How to Understand the Causes of the American Revolution

As nations have discovered throughout history, it is difficult enough to maintain control of a colony that is relatively nearby—much less one that is thousands of miles away. In the period leading up to the American Revolution, Great Britain discovered just how hard it was to impose its will on the citizens of a distant continent. Here are the issues that led to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Tensions escalated during the French and Indian War. This conflict in the New World, an offshoot of the Seven Years War in continental Europe, resulted in the expansion of British colonial holdings in North America (mostly in Canada and Florida, parts of which had been under French control). To pay for this war, which ended in 1763, England had no choice but to tax its American colonies.
2. Some colonists opposed “Taxation Without Representation.” After the end of the French and Indian War, Britain continued to levy taxes on the colonies (though these taxes weren’t nearly as punitive as you may have been taught in school). Americans opposed these taxes more on political than on economic grounds, since the colonies had no representation in the British Parliament.
3. England attempted to reorganize the colonial system. Following its defeat of France, England proposed to allow its new colonies—including Quebec and Florida—to enjoy rights (such as full English citizenship and court appeal) that had been denied to the American colonists. Americans were also technically barred from expanding beyond the Appalachian Mountains, but this law was pretty much ignored.
4. Americans increasingly embraced the concept of “Republicanism.” Many of America’s founding fathers had read the works of John Locke, the 17th-century English philosopher who expounded on the “Social Contract”—that is, the right of a subject people to rebel if they were governed (or exploited) without their consent. This tied in naturally with increasingly negative feelings about the British government.
5. The “Intolerable Acts” were the last straw. In the early-to-mid 1770s, Parliament passed a series of acts that increasingly aggravated an already tense colonial population. One act shut down the port of Boston after the Boston Tea Party. Another required Boston residents to quarter British soldiers; and yet another allowed British soldiers who broke the law to be tried in England rather than the colonies. Popular resistance to these acts led directly to the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775, the start of the American Revolution.