Chapter 5 Flashcards
The government’s formerly lax oversight of the colonies ended as the architects of the British Empire put these new reforms in place. What did this change cause to happen?
The British hoped to gain greater control over colonial trade and frontier settlement as well as to reduce the administrative cost of the colonies and the enormous debt left by the French and Indian War. Each step caused backlash and over time imperial reforms pushed many colonists toward separation from the British Empire.
The massive debt the war generated at home, however, proved to be the most serious issue facing Great Britain. What obstacles did they come across?
The frontier had to be secure in order to prevent another costly war. Greater enforcement of imperial trade laws had to be put into place. Parliament had to find ways to raise revenue to pay off the crippling debt from the war. Everyone would have to contribute their expected share, including the British subjects across the Atlantic
In a broad-based alliance that came to be known as:
Pontiac’s Rebellion, Pontiac led a
loose coalition of these native tribes against the colonists and the British army.
Pontiac started bringing his coalition together as early as 1761, urging Indians to “drive [the Europeans] out and make war upon them.” The conflict began in earnest in 1763, when Pontiac and several hundred Ojibwas, Potawatomis, and Hurons laid siege to Fort Detroit. At the same time, Senecas, Shawnees, and Delawares laid siege to Fort Pitt. Over the next year, the war spread along the backcountry from Virginia to Pennsylvania. Pontiac’s Rebellion (also known as Pontiac’s War) triggered horrific violence on both sides. This caused stories of what?
Firsthand reports of Indian attacks tell of murder, scalping, dismemberment, and burning at the stake. These stories incited a deep racial hatred among colonists against all Indians.
Well aware of the problems on the frontier, the British government took steps to try to prevent bloodshed and another costly war. At the beginning of Pontiac’s uprising, the British issued the____________, which forbade white settlement west of the Proclamation Line, a borderline running along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains. The ____________ aimed to forestall further conflict on the frontier, the clear flashpoint of tension in British North America. British colonists who had hoped to move west after the war chafed at this restriction, believing the war had been fought and won to ensure the right to settle west. This therefore came as a setback to their vision of westward expansion.
Proclamation of 1763
Proclamation Line
THE BRITISH NATIONAL DEBT
Great Britain’s newly enlarged empire meant a greater financial burden, and the mushrooming debt from the war was a major cause of concern. The war nearly __________
doubled the British national debt, from £75 million in 1756 to £133 million in 1763. Interest payments alone consumed over half the national budget, and the continuing military presence in North America was a constant drain. The Empire needed more revenue to replenish its dwindling coffers. Those in Great Britain believed that British subjects in North America, as the major beneficiaries of Great Britain’s war for global supremacy, should certainly shoulder their share of the financial burden
What Act caused a unity of outrage of otherwise unconnected American colonists and gave them a chance to act together both politically and socially?
The crisis of the Stamp Act allowed colonists to loudly proclaim their identity as defenders of British liberty. With the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, liberty-loving subjects of the king celebrated what they viewed as a victory.
For many British colonists living in America, the _____________ raised many concerns. As a direct tax, it appeared to be an unconstitutional measure, one that deprived freeborn British subjects of their liberty, a concept they defined broadly to include various rights and privileges they enjoyed as British subjects, including the right to representation.
Stamp Act
THE STAMP ACT AND THE QUARTERING ACT
Without _______________ there could be no taxation.
Representation
Only representatives for whom British subjects voted could tax them under the unwritten British Constitution, supporters and protesters of the Stamp Act felt what?
Parliament was in charge of taxation, and although it was a representative body, the colonies did not have “actual” (or direct) representation in it. Parliamentary members who supported the Stamp Act argued that the colonists had virtual representation, because the architects of the British Empire knew best how to maximize returns from its possessions overseas. However, this argument did not satisfy the protesters, who viewed themselves as having the same right as all British subjects to avoid taxation without their consent. With no representation in the House of Commons, where bills of taxation originated, they felt themselves deprived of this inherent right.
Which two groups led the popular resistance to the Stamp Act?
Two groups, the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty. Both groups considered themselves British patriots defending their liberty, just as their forebears had done in the time of James II
MOBILIZATION: POPULAR PROTEST AGAINST THE STAMP ACT
In the protest against the Stamp Act, how did the Sons and Daughters of Liberty boycott?
