George III had endeavored to bring an end to the Seven Years War but Britain soon found themselves in a fatal tug-of-war with her American colonies. The population of the colonies had been rising steadily over the century, from about 250,000 in 1700 to the one million mark in 1750 and it continued to grow. That the colonies would outnumber the mother country seemed to be only a matter of time. Montesquieu predicted in 1730 that some kind of rupture would happen, most likely over trade. The Marquis d'Argenson predicted 17 years later that the American colonies would revolt, form a republic, and become a great power. Soon after the Treaty of Paris concluded the Seven Years War, Vergennes told an Englishman that the one thing still binding the colonies to the mother country, fear of the French presence in North America, had been removed.
Parliament had the power to overrule any legislation passed by colonial assemblies. It was not often used but when South Carolina voted to restrict importation of further African slaves "due to the great social and political danger rising from the enormous multiplication of Black folks in the colony" they were overruled on the grounds that the slave trade was a necessary economic component of the British Empire. Parliament could and did pass economic legislation for the whole British Empire and normally always sided with the mother country over the colonies. Its main interest was for the colonies to serve as a raw materials supplier for British factories, which would sell finished goods back to them, and the growth of native industry was discouraged--cloth, leather goods, hats, and iron products were forbidden to be produced. The Earl of Chatham declared that he wouldn't let a single nail be manufactured in the colonies. It was also forbidden for them to construct blast furnaces or rolling mills.
Exported goods could be transported only in British ships, cash crops could only be sold within the British Empire, and goods could not be imported from Europe unless first passed through a British port, an impost tax paid, and the goods transferred to a British vessel. Wool could not be sold outside its colony of origin. Imports of sugar and molasses were heavily taxed starting in 1733 but smugglers often evaded this rule. Entire forests were earmarked as reserved for the Royal Navy and it was forbidden to cut them down.
In early 1765, Grenville proposed to Parliament a tax on printed goods, from playing cards to legal documents to newspapers. Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams urged defiance of the tax on the grounds that the English civil war had been sparked by Charles I and his attempt to impose a tax by fiat, and the colonies had no Parliamentary representation. London claimed that distance and slow communications made the idea of having American MPs in Parliament impractical, and that the masses of England had never been taxed with their consent either, but accepted the notion that Parliament was supposed to implicitly represent their interests. This explanation was not accepted by the colonists. Increased anger boiled over. Riots erupted in some areas and the governor of New York was hanged in effigy.
In January 1766, ten months after the Stamp Tax had been passed, Pitt the Elder addressed Parliament and declared that they had no business taxing the colonies as they had no Parliamentary representation. Grenville told him he was encouraging sedition. Pitt replied "I am rejoiced that America has resisted." The Stamp Tax was lifted on March 18 and for a time the crisis seemed to have subsided. But fourteen months later, a new tax was proposed on lead, glass, paper, and tea to pay the salaries of governors and administrators, and the British troops stationed in the colonies.
Resistance continued. Lord North tried to get all these taxes lifted save for the tea one. When three East India Company vessels landed at Boston, a mob of colonists snuck onto the ships the night of December 16, 1773 and threw almost 300 crates of tea overboard.
Edmund Burke used all his efforts to avoid a shooting war. From