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This is a very impotant element. The vast majority of those who came the earliest along with the younger sons hoping for their own fortune were servants or later imported as 'labor'. The Amercian colonies were not overly inticing to people who had something in Britan, which is why most of the nobility were younger sons. And vast amonts were people, all poor and many not given a chioce, were shipped in as indentured, either 'privately' or as convicts. These are our true forfathers and mothers, people who had nothing and found a way to turn it around. They also had the willingness to start low and work up. The colonies were the British dumping grounds of 'excess population' and continued to be after the Amercian colonies were gone.
My five x g grandfather came on one of the five ships which transported the first offical, post transportation act convict labor in 1719. He escaped an execution because of it. He and his brother, also transported, were thieves in East London. Two generations back they had lived in the same area, on the rural estated which East London took over. A few generations back had been skilled craftsmen. Then the estates were enclosed, sheep took over the strips, and a huge pool of displaced 'excess labor' was created which only some were used in factories. This is the source of *many* a first British ancestor.
My ggrandfather was sold to a tabacco farmer in Maryland and worked there eleven years, then married and stayed for a few years. But the land in Maryland available for ex underclass was poor. He moved on to Kentucky, then Pennsulvania. He had eight or nine kids, and left land for each of the sons when he died at 91. In one generation they'd gone from being displaced pesant/east end thieves to land owners with position.
This is not an unusual story either. It would never have happened in Britan. This is one of the reasons why Americans had already started thinking of themselves as Americans instead. The core culture remained but the social divide which kept the poor and unneeded poor had vanished, and by the time the revoluiton came about we were already just 'cousins'.
Excellent points. You can almost look at the whole Revolution against a backdrop of social mobility. There was no mobility in England. You remained in the station you were born into as your forebears had and your descendants would.
However, in America, one could change their station by acquiring land and accumulating wealth. The land and the wealth could then be passed down to newer generations and since there was so much land to go around, holdings were willingly divided giving subsequent generations a firm basis from which to enrich themselves. The land owners provided the basis for wealth in the colonies which then expanded into mercantile enterprises and an entire middle and upper class was created. The sons and daughters of indentured servants, convicts, "extra sons" and religious castaways were now accumulating wealth to rival their counterparts in England.
Now that they have equal wealth, they expect equal social standing turning the whole class system on its head and that was a non-sequitor. Of course, none of that would boil to the surface until the English started doing things that impacted the new "American way of life" and the ability for Americans to continue to climb the social/wealth ladder.
sorry NJ Goat, you're not on the lip with reality here. Quebec Act
meant Catholic New France all over again. And forever, because English rule
over Quebec ended. Reverted back to Francophone and Catholic.
No it didn't. The Canadians were allowed to practice Catholicism and Catholics were allowed to hold local offices. The common law system for civil and property matters also reverted back to the French system. However, the actual government of the Province was given to the English Crown. The King appointed the governor and the King appointed the assembly that would advise the governor. The Act specifically banned the formation of an elected legislature for the Province as such bodies were too "inexpedient". It also reinforced English common law for criminal cases and made English judges and laws supreme.
The Crown basically consolidated the actual power of running the Province in its own hands, while tossing the Canadians a bone and letting them practice their religion.
Here's the Act, find the part of it that supports what you are claiming that the British gave up dominion over Quebec and re-established "New France":
What is a lecture sponsored by ultra-conservatice Catholics "dedicated to the restoration of the traditional Catholic faith and Latin mass" going to tell me about what the British meant when they pass the Quebec Act and what impact that had on the American colonists?
What is a lecture sponsored by ultra-conservatice Catholics "dedicated to the restoration of the traditional Catholic faith and Latin mass" going to tell me about what the British meant when they pass the Quebec Act and what impact that had on the American colonists?
It would perhaps embellish your already vast knowledge of history. Are you beyond the point
of learning ? I have many other programs I could share with you, if you open your mind.
Btw, in your previous post, you admitted that what I said is correct, on various
points, your own words acknowledged the point I was making..
then continued to lambaste it ..
all is well.
Same with the rest of the Founders, they would have all been just as happy being in a "North American Parliament" with representatives sent to the Parliament in England as they would have been being in a Continental Congress.
.
I do not think that is consistent with what was understood by "no taxation without representation."
In that none of the British tax demands were unreasonable, and none were so steep as to be ruinous to legitimate merchants, there had to be more at work than just the economics of it. What was really at stake was the ultimate defining of the relation of the colonies to the crown. Because there was such a prolonged period of benign neglect prior to the Seven Years War, Americans got used to being politically self reliant. In their minds their colonial assemblies were their Parliament and the one in England represented a needless redundancy. They were all subjects of King George, but the British crown was subordinate to the popular representatives in matters of taxation. The executive did not control the purse strings and that was the people's leverage against tyranny by the monarch.
The Americans began to reason that this was their right as well, their protection against tyranny was the leverage they held against the crown in the form of consent for taxation. Their consent would come or be denied by their assemblies. If instead it was controlled by a foreign legislature, they no longer enjoyed the guaranteed protections of British law.
Consequently, the representation of "no tax without representation" didn't mean a handful of colonial delegates sitting in the British Parliament where they would be easily outvoted, it meant exclusive power to tax to be held by the home team...their assemblies.