The protests of the Sons and Daughters of Liberty soon spread until there was a chapter in every colony. The Daughters of Liberty promoted the boycott on British goods while the Sons enforced it, threatening retaliation against anyone who bought imported goods or used stamped paper. In the protest against the Stamp Act, wealthy, lettered political figures like John Adams supported the goals of the Sons and Daughters of Liberty, even if they did not engage in the Sons’ violent actions.
In March 1766, the new prime minister, Lord Rockingham, compelled Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act and proposed what Act?
However, to appease opponents of the repeal, who feared that it would weaken parliamentary power over the American colonists, Rockingham also proposed the Declaratory Act. This stated in no uncertain terms that Parliament’s power was supreme and that any laws the colonies may have passed to govern and tax themselves were null and void if they ran counter to parliamentary law.
THE DECLARATORY ACT
When the colonists resisted the Townshend Acts, another shared experience among the diverse regions and backgrounds, a partial repeal convinced many that liberty had been _____
Defended. Nonetheless, Great Britain’s debt crisis still had not been solved.
William Pitt was ill with Gout and old. His Chancellor, Charles Townshend took on many of his duties, such as:
Raising the needed revenue from the colonies.
Conflict turned deadly on March 5, 1770, in a confrontation that came to be known as The ______________________.
Boston Massacre.
On that night, a crowd of Bostonians from many walks of life started throwing snowballs, rocks, and sticks at the British soldiers guarding the customs house. In the resulting scuffle, some soldiers, goaded by the mob who hectored the soldiers as “lobster backs” (the reference to lobster equated the soldiers with bottom feeders, i.e., aquatic animals that feed on the lowest organisms in the food chain), fired into the crowd, killing five people. Crispus Attucks, the first man killed—and, though no one could have known it then, the first official casualty in the war for independence—was of Wampanoag and African descent. The bloodshed illustrated the level of hostility that had developed as a result of Boston’s occupation by British troops, the competition for scarce jobs between Bostonians and the British soldiers stationed in the city, and the larger question of Parliament’s efforts to tax the colonies
The Coercive Acts were:
punitive in nature, awakening the worst fears of otherwise loyal members of the British Empire in America.
What was the purpose of the Tea Act of 1773?
Parliament did not enact the Tea Act of 1773 in order to punish the colonists, assert parliamentary power, or even raise revenues. Rather, the act was a straightforward order of economic protectionism for a British tea firm, the East India Company, that was on the verge of bankruptcy. In the colonies, tea was the one remaining consumer good subject to the hated Townshend duties. Protest leaders and their followers still avoided British tea, drinking smuggled Dutch tea as a sign of patriotism.
The Tea Act of 1773 gave the British East India Company the ability to export its tea directly to the colonies without paying import or export duties and without using middlemen in either Great Britain or the colonies. Even with the Townshend tax, the act would allow the East India Company to sell its tea at lower prices than the smuggled Dutch tea, thus undercutting the smuggling trade.
Colonial Protest against the Tea Act of 1773 protested by:
Protected by a crowd of spectators, they systematically dumped all the tea into the harbor, destroying goods worth almost $1 million in today’s dollars, a very significant loss. This act soon inspired further acts of resistance up and down the East Coast. However, not all colonists, and not even all Patriots, supported the dumping of the tea. The wholesale destruction of property shocked people on both sides of the Atlantic.
What represented a direct challenge to British authority?
The First Continental Congress, which comprised elected representatives from twelve of the thirteen American colonies.
The First Continental Congress was:
their own de facto government. While the colonists still considered themselves British subjects, they were slowly retreating from British authority.
What was the turning point for many colonists?
The Intolerable Acts.
- Which of the following was a cause of the
British National Debt in 1763?
A. drought in Great Britain
B. the French and Indian War
C. the continued British military presence in
the American colonies
D. both B and C
D. both B and C
- What was the main purpose of the Sugar Act of 1764?
A. It raised taxes on sugar.
B. It raised taxes on molasses.
C. It strengthened enforcement of molasses
smuggling laws.
D. It required colonists to purchase only sugar
distilled in Great Britain
C. It strengthened enforcement of molasses
smuggling laws.
