The prehistory of American independence is characterized by a complex web of economic interests, constitutional disputes and social tensions. After the first major protests against the stamp duty, the 13 colonies seemed united, but the deeper conflicts with the British motherland continued to simmer. The colonial elite tried toto maintain control over its own underclasses while the British Crown sought to impose its financial and administrative authority. This dynamic inexorably led to a crisis that would change the British Empire forever.
The Illusion of Calm and the Land Problem
The withdrawal of the Stamp Act in 1766 initially made the economic situation in the colonies appear much better. New investments from the metropolitan area flowed into the cities, and consumption of British goods picked up again. Nevertheless, the pressing problem of Western land grabbing remained unresolved, as the royal proclamation line prohibited the settlers from expanding.However, speculators simply ignored this ban and illegally measured huge areas in the West. The British administration rigidly insisted on maintaining peace with the indigenous peoples, which inevitably led to new conflicts with the ground-hungry colonists.
The Accommodation of Soldiers and the Anger in New York
To maintain colonial order, the British government moved regular troops to the east coast. The quartering obligation enacted in 1766 allowed the military to move into private houses if necessary. For the outraged citizens of New York, this represented intolerable interference with their private rights and pure absolutism. The anger of the city dwellers quickly skipped overto the landlords in the Hudson Valley, who used the buzzword of English liberties to harass their own feudal lords. However, these local riots remained isolated for the time being and received little attention in the rest of the colonies.
British criminal law and the deportation of convicts
Further massive problems were caused by the British government’s practice of shipping numerous convicted criminals to the colonies every year. The British legal system protected private property with extreme harshness and threatened death even for petty thefts. In order to relieve the prisons, many death sentences were converted into a life-long exile overseas.In 1713 and 1775, numerous convicted thieves and robbers reached the American shores. The colonists found it a deep humiliation to be treated by the motherland as a garbage can for unwanted human material.
British Government Crises and the New Customs Laws
In London, meanwhile, the governments replaced each other in rapid succession, driven by personal intrigues and monarchical arbitrariness. After nervous breakdowns of powerful politicians, Charles Townshend assumed financial responsibility and searched desperately for new sources of income. In 1767, Parliament passed numerous new laws regulating levies on glass, paper and tea in the coloniestownshend hoped to disguise these levies as mere trade tariffs to avoid the constitutional dispute over direct taxes. However, the American patriots immediately saw through this semantic trick and refused to acknowledge these new burdens.
The journalistic resistance and the radicalisation of the masses
The lawyer John Dickinson published a series of letters in which he sharply branded the new levies as unconstitutional taxes. In Boston, James Otis even urged citizens to resist customs officers by force if necessary. The radical lower classes of the city increasingly took over the leadership of the resistance and put the bourgeois elite on the defensive.They lost control of the streets and were forced to pursue a dual strategy of secrecy and supercolonial networking. Samuel Adams wrote circulars to all colonies to organize extensive boycotts of British goods.
The harshness of the customs authorities and the uprising for freedom
The British customs inspectors and the navy took brutal action against the flourishing American smuggling. Sailors hijacked suspicious ships and forcibly recruited local sailors, which further inflamed the mood in the port cities. The decisive spark struck when the authorities seized the smuggling ship of the wealthy merchant John Hancock.Angry mobs prevented the search of the warehouses and fought fierce street battles with the customs officers. This incident solidified the alliance between the bourgeois elites and the radical lower classes against the British Crown.
The march of the troops and the bloodshed in Boston
In response to the growing unrest, the British government moved more infantry regiments to the insurgent cities. In Boston, the situation worsened when drunken soldiers and angry civilians clashed in the streets. On March 5, 1770, small detachments of British infantrymen faced massive and stone-throwing crowds.fired the overwhelmed soldiers into the mob, killing several innocent citizens. This incident went down in history as a gruesome massacre and provided the patriots with perfect propaganda against British tyranny.
The propagandistic exploitation of the massacre
Artists like Paul Revere used their engravings to portray the event as a cold-blooded slaughter of defenseless citizens. In the depictions, unpleasant figures such as the dark-skinned Crispus Attucks were simply omitted to paint the picture of a purely bourgeois sacrificial community. The bourgeois elite feared the radical lower classes at least as much as the BritishSoldiers. For this reason, the later President John Adams took over the defense of the accused soldiers in court. He successfully argued that the soldiers had acted in pure self-defense against dangerous mobs.
The withdrawal of customs duties and the deceptive calm
The new British government under Lord North reacted to the boycott and abolished almost all new tariffs. Only the levy on tea remained as a symbolic act of parliamentary sovereignty. Since the tea tariff even brought lucrative profits to American traders, the boycott quickly collapsed. For superficial observers, the crisis seemed to have been overcomeand commerce flourished again. Spanish officers touring the colonies barely noticed the Creoles’ republican aspirations for independence.
The Slave Question and the Fears of the Southern Elite
In 1772, the chief British judge rendered the verdict declaring slaves free on British soil. Although this judgment did not apply directly to the colonies, it caused panic among the southern plantation owners. They feared that the motherland could also interfere with the ownership of their human labor in the future. This deep insecurity drove thesouthern elite into the arms of the North American patriots. Fear of losing her property was now closely linked to opposition to British tax policy.
The brand of tariff savers and the new networks
When American smugglers set fire to British tariff savers off the coast of Rhode Island in 1773, London reacted harshly. The masterminds were to be charged with treason in the motherland, which would have meant the death penalty. To prevent this, the patriots set up supercolonial correspondence committees. These networks enabled law enforcementby local sabotage and coordinated resistance. The organization of the colonies thus adopted fixed, cross-border structures for the first time.
Tea as a trigger for the final disaster
The British East India Company was on the verge of bankruptcy, and the government saw the American market as a rescue. The tea law passed in 1773 allowed the company to export directly, which even lowered the price for the end user. However, the American middlemen and smugglers saw their economic existence threatened and ran storm.Elite used the favour of the hour to brand the remaining tea tariff as an attack on their freedom. The mixture of wounded pride, economic interests and radical ideology made any compromises impossible.
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