Britain And British Colonies Essay

The relationship between Britain and the colonies was evolving as time went on. As it first started the colonies thought they were better off by standing as individual colonies because it would be better for each colony to handle its own governing instead of becoming one united unit. They hoped this would eliminate Britain from gaining too much authority against the colonies. This may have worked for some time, but British had a war to pay for and started to tax the colonies to pay their debt off. They started passing acts to increase tax on the colonies. This caused a change of opinion the leaders of the colonies to change their opinion. The British had forced them to completely change their direction for government in twenty years.
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The most notable were the Sugar, Stamp and Townshend act which help lead to the Boston massacre after that Tea and Coercive acts which all lead to the actions taken by the colonist. The Sugar Act of 1764 lowered duties on French Molasses but raised the fine for smuggling of it. It also was used to increase the power of British navy as Customs agents and was used to harass the colonist to increase revenue. This never really gained steam other than causing some confrontations in the attempts of the British to stop the smuggling. This showed that the Colonies were willing to go against taxes and regulations that they felt were an over step of Britain’s power. Next was the stamp act that was a tax on legal and official documents such as wills, licenses, and cargo ships inventory list. It was required that all the legal documents were required to have an official stamp to prove the taxes were paid. This tax was going to affect all people of the colonies which caused a uniform anger against this tax. The British planned to have people in localized office to collect the tax and giving them a percentage of the tax as incentive to collect as much tax as they could. The citizens of the colonies had some time before this tax was started so they set out to stop it. One man that worked towards defending from over taxation was Patrick Henry and his Virginia Resolves which laid out the …show more content…
The Tea Act which lowered duties on tea but many thought this was a trick to get them to by British tea. This lead to one ship not wanting to unload their tea because they felt that the citizens of the town would be angered and retaliate against them. The crew also ran into another problem because they had to pay duties on the tea if they brought it out of the port leading them to sit there and make a decision. This waiting time lead the citizens to make a plan of attack. They decided to bum rush the ship and dump a few hundred pounds of tea into the bay. This was just another example of how serious the Colonies were in stopping of the control of their taxes by a government so far away. The Final act set things into motion the Coercive Acts which included multiple acts that increased Britain’s power in the colonies. One allowed the governor to appoint all his government body instead of electing them. These acts lead to a massive stance against these acts and the government enforcing them. Militias gained numbers and protested took over city’s shutting down the government activities. This lead the Colonies to disgust their rights against Britain and the increasing military present they had. Shortly after this point is when the fighting