'm getting at here is that oftentimes whenever we see big bloody expensive and destructive Wars in human history we oftentimes will see revolutions erupt as a result of it the American Revolution fits this pattern okay what we want to do now is get into some early signs of trouble right we kind of have a a pretty good idea or at least a general understanding of what was the cause of the rising tensions now let's get into some of the actual Rising tensions and what we're going to look at here is just a few examples of things that were red flags for the colonists early signs that something's happening right uh between the the end of the French and Indian War 1763 and we're going to take it all the way up to 1773. now I want you to understand this is by no means an exhaustive list of all the problems that began to emerge between the colonists and Great Britain but we simply don't have time to cover them all we could do an entire course on it so let's jump right into the first item there the Navigation Act we've already learned about these things but if you don't remember the Navigation Acts were the Parliamentary laws first established in the 1660s right that were designed to control and regulate all the trade in the in the English later on the British Empire and the colonies played an important role in the Empire by producing things the Empire needed uh the Navigation Acts were designed to kind of control then and regulate the colonies to ensure that money flowed to England that the colonies did all their trading at the benefit of England and not the colonies now you've also learned previously that these Navigation Acts were Loosely enforced for nearly a hundred years this was this era known as solitary neglect now the thing about Navigation Acts is that it's designed to generate money for the mother country of the Empire and if you're Loosely enforcing these things it means you're probably still generating money but not as much as you could okay well let's fast forward now to the end of the French and Indian War which we just learned has bankrupted England they're in massive debt and they also need more money not only to pay the debt down but to administer new lands in North America what's the quickest easiest way to generate more money how about strictly enforcing the Navigation Acts and beginning in 1763 that's exactly what the British began to do now remember these are Parliamentary laws that were written a hundred years before this moment and over that hundred year time you're talking three generations right three generations of colonists had never really had to abide by these things right A lot of them never even heard of them these were laws written so long ago people don't even remember but now out of nowhere the British are now heavily and strictly enforcing these Navigation Acts now is this a red flag to every colonist no it's only a red flag to those colonists that are directly involved in Commerce but it is an early sign of trouble and it is a red flag that Great Britain's up to something the next item on our list was a big one and it is known as the Stamp Act now the Stamp Act of 1765 was a tax a a parliamentary law that placed a tax on stamps no it placed a tax on all paper products that were produced inside the North American colonies and the way you'd show you'd paid this tax is you would pay to have it affixed with one of these stamps and depending on what the paper product was would determine how much of a tax you had to pay now what are these paper products we're talking about well we're talking about things like legal paperwork okay that doesn't affect too many people we're talking about things like wills and deeds but we're also talking about things like the mail and newspapers this affects everybody and the thing about this stamp tax is that this was unprecedented this isn't like a Navigation Act Right This is a direct tax the first direct tax on the English colonists of North America that's what makes it so Infamous and that's what makes it so important England had never done anything like this before the Navigation Acts were not taxes right these were tariffs that only people engaged in Commerce would have to pay but this tax this tax would be directly aimed at the colonists themselves and it affected everybody and what made the infamous what made it dangerous as I'm going to emphasize here was that the colonists never had a say in this tax which deprived them of their money so you can imagine that when the stamp tax arrive when word of the stamp tax arrived in the colonies and government officials began to enforce the stamp tax there was a lot of resistance to it and there was a lot of colonists would refuse to pay this tax there would be vigilante groups formed to try to prevent colonists from paying this tax and generally speaking the colonists were just in an uproar over this tax they'd never had to pay before but more importantly a tax they had no say in so how did did the Colonists react to these uh to this stamp tax so this first ever direct tax I want to emphasize a little bit more here their reaction because what the colonists did helped establish a precedent for how to resist future actions by the British Parliament the first important way that the colonists reacted to the Stamp Act is a time-honored tradition not only in American history but going back to our days as Great Britain as part of Great Britain petitions oh we love petitions in this country they're a great way to tell your leaders and your government officials what huge groups of the people want right or why huge groups of the people are upset this is a tradition that we brought with us when we came from Great Britain well they make sense then that it remained a tradition here in the United States today so what is a petition a petition is something that a huge group of people uh who have a an agreement about something or want to see something changed or want their leaders to know something would ride up what they want their leaders to know or ride up what they want changed and then what you do is you try to get as many people as you can to sign this petition and the more signatures on this petition the more influence it should carry this is the first