State of Great Britain's government before the Revolutionary War

British Government

Any student of the period of the American Revolution may find themselves asking how it was that the British government in a period of just over a decade managed to transform a group of seemingly enthusiastic group of loyal colonies into a rebellious and independent new nation. However, this is a very simplistic concept that is not based upon fact.

The Reality of American Tax Evasion and Smuggling

A journal article public by Walter a. McDougall Somehow, these enthusiastic colonials had collective memory loss and forgot about these transgressions and could only see the violation of their traditional rights as Englishmen. McDougall calls early colonial leaders such as John Winthrop "hustlers" and "bold and devious entrepreneurs (McDougall 2004, 10)

." Additionally, he points the well established fact that in 1651 when the British Parliament passed the first

Navigation Act, the citizen assemblies in New England and Virginia forbade their settlers to obey the English law. These are only two well know examples of the century and a half when the American colonists (in particular their wealthy local leaders) enjoyed their rights, but not responsibilities as Englishmen (ibid.,).

British Colonial Policy Worldwide

One of the chief wrong assumption that Americans make is that American colonial affairs were the top or a major priority for the British government in the period between 1763 and 1775. A simple map exercise will suffice for a start. The vast British post 1763 was worldwide and commanded the attention of the British government as a whole in those many areas. The American theater was only one that they had to pay attention to and that India was probably at least equal to America in value. After all, the occupation of Boston by British troops was triggered by the dumping of a shipload of Indian Tea to be taxed and sold in the colonies (Beer 2010, 6).

The movement into the British was largely carried out by private enterprise. Finance largely governed policy decisions from the earliest days on. As such, the American colonies (like India) were never integrated into the British body politic. They were simply financial extensions of the crown and were expected to generate income. The interest and therefore the knowledge of them on behalf of the British Crown and Parliament was circumscribed to fiduciary matters, ergo, the knowledge and decisions that were involved on their behalf were limited to finance and generally excluded other issues (ibid., 9). The reason that the British government did not take advantage of the various colonial representatives or former colonial officials to remedy their lack of knowledge was that in general the colonists were unable to defend themselves, especially in exposed colonies such as New York and South Carolina where they demanded and got garrisons of British troops (ibid., 10). Certainly, it is no mystery that given this reliance upon the mother country that the British government would be surprised and ill equipped to deal with a full scale and united rebellion in the American colonies on the eastern American seaboard.

The policy of the British prior to the period of the Revolution had largely been hands off. However, the Tea Party went too far and the British had to respond (one wonders what else they would have done). They had just won the equivalent of world war in 1763. British had fought in almost every of the globe from India to Canada, India, the Philippines and the 13 American colonies. Unfortunately, to borrow an apt analogy, the British had only the military in the tool kit once their tax collection efforts failed. If a hammer is all one has in the toolbox, most solutions will look like striking a nail. The perception was that the crown had defended the colonies against France and now that defense must be paid for. They looked at the thirteen colonies as ungrateful subjects who would not pay their bills (ibid., 14-15). Since hands off did not work, the hands were now on. Unfortunately, these were the hands of red coats and British sailors and marines and the military leaders and their political superiors were obviously making it up as they went along. After the war with Indian chief Pontiac, British policies were obviously a failure. Innovation was now the matter of course. Unfortunately innovation hit the solid brick wall of colonial opposition to taxation and colonial opposition to limiting white expansion to the east side of the Appalachian Mountains (White 2011, 270).