Imagine America was still under the British rule, all Americans being British citizens and perhaps, the American economy being part of the European Union. Would the essence of the American life be radically different or just slightly different? Would America have been able to reach the high productivity growth it has right now, beating Great Britain by significantly lower unemployment rate and inflation? Would America have created its image as a Superpower if it were still under the reign of the Queen? Imagine America right now being a British colony. You can’t. You can’t imagine it because such an idea is inconceivable. There are no circumstances that could have made the subordination of a large, rich and productive unit to last so long. The process of separation was gradual and inevitable. The economic events of the 1760-70’s - The Sugar Act, the Stamp Act and other trade conventions – were a catalyst for a sooner separation but a divorce between the Mother country and the colonies was unavoidable and would have happened in any circumstances.

American Independence was proclaimed in 1776. However, it was not a spontaneous decision of the colonies that they should become independent. Rather, it was a long process of accumulation of political, psychological and economic reasons, which eventually burst out as an organized rebellion against the rule of the Mother country. Some historians claim that the origins of the American Revolution date as far as 1764 when the Sugar and afterwards the Stamp acts were passed. Others think that the beginning of the end of the subordination of the colonies started with the creation of the very first colonies. Some say the Revolution was random and contingent, and a little bit of good will from both sides would have avoided the turmoil. Others believe that it was the inevitable consequence of development, and as a child leaves her mother when she grows up, the colonies abandoned their Mother country, as they became more self-sufficient and organized.

There are too many opinions about the causes of the American Revolution and too many interpretations of the events that preceded it. Here I am going to make a brief list of some of the fundamental events that happened prior to the Revolution. On these facts will the interpretations be based.

1733 Molasses Act

1750 Iron Act

1764 Sugar Act

The colonial currency Act

1765 Stamp Act

1766 Repeal of the Stamp Act

1773 Tea Act

1774 Quebec Act

Hat Act

1776 Declaration of Independence

The effect of the Navigation acts was mixed. On one hand they imposed some trade restrictions on the colonies. On the other hand they benefited the colonies by assuring monopoly on some of their main productions. The Navigation act of 1651 limited the shipment of goods to Britain and the colonies to only goods that are imported on ships whose owners, masters and majority of crew were Englishmen or colonists. This limited the imports of cheap goods from Asia, Africa and Europe. The consumers in the New World were hurt by the higher prices for some commodities, but so were the British consumers. More important – the colonies too benefited by the Act by the increase of jobs for shipbuilders and sailors. It stimulated the development of the shipbuilding industry, especially in New England where shipbuilding became an important industry. Shipbuilding was not a major production before the enactment of the Navigation Acts. Without any government protection it would have been hard to develop it, especially having the competition of the Dutch, who at the time were strong navigators. The Navigation Acts actually stimulated growth in the colonies (mostly in New England). There were negative effects but Britain did not mean them to hurt the colonists. Important evidence is the fact that although the English shipbuilders complained to the Parliament of the competition of the colonies, the Parliament did not take this into account, so the colonies were not discriminated against. Adam Smith described the Navigation acts as wise, but in a political, not economic aspect. "National animosity at that particular time aimed at the very same object, which the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended, the diminution of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could endanger the security of England." Political and economic interests are highly interwoven and hard to differentiate. Political moves were often justified with economic ends.

Not all Navigation Acts were as harmless to the colonies as the one of 1651. The first Navigation Act of Charles II was detrimental to the colonial trade. It required that certain goods called the ‘enumerated’ could only be shipped from the colonies to England, Ireland or the colonies themselves. The idea was that England would have total control over them and would make revenue from it. The plantations were hurt by it and wanted to continue their direct trade with Holland. (As a matter of fact at the time the relationship between the colonies and the Dutch was far less hostile than the one between England and the Dutch.) Adam Smith’s observation is that this monopoly of England over the enumerated goods benefited mostly the English manufacturers and consumers at the cost of the colonies. Lower prices in England were reached by control of the production of the plantations, which perceived this burden as a tax imposed on them indirectly.

This was not the end of the Navigation imposition upon the colonies. In 1663 another Act came into force, which gave the power to the English merchants to make decisions about the imports and exports of the New World. However, Britain’s policies occasionally happened to benefit the plantations. Such a policy is the prohibition of planting tobacco anywhere in Britain. Also colonial tobacco was preferred than foreign tobacco. This might not have remedied fully the colonies for their losses from the Navigation Acts, but at least showed that the Mother country had respect towards them and tried to conciliate their situation.

Another important relief was the fact that duties were refunded in case the goods were re-exported within eighteen months. This helped to reduce prices of certain goods. Further, Britain introduced the granting of bounties for particular industries. They played the role of subsidies with the purpose to make the Empire self-sufficient and independent from foreign imports.

Giving some conciliation, the British continued enacting other acts some harmful for the colonies, some less harmful. Worth mentioning are the Molasses act of 1733, which imposed prohibitive duties on foreign rum, sugar and molasses imported into the English colonies. The Iron Act of 1750 forbade some aspects of the iron and steel manufacture, thus boosting growth in other aspects of it. The Tea Act of 1773 was rebelled against by an agitation not to drink tea. The Hat Act of 1774 forbade the manufacture of hats. The Quebec Act of 1774 gave away huge areas from Virginia that could have been otherwise successfully utilized.

