Was the American Revolution really about taxes?

The short answer

• Paying for an empire. Britain’s victory in 1763 left it with the world’s biggest empire and biggest debt, as well as a new American frontier to garrison. Ministers could reasonably ask those protected by its troops to contribute to their cost. Colonial assemblies, however, had voted taxes for 150 years. The attempt to raise revenue therefore put the question of representation before the colonies: who had the authority to require payment? War debt and fiscal reform will bring France to another crisis in Chapter 3.
• Readers and the language of rights. Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau gave political arguments an influential body of theory. Print helped carry those arguments to readers: colonial literacy was among the highest in the world, and printers such as Franklin made political writing widely available. The “rights of Englishmen” and, later, the “rights of man” supplied terms in which people could make claims on their governments.
• An empire sustained by slavery. About one in five people in British America was enslaved; in the sugar islands the proportion was about nine in ten. Plantation wealth supported an imperial world that maintained navies and circulated pamphlets. A declaration about “all men” would have to meet the fact that these societies depended on enslaved labor. In Chapter 5, enslaved people force that question upon the Atlantic world.
• The people beyond the line. The Proclamation Line of 1763 sought to keep settlers off Native land and preserve peace at less cost. Colonial speculators, including Washington, resented the restriction. For the Six Nations, the Cherokee and many other nations, the same line offered some restraint on settlers. A movement to free the colonies from British authority could remove that restraint, with very different consequences for the people whose land settlers wanted.

What it changed

A common deliberation. Twelve colonies with separate governments sent delegates to Philadelphia in 1774; they had never cooperated on anything before. Their Continental Congress gave them an institution through which to deliberate and speak for “America” before fighting began.

France sees an opportunity. Defeat in 1763 had humiliated France, and its ministers saw the American crisis as a chance for revenge against Britain. French money and gunpowder would support the rebels, while the resulting debt added to France’s own financial difficulties. Those financial ties connect Lexington to the Bastille.

Rights travel with cargo. Ships linking Nantes, Boston and Cap-Français carried printed arguments along with goods. Free people of color from Saint-Domingue would fight at Savannah in 1779 alongside men who spoke of rights. The ideas circulating through this trade could reach people excluded by those who first advanced them, and be put to new uses.