important way the colonists reacted to the Stamp Act they wrote petitions urging the British Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act now why this is very important so make sure you take notes Here the biggest problem with the Stamp Act wasn't so much that it was a tax the problem with the Stamp Act for the colonists is they didn't have a say in it meaning they were not represented in the British Parliament when the British Parliament passed this tax that directly affected their lives so what the colonists are going to argue here is that this stamp tax actually violated their rights as Englishmen now what do they mean by this well first off it shouldn't come as any surprise that the colonists saw themselves as Englishmen they didn't see themselves as different than people back in England they saw themselves as the same with the same rights and the same privileges as people back in England so when colonists make the claim that a parliamentary law is violating their rights what they're saying is that it's violating their right to be represented one of the rights extended and protected even today by the English people is the right to be represented in a government and it is through them that represent representation that you give your consent to the laws that affect you so what the colonists were saying here in these petitions is that you do not have the right to tax us Parliament if you do not allow us representation in that Parliament because only through that representation can we give our consent to this tax this is where you saw then the famous argument of the American Revolution there is no taxation without representation so the first important way that the colonists reacted to the stamp tax this first ever direct tax was by writing petitions arguing that it violated their rights as Englishmen and urging Parliament to either give them representation in the parliament or repeal the stamp tax the second way that the colonists reacted to the passage of the Stamp Act is they agreed the colonial legislatures agreed to boycott the purchase of british-made goods this is what's known as economic Warfare it was designed to hurt Great Britain in its pocketbook in its wallet this it was designed to economically Force Great Britain to either give the colonists representation in Parliament or repeal the stamp tax now boycotts are highly effective but they're only highly effective if you can maintain them and enforce them but these boycotts otherwise known as non-importation agreements but boycott's a better word these boycotts these were the second important way in which the colonists reacted to the stamp tax now how did you enforce the boycotts well that brings me to the third way in which the colonists reacted to the passage of the stamp tax another time-honored tradition in American history um of course before referring to good old-fashioned mob violence across the colonies you were going to see the establishment of political organizations that called themselves the Sons of Liberty now the Sons of Liberty hold an interesting place in American history today they're seen as seen by most Americans as a very Noble organization and I I don't want to detract from any of that sentiment but it's important to put the Sons of Liberty in perspective the Sons of Liberty were groups that engaged in violence and intimidation aimed at ordinary colonists that attempted to pay the stamp tax and they also aimed their campaigns of violence and intimidation at government officials that were associated with the collection of the stamp tax in many ways their tactics were very violent very nasty stuff by today's standards we would refer to the Sons of Liberty as a terrorist group now you want to be careful calling them that because there was no concept of a terrorist organization in the 1760s 1770s but by our standard today that's what they are and they were highly effective two of the more prominent leaders of the Sons of Liberty were two of the more prominent founding fathers of this country Sam Adams and John Hancock now the mob violence was the third important way in which the colonists reacted to the passage of the stamp tax and when you combine the mob violence with the boycotts with the petitions written by the various state legislatures all of this combined to force the British to repeal the stamp tax now why is this stamp tax important why is the repeal of it important well colonists now have a blueprint for what they're going to do if Great Britain never tries something like this in the future now one more thing about the stamp tax at the same time that the that the British Parliament repealed the stamp tax they also issued something known as the declaratory act and in that declaratory act it was pretty clear where parliament's sentiments lied concerning their ability and their power to tax the subjects of the colonies and in that declaratory as you can see a portion of it said that Parliament and the King had full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and the people of America who are subjects of the crown in all cases whatsoever that was a warning shot most colonists ignored it they simply didn't care they were so wrapped up in their Victory had they paid more attention to the declaratory act they would have known England's gonna try this again and that's where we're going to turn to next with something known as the Townshend Acts of 1767. so the Townshend Acts are similar to the Stamp Act in terms of being a direct tax on the colonists now the difference between the Stamp Act and Thompson acts is that uh the townsendx were a whole series of taxes taxes on things again like paper things like paint lead uh and a really important one attacks on t uh Townshend X where again they were they were taxes on a whole series of things that were imported into the colonies in large amounts and the reason the British Place taxes on those is that it was clearly these were things that the American colonists wanted and since they're being imported in large amounts you put attacks on that stuff uh then clearly the the colonos will probably pay this tax and it'll generate a lot of money for you so that's kind of what the Townshend Acts were right tax on