However, not only colonists were hurt by the British policies, but also the British taxpayers were hurt in the benefit of the colonies. "British tax-payers paid bounties on many colonial products, though the producer of the same commodities in the mother country would not be entitled to them." The Britons, too, were dissatisfied with some of the taxation policies. A verbal complaint was expressed by Joshua Gee in 1721, "I could never see a reason why the subjects of Great Britain who have all along paid very great taxes to support the Government, and have been at the expense of convoys to protect the plantation trade, should bear so much, and the plantations, who have never paid any taxes, should not pay the common duty on linens…, woven in England".

The fact that the acts have had both positive and negative effect on the colonies, and also negative effect on both the colonies and the Mother country makes it difficult to assess whether Britain was discriminating the colonies and whether they had harder time paying taxes and obliging restrictions than the Britons. It is important to know that the impact of the acts in theory was exaggerated compared with the practical situation. Smuggling and contraband were largely adopted in the colonial trade system and this reduced the negative effects of the numerous restrictions imposed on them.

In 1764 the Sugar Act was passed. This was the beginning of the end. More duties from the colonies were justified with the explanation that they were to remedy the protection costs that Britain had in the Seven Year War. Egerton asserts that "The Sugar Act of 1764, no less than the Stamp Act of 1765, was inspired by the same desire, namely, to obtain a larger revenue from the American colonies, and was therefore equally suspect".

Between the two Acts there is another act worth mentioning and this is the Colonial Currency Act, according to which the colonies were forbidden the use and issuance of paper money as legal tender. This created a severe money shortage, especially since the export of specie from Britain already was forbidden.

The hardships of the colonists were made harder after the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765. It was a new taxation imposed on them within such a short time. The Stamp Act was the first act to invoke not only dissatisfaction, but also action against itself. Franklin's Testification against the Stamp act is a step further towards the disintegration between the Mother Country and the colonies. His assertion that the colonies are self-sufficient is an important realization. "I think they may very well do without [the English manufacture goods] … The goods they take from Britain are either necessaries, mere conveniences or superfluities. The first, as cloth, etc., with a little industry they can make at home; the second they can do without till they are able to provide them among themselves; and the last, which are mere articles of fashion, purchased and consumed because the fashion in a respected country; but will now be detested and rejected." Self-sufficiency later on would give the courage to the colonies to declare independence.

No matter the impact of the acts on the colonial and British economics an important fact is that the colonies were not represented in the British Parliament. Egerton emphasizes it, "Whatever might be said in favor of the Navigation Acts there was always the damning fact that they had been enacted by a legislature in which the colonists had no voice or part". It is a psychological factor that weighs against Britain. Having somebody else's will imposed on them, made the colonies always doubt the good intentions behind it. Miller expresses this effect well, "The true significance of these acts lies in their effect not so much upon colonial economy as upon colonial psychology: they helped to establish the conviction in the minds of many Americans that Great Britain regarded the growth of the colonies with implacable jealousy and hostility".

Such is the economic background of the American Revolution. Whether these economic circumstances had driven the Americans to pursue independence or it was for other reasons that they did it is a debatable issue. Knollenberg asserted that economic restrictions were the fundamentals of the American Revolution. "My conclusion and thesis are that, while the British Stamp Act of 1765 greatly contributed to and touched off the colonial uprising of 1765-1776, the colonists had been brought to the brink of rebellion by a number of other provocative British measures from 1759 to 1764, most of which persisted after the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766 and contributed to the mounting colonial discontent culminating in the American Revolution of 1775-1783." He finds the beginning of the dissatisfaction with the British Government in 1759 when the Privy Council orders that all contradicting acts passed by the colonial legislature should be suspended until approved by Britain. Not much attention has been paid to this order but it is a start of imposition of rules detrimental to the colonial organization.

On the other hand the opposite opinion - that the origins of the American Revolution do not stem from the economic restrictions - is also held by historian economists. Miller asserts, "Yet it cannot be said that Americans were driven to rebellion by intolerable economic oppression. In general after the post war depression of 1763-1765, the revolutionary period was an era of growth and prosperity for the colonies".

No doubt, though, the economic factors did contribute to the idea of independence. The chain of acts, harming more often than benefiting the colonies, imposing restrictions on trade, protected some industries and taxed others. Do the losses outweigh the benefits and by how much is hard to be determined. Would there have been a revolution if it weren't for all these acts? The answer is most likely "yes". As Mrs. Schuyler van Rensselaer beautifully puts it, "The Revolution began when the history of the colonies began. It was not, as some have tried to believe, an event that chanced to happen when it did, one that might have been avoided or long postponed. … It was the culminating point of a long and slow evolution. …The real revolution which resulted in an armed revolt was a state of feeling… And this mental attitude began unconsciously to shape itself when the first Dutch and English settlers established themselves along the American seaboard." Try again to imagine America right now as a British Colony. You still can't. Now you know why.

Bibliography:

Egerton, The American Revolution, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1923

John C. Miller, Origins of the American Revolution, 1943

The Causes of the American revolution, compilation, edited by John Wahlke, Boston 1950

John Fiske, The American Revolution, Boston and New York, 1891

Knollenberg, Origins of the American revolution 1759-1766

Franklin Testifies the Stamp Act (1766)

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations