Short and Long Term Causes of the American Revolution

Essayist Colin Bonwick writes that a short-term cause from the British perspective was the loss of revenue from taxes generated by American businesses and trading companies. And the short-term legislative measures by the British government were called the "Intolerable Acts" (Bonwick, 2002). More on the Intolerable Acts later on this page, but from the prospective of the colonists, their short-term causes included their rage at the " . . . indebtedness to rapacious British merchants and of navigations acts requiring them to trade through Britain" (Bonwick, 70).

On the subject of the Intolerable Acts (also called Coercive Acts), the short-term cause was created by the anger and frustration the colonists felt when Britain handed down unreasonable laws, designed to pinch the colonists in their pocketbooks, and basically punish them for their drift towards independence. The Boston Massacre happened on March 5, 1770, when a small group of British soldiers were attacked by colonists. Five colonists were killed in the battle, and the captain of the British forces involved (Thomas Preston) was let go notwithstanding murder charges against him. Then the Boston Tea party happened, in protest of the British taxing tea.

Then there was the Stamp Act, the Boston Port Act, the Quebec Act, the Justice Act; and all of these were designed to help Britain keep a strong hold on the colonists' economy. What it did was anger the colonists and motivate them to organize to fight back against Britain. Which they did, and convened the First Continental Congress in 1774 (a first step towards independence).

The big picture vis-a-vis the American Revolution was that over time there was a strong desire among the colonists to break away from Great Britain. The passion to break free became specially prominent when the inequality between the colonists and the King of England (and Britain's Parliament) became too much to bear for the fledgling Americans. Great Britain began crossing over the line "politically and economically," and the colonists "did not have any representatives in Parliament" (Yuen, 2010).

These facts put great pressure on the colonists to object loudly and forcefully to the fact that they had laws forced on them without their own representation where these laws were being enacted, Yuen writes. The Proclamation of 1763 by Britain denied the colonists the right to expand westward. The colonists, feeling the noose tightening against them, had strong emotions as to the terrible decisions against their colonies by the distant king and his Parliament.

In fact, the long-term cause that started the actual revolutionary war was the native desire to be free from absurd laws enacted by a country on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. They could no long tolerate being governed without their specific consent. The control England was putting on the 13 colonies was obviously like a vice-grip, and the colonists were weary of the unfair laws and the sense that they had no control over their destiny. Britain's control was all about the British, not about making life better for the colonists.

The Declaration of Independence (created in July, 1776) was an admission that the colonists had lost faith in any "reconciliation between them and Great Britain. By this time, the colonists had long stopped trusting the British to treat them equally, and this frustration was to lead to war, the Revolutionary War, in order to once and for all free themselves from the tyranny of the British.

Works Cited

Parker, D. Revolution and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West, 1560-1991. Florence, KY:

Routledge, 2001.

Yuen, T. (2010). The American Revolution / Long / short-term causes. American-revolution

Website. Retrieved February 13, 2017, from http://american-revolutionwebsite.weebly.com.