Independence the Year 1763 Officially

¶ … Independence

The year 1763 officially marked the end of the French and Indian War and the Seven Years' War. With the Treaty of Paris, 1763 marked a turning point in the relationship between England and its New World colonies. After the wars ended, England sought to have more political and economic control over the colonies for several financial and political purposes. First, the French and Indian War in the New World and the Seven Years' War in the Old World drained the British budget. Seeking to share the wealth of the thriving colonies and ease the British war debt, the Crown and parliament passed a series of laws imposing tariffs and various trade regulations on the colonies including the Sugar Act, passed by Parliament in 1764. Second, the British reeled from the political after-effects of the war with France and its colonies. In light of the frequent clashes with Native Americans, England demanded that its colonies cease expanding west of the Appalachians in the Proclamation of 1763. The proclamation, issued by King George III, also required that British settlers already living west of the Appalachian Mountains actively "ease tensions" with the native peoples ("Prelude to Revolution"). The increased British presence in and political control over the colonies promoted resistance and resentment and eventually led to revolt and revolution.

With the Proclamation of 1763, Britain intervened directly in the ability of the colonies to determine their own land-holdings. The proclamation also affected the daily lives of many colonialists, who lived in the rural regions affected by the mandate and who came into frequent contact with Native Americans. Colonialists resented the Crown interfering in matters of which it knew little except through second-hand reports by Crown representatives in the colonies. The decision to cease westward expansion in 1763 was largely sparked by the desire to avoid future conflict with both the French and the Native Americans. However, many colonialists viewed the proclamation as a piece of unreasonably heavy-handed legislation that interfered with the self-determination of the colonies.

Similarly, when parliament passed the Sugar Act and the Currency Act in 1764, colonialists viewed the British with contempt. The Sugar Act included tariffs on most luxury goods that were imported from Great Britain and was not limited to sugar alone; the act was devised as a legitimate means to collect taxes from the colonies, which demonstrated a successful agricultural industry. Debt incurred by the wars on both sides of the Atlantic had drained the British budget significantly enough to warrant domestic taxes in England. Imposing a tariff on goods ranging from textiles to wine was therefore a natural attempt to raise more money in the interest of offsetting national debt.

The Crown asserted its right to impose the tariffs because of the role the colonies played in the French and Indian War but the colonialists rejected the argument, instead pointing out that only the British supported the war effort. Many colonialists in fact offered no quarter to British troops stationed there during the war. The British Crown viewed the colonialists' trading with the French colonies in the West Indies as traitorous, too, exacerbating an already tender problem.