Reasons for Revolt: The Revolutionary American Colonial Perspective on the British Monarchs

Introduction 

The citizens of American colonies always had misgivings about the British Colonial government and the monarchs. Indeed, most colonists ended up in the colonies out of an effort to escape the excesses of the monarchy. The uneasy relationship between the two parties got increasingly worse towards the end of the French and Indian War. Gradually, the actions of the British Monarchy and its agents in the colonies begun to vindicate the fears of the colonial American citizenry. After the French and Indian War, the colonialists’ excesses exacerbated, leading to a protest by the citizenry (Shaffer, 2011). Instead of hearing out its subjects, the monarchy doubled down on its persecution, through a series of laws referred to as the Intolerable Acts by the citizenry. The situation would gradually exacerbate infuriating and scaring the colonial subjects into a revolution. The revolution precipitated the War of Independence and the Declaration of Independence that heralded the advent of the United States of America. From revolutionary American colonial perspective, the revolt that eventually resulted in the Independence of the USA emanated from the excesses of the British Monarch and a failure to handle complaints about those excesses effectively.

Relations after the British before/ after the French and Indian War 

The relationship between the British government and its colonies in the Americas was never fully cordial, to begin with, and then got increasingly worse. Many of the colonial subjects had come to the Americas to escape the excesses of a monarchy that sought to control their lives excessively (Shaffer, 2011). A key concern in Britain was a lack of freedom of religious freedom. Before, during and after the French and Indian War, the British government placed several armies in the colonies. The armies were a nuisance to the citizenry. After the war, the government levied taxes and established laws to enable the supporting of the armies in the colonies. These laws included Sugar Act, Quartering Act, and the Stamp Act among others (Shaffer, 2011). The colonists, who had been used to governing themselves protested, as they had no representation in the parliament that passed the laws. The said protests, which included the Boston Tea Party, which protested a new tax on tea.

Intolerable Acts 

The second main set of reasons for the revolution, from the perspective of the colonists, was a failure by the British government to resolve the protests of its colonial subjects effectively. When the citizenry of colonial America protested the unfair treatment of the British government, led by the Monarch, the latter responded with a show of might, as opposed to a conciliatory approach. For example, government representatives killed protestors in Boston; an event dubbed the Boston Massacre. Secondly, a further protest in Boston that included the Tea Party led to the enactment of the Boston Port Act, which effectively closed down the vital Port of Boston (Furmuzachi, 2017). The closing down of the port of Boston included a powerful naval blockade that adversely affected even British Loyalists, thus increasing alienation. These intolerable acts of the Monarchy have the effect of uniting the dissenting voices among the colonists, a fact that precipitated the revolution.

Conclusion 

Based on the argument presented above from the revolutionary American colonial perspective, the eventual revolution resulted from the acts and omissions of the British government and the monarchy. The said government failed to notice that many of the colonists left Britain to escape government excesses. Instead of respecting the rights of the colonists, the government exported its excesses to the colonies before, during and after the French and Indian Wars. When the colonies protested justifiably, the British government reacted through more excesses including blockades and punitive laws. These actions led to the revolutionary war. Indeed, from the perspective of the colonists, they did not have a choice but to revolt due to the acts and omission of the British Government.

References

Furmuzachi, G. (2017). The Intolerable Acts. DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/wvmkc.

Shaffer, A. H. (2011).  The Politics of History: Writing the History of the American Revolution, 1783-1815 . Piscataway, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.