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.