a whole bunch of stuff imported into the colonies in large amounts the most important tax being of course the tax on T which will come into play later now we know what they were we know the purpose behind them it's designed to generate Revenue okay how do you think the Colonials reacted to this you guessed it in the exact same ways that they reacted to the Stamp Act you saw petitions written by the various Colonial legislatures written by various societies addressed the parliament uh telling them what was wrong with the town shanax that again it violated their rights as Englishmen that they didn't have representation uh that the Acts were on then unconstitutional and these petitions were written up and of course sent across the Atlantic to the the British Parliament uh you also saw the colonial legislatures uh make once again uh non-importation agreements there's an example of one by bostonians that one uh was signed by Paul Revere in which they're basically agreeing to not buy any of this stuff that's being taxed from Great Britain and to wage economic Warfare against Great Britain and of course then the other way the colonists reacted was good old-fashioned mob violence uh this picture shows you a lot of colonists gathered around what were called Liberty trees this one was in Boston this was a big fad you gathered around a big tree and you hung government officials in effigy and things like that people gave speeches it was all just you know great great rabble rounds big big hoot Nanny all the time uh sometimes you know the the the the resistance was passive such as that and sometimes it was very violent uh collecting taxes uh for British officials could get you tar and feather it was pretty dangerous uh and hazardous to your health and so once again what we see then is the blueprint and the model that was established by the colonists and their resistance to the Stamp Act simply being employed here and it makes sense that this is what the colonists would do in terms of petition boycotts and mob violence because it worked the first time uh either Great Britain grants them representation or they repeal these taxes the point is for a lot of these colonists these taxes can't stand you can't allow these taxes to remain in place and you certainly can't pay them to do so is going to be reducing the colonists of what Thomas Jefferson famously said in the Declaration of Independence reducing the colonists to Absolute despotism if you if you just blindly give in to this stuff right without representation then the British can do whatever they want to you this is something that the colonists were unwilling to accept because they saw themselves as Englishmen uh so you can imagine that Colonists react then to this to the Townshend Acts the same way in the Stamp Act you can imagine the reaction Great Britain's going to have that perhaps this was the final straw perhaps they're they're not going to give in this time well it turns out they did the British ended up repealing every single one of the Townshend Acts except for one they left the tax on T they left the tax on T to live up to that declaratory statement they made that they bind the colonies uh they left the tax on T expecting the colonists to obey that tax and to pay that tax we of course cannot and will not so we get around the T tax by simply smuggling tea into the colonies and this is where people like John Hancock really made a name for themselves that's how he got rich the point is this you have this sudden enforcement of the Navigation Acts which is a giant red flag then you have this game changer in the Stamp Act Right the first ever direct tax which because it was unprecedented it it gave way to this unprecedented response by the colonists in terms of mob violence petitions and boycotts then you have the townshinex and you see the exact same thing so hopefully what you're getting now is a sense that things are beginning to ratchet up right the Navigation Acts were one thing but the Stamp Act and then the Townshend Acts coming on the on the heels of it it's all ratcheting up and the stakes are now getting pretty high uh for the colonists this is this is this is a resistance and a conflict for their rights as Englishmen in the Empire and it's something they're not going to just take lightly well things really are going to spiral out of control when in the winter of 1770 uh something known as the Boston Massacre occurred in Boston Massachusetts now the events surrounding what became known as the Boston Massacre are tilted day a little bit fuzzy but let me give you the facts as we know it in the winter of 1770 you had a lot of people in Boston who simply did not like the presence of British soldiers um by 1770 this this building anti-great Britain attitude was running really hot especially in places like Boston and the British soldier was the visible symbol of the thing bostonians were angry about right they are the visible symbol of the British Parliament now in the winter of 1770 there were a lot of British soldiers stationed in Boston and it gave the impression to a lot of people in Boston that the soldiers were there to actually oppress them right to enforce the Tea Act Right force them to pay these taxes force them to obey navigation X things like that it turns out what the British soldiers were there in Boston to do was to protect all of the government property that a lot of the mob violence had been destroying things like Governors houses uh and Customs houses uh and so these soldiers are actually there protecting government property and it turns out that there were a company of soldiers that were guarding a customs house in Boston in the winter of 1770 and they were approached by a very angry very upset and uh by all accounts very drunken Colonial mob that were enticing them trying to goad them into attacking right to try to they just want to get at them uh until this day nobody really knows what happens what happened but we do know that the colonists were were you know tempting you know in trying to to to to get scare the soldiers and you have to put yourself in the shoes of some of these soldiers you know these are 18 uh maybe even younger 16 17 year old boys thousand miles away from home