That they thought this way was one more outgrowth of that new American mentality we have been discussing. Wider distribution of land meant higher percentages of those enfranchised, which meant a far more egalitarian mentality prevailed. That egalitarian mentality reacted poorly to the idea of being taxed twice, once by their own votes and again by Parliament.
What would have settled matters short of revolution would not have been opening up some seats in Parliament for Lord Philadelphia or the Duke of Boston, but the King asking the colonial assemblies if they would please levy some taxes to underwrite the military defenses of the colonies. Parliament would have been removed from the equation entirely.
Which is why the Americans became so rapidly furious with King George when he came down on the side of Parliament in this dispute. The Americans felt betrayed.
Last edited by Grandstander; 10-23-2013 at 05:35 PM..
I think that it isn't much of a stretch to take a Marxian approach and describe the American Revolution as being a truly bourgeois revolution, perhaps even the first. It was a revolution of land owners, and speculators, merchants and the middle classes (as defined in nascent capitalist economies) freeing themselves form a monarchy even one that was constitutional in nature. It also belies its secular nature. The Founders wanted to be free of any constraint that might interfere with the accumulation of wealth, which isn't a bad thing.
The above was the explanation advanced by Charles Beard and the Marxian historians who were dominant at the end of the 19th and beginnings of the 20th Centuries. Theirs was an economics uber alles outlook and their bumper sticker might have been "It wasn't a war for home rule, it was a war to see who would rule at home."
I see it as an element, but not the only element in the revolutionary impulse. There was also an ideological component, even if that ideological component consisted of rationalizations as to why advancing their personal fortunes was congruent with advancing the ideals being promoted.
There are so many forces in play, interacting with one another, it does not seem sufficient to identify one motivation for it all.
I see it as an element, but not the only element in the revolutionary impulse. There was also an ideological component, even if that ideological component consisted of rationalizations as to why advancing their personal fortunes was congruent with advancing the ideals being promoted.
Sort of a chicken vs the egg situation. Clearly the British were concerned about the colonials bypassing he Crown's official import/export agency, the East India Company, and the tactics that they employed to put down the protests and smuggling were indeed oppressive. So like every other low intensity fight with insurrectionist the tactics of repression, innocent folks get caught in the cross fire and are then radicalized as a result. So freedom from British repression was a cause, but the question is what came first.
It's late and I'm I'm only good for a one liner or two... so I need to get back to this tomorrow.
I have heard two reasons, not sure which (if not both) are accurate to a degree..
[LIST=1][*]The British imposed a higher tax on the colonies to pay for the Indian/ Spanish/ French wars which served the colonists more than the British[*]The running of the British empire proved very expensive and Britain needed a quick easy way to make money[/LIST]
the british empire forced thr colonies to use the bank of england's debt notes instead of our debt free money.
thats a tax so we hear taxation without representation. nice way of saying bank of england bugger off.
It would perhaps embellish your already vast knowledge of history. Are you beyond the point
of learning ? I have many other programs I could share with you, if you open your mind.
Btw, in your previous post, you admitted that what I said is correct, on various
points, your own words acknowledged the point I was making..
then continued to lambaste it ..
all is well.
You know what, I actually took the time to listen to what you posted last night on my drive home. I didn't listen to the entire hour plus program, but I did listen to about 45 minutes of it. Despite the fact that I was correct in my initial reply about the link, I should have given you the courtesy of listening before dismissing it. However, I will also say that asking people to listen to or watch hour long programs in reply to a debate on a message board is rather poor form.
So, after listening here are my thoughts on what was said...
1. The program only dedicated about 5 minutes to the discussion of the Quebec Act. In it they did not support your original statements that Quebec was "granted self-rule" and "New France all over again. And forever, because English rule over Quebec ended". Their comments were "sanctions against the practice of Catholicism were lifted" and "Quebec was given home rule in regards to religion and civil law". What was said in the clip was correct (though the context they frame it in was a little 'out there'), what you implied in your posts was not.
2. In order to "learn" anything from the program there are certain pre-conditions that I must accept in order to legitimize the views being presented...
a. There is a God.
b. That God is of the form expressed by those who made the audio clip.
c. That Free Masons have been working for centuries to create a "New World Order".
d. That the US and all republican/demcratic movements are the result of Masonic actions.
e. That the Masons have inflitrated the Catholic Church and perverted it with Vatican II.
That's a lot to accept before I can start to learn anything from what they are saying.
As for what I "lambasted" I was very much responding to what I took as your implication that Quebec was granted some form of autonomy and/or granted an independence of sorts and this angered the American colonists. This is simply not correct and is not claimed in the audio clip you provided. All Quebec was given was the right to practice Catholicism. What they gave up was the ability to have any say in how their Province would be run. All of the power was vested in the Crown's appointed governor and the Crown's appointed body of advisors.
The longterm implication, which was mentioned in the audio clip, was that the Canadiens ended up quite happy under British rule given that they were allowed to keep their customs and religion. This led to them refusing to side with the Americans during the Revolution. Better to deal with a Protestant King thousands of miles away than thousands of 'fanatical' Protestants a mile away.
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