What if you were forced to pay for things you didn’t want? If you were a colonist in the late 1700’s, then your life was always being forced to do something. In fact, it happened so often that the colonists were starting to get fed up. The colonists were treated very harsh and had many boundaries to stay within. The British’s forceful treatment caused the Americans to revolt because of things like acts being passed without proper representation. This made colonist furious and later led to the American Revolution.
The Sugar Act was one of the reasons Americans started to resist Britain and made way for the American Revolution. Britain’s parliament realized that the colonies were making great profit off of selling rum. Sugar was needed in order to make rum. By passing the Sugar Act, it would force the colonies to buy their sugar from Britain. Originally the colonies would buy sugar from other countries, but the Sugar Act put taxation on sugar bought outside of Britain. This angered the colonists because they would have to pay more to buy from other countries. They didn’t want to buy from the British.
After this act was passed, colonists started smuggling in sugar. The British were sent to the colonies to search houses for the smuggled sugar. This angered the colonists even more. While striving in the colonies, Britain forced the colonies to get rid of their currency. As America was starting businesses, large profits were being made. Since money was thriving, making a new currency allowed for the colonies to expand more. To Britain, this meant getting out of Britain and their banks. To fix this, British Parliament passed what is called the Currency Act.
This enraged everyone, mostly because Britain forced the colonies to turn in their currency at half its value. That meant for every dollar, or what was called colonial scrip, of the colony’s currency, you only got half of a Bank of England note. This made the colonies plunge into a depression which made a lot of businesses suffer. This also made the colonies mad and was another big contribution to the start of the American Revolution. The colonies were forced to house British soldiers under the Quartering Act. The colonies were already fed up with the way the British treated them.
So after this act was passed many were already up to the top with Britain. Most Americans believed that the British Army was present just to keep the Americans in line. So it is no wonder why this Act added to the tensions and why the Quartering Act was deeply resented by many. Not only were the colonists forced to house the British soldiers, they also had to let them use whatever they wanted where they were housed. The Quartering Act had a big impact on America. It made colonists feel like they were being controlled by Britain, which was true.
It started uprisings and battles between the colonists and British, but the colonists won more than Britain. At of all the Acts, one of the most despised was the Stamp Act. After this Act was passed, many people were upset. The British Parliament had been forcing them to do things and now they had to pay taxes on anything as little as playing cards and all the way up to land deeds. After the few ears that all these Acts were being passed, the colonist finally weren’t having it. They started the saying, “no taxation without representation”.
This meant that it was unconstitutional and illegal to pass Acts without going to the colonies and agreeing to do so there. The Act that is said to have started the final tensions between the colonies and Britain is the Tea Act. The Tea Act was part of these taxation Acts that the Americans didn’t agree with and they didn’t want to be taxed anyway. Britain was starting to give up and withdraw the Acts that the Parliament had brought upon America. After all this time of having to listen to the British, Americans started rebelling.
News didn’t get around as fast at the time. So even though Britain lifted the taxes, none of the Americans would know. At that time, a group of colonists were planning to sink a large shipment of taxed tea from Britain. Since the news couldn’t travel fast enough, the colonist had carried out their act before they knew that the acts had been lifted. The dumping of the tea finally outraged Britain. They declared war on America and the American Revolution began. Over time, we can see how the actions of the British Parliament had affected the colonists.
They were often forced to do things they didn’t want to do and they had to pay taxes on things that made them have to spend more. Coming to America was supposed to be a new start away from Britain, but there was never a time that it wasn’t present. Instead, where life in America for the colonists had started great, they were always in depression. You can see why the things that the British Parliament did that made the colonies so mad. It was only the matter of time before the America Revolution would begin, and it all started with the British.