to them a foreign place you got these really angry people yelling at you calling you names calling your mother names all this stuff and as the protests and gets bigger and and louder I'm sure that the soldiers got a little scared and nobody really knows what happened but one of them fired into the crowd and once one of them fired they all fired now when the smoke cleared there were only five colonists dead and there were about a dozen or so wounded um but this took on the name of the Boston Massacre and I and I used the the word massacre in quotations because you know if if we if you talk about other massacres in human history that resulted in hundreds of people being killed uh innocent people being killed uh I don't know if you can compare and say that the Boston Massacre is every bit of Massacre is say that one uh I don't know words mean things regardless it was people in the colonies that wanted to convince other colonists to begin questioning Great Britain right to join in on this resistance they were the ones that referred to this event as the Boston Massacre um the etching you see there on the left is the famous Paul Revere etching this was the one that was reprinted numerous times in colonial newspapers um the other one is uh as a a lithograph that was actually produced in the America after the American Civil War but I'd like to include that one because the gentleman there in the in the middle that's that's Crispus attic addicts uh who was uh uh became a big symbol for the Abolitionist later uh to illustrate that uh African Americans had been fighting for the rights of the United States uh from the very beginning so if you're interested in Christmas addicts definitely look them up really interesting story but I like to include that edging as well so this was the Boston Massacre now its significance lies in this it was used by a lot of people in the colonies to convince other people in the colonies to join this emerging resistance against the British and it was highly effective because if you questioned what the British intentions were right if you quest if you were questioning whether or not the British were truly turning into some type of oppressive foreign power well all somebody had to do was point to the Boston Massacre and say see see they're killing us now so the Boston Massacre had the significant effect then of really ramping up this anti-king anti-parliament anti-british attitude and it greatly inflamed the situation uh as the loss of innocent life will do from time to time uh okay so the that's another early sign of trouble right we've got British soldiers here in the colonies and now they're actively killing people okay couple that with the Navigation Act Stamp Act Township next things are beginning to really crystallize for a lot of the colonists the last early sign of trouble is something known as the Tea Act of 1773. now let me just briefly discuss what this was before we talk about the colonial reaction to it the Tea Act was not a tax on T because if you remember the tax on T has already been there it was part of the Townshend X instead what the T Act was was a kind of a scheme by Parliament to try to trick the colonists into paying that tea tax and the way they were going to do that is the T Act was designed to provide the East India Trading Company which was one of the largest and most influential corporations in England at the time it was designed to give them a uh pretty much a near Monopoly in the colonies uh and the way it was going to do that it was it was it was going to impose really high tariffs on all T coming into the colonies except for the T aught in by the East India Trading Company this was good this was going to then result in the cheapest tea in the colonies being that of the Eastern knit Trading Company so you see what they're doing is they're trying to trick the colonists like if you want cheap tea you're going to buy the East India Trading Company tea and it's really really cheap tea but you're gonna have to pay that tax too well I mean it's pretty clear what the British are trying to do we're trying to trick the colonists and the colonists all right through it so how do you think the colonists reacted to something like the Tea Act well they wrote petitions they agreed the boycotts and they engaged in mob violence now I want to talk for a second about the mob violence that was uh instigated in reaction to the Tea Act the resistance to the Tea Act especially the violence right the mob violence the rioting was much more widespread and way more destructive than anything that had come before and it's really if you think about it's the natural progression of what's happening the most famous of this mob violence took place in Boston once again becoming that hot then as known as the Boston Tea Party in which members of the Sons of Liberty boarded ships owned by the Eastern Trading Company broke into the cargo hold and threw the T not into actually the harbor they threw it onto the shoreline and destroyed it all and this was millions of dollars worth of tea now the Boston Tea Party was not the only tea party there were multiple events like this you just know about the Boston one because well it's Boston and it's quickly becoming the the focal point right it's becoming Ground Zero for this Rising resistance but here's the significance of this resistance to the Tea Act this was the final straw based upon the level of resistance the level of Destruction and property destruction and based upon the fact that three times now the colonists have refused to obey parliamentary laws this was the last straw for the British Parliament from here on out and beginning in 1774 the British are now going to begin clamping down on the colonists and the best way I can put this is that based upon the resistance of the Tea Act it'll be No More Mr Nice Guy for Great Britain so this will conclude part one we're going to go ahead and stop this lecture here in the next lecture we're going to cover part two in which we talk about how the British Parliament and how King George III ended up clamping down on the colonies how did this clamping down manifest itself and then we'll talk also in that lecture about how did the Colonists react to it