Before the American Revolution, there was growing unrest among the colonists. The English congress had enacted laws that increased taxation to the Americans. Such laws included the stamp act, which taxed American’s legal and business documents. These laws oppressed the Americans and they were unhappy with them. Other reasons such as the need for freedom increased the pressure which eventually led to the revolution.
One major cause of the revolution was the Stamp Act of 1765. The war between the Indians and the French left the British government with huge debts. The British parliament passed laws that oppressed the Americans, such as the Stamp Act (Price,1992). This law was enacted to help the Britain government raise money to pay the debt. The British government said it fought the war to protect the Americans. The Americans were not fooled by this and believed that the British government fought in the war for their own gain for establishing their authority and need to strengthen their empire. , they were not buying it. They believed that the British fought the war to strengthen their empire. The Americans refused to pay the taxes since they were even not represented in the parliament that made these decisions. The Americans rioted, which made the British government to rescind the law. Rescinding the law acted as a motivation to the Americans who believed that they could resist all the British laws and oppressive practices.
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The Boston massacre was also another tool by the colonists to create a revolution. In 1970, there developed a conflict between the British occupiers and the residents of Boston(Nelson, 1978). There was a disagreement one afternoon between a British soldier and a wig maker. The British soldiers were surrounded by the Americans. The Americans started taunting the soldiers and attacking them. The surrounded soldiers fired to the colonists which resulted to the death of three people while two more people were injured. The activists used the massacre as a tool to plan a revolution. They used this massacre to depict the British as violent and aggressive people. This created a negative image for the British which acted as the start of resistance.
The Boston tea party was another huge contributor to the American Revolution. After the Boston massacre, the British withdrew their soldiers. They introduced taxes on tea which was referred as the Tea Act. The Tea Act was intended to boost the British East India Company that was struggling financially. The law favored the company by allowing it to sell their tea at prices that undercut the American traders who obtained their tea from the Dutch. This left the Americans, who wanted more trade freedom, unhappy (Price,1992). A radical group, Sons of Liberty, destroyed about 92, 000 pounds of BEIC tea and dumped it in the harbor. The group did not harm anyone during the raid, which acted as a message to the British that their act was to show rebellion rather than vandalism. Destruction of the tea was a huge blow for the British government. The officials knew that revolution was in the air. It was just a matter of time before the agitated colonists rebelled in masses against their rule.
The American Revolution was inevitable. The British rule on the Americans lost grip every time the British government eased their regulations on the Americans. The Americans understood that they could resist all the British government regulations. In any case, the authority and governance of the British on the Americans was not based on free will which meant that there was no loyalty (Cogliano, 2011). The tension was evident from the start ad regardless of whether the British worn the war, revolution would later come
References
Cogliano, F. D. (2011, February 17). History - British History in depth: Was the American Revolution Inevitable? Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/american_revolution_01.shtml
Nelson, P. D. (1978). British Conduct of the American Revolutionary War: A Review of Interpretations. The Journal of American History , 65 (3), 623. doi: 10.2307/1901416
Reasons behind the Revolutionary War. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ncpedia.org/history/usrevolution/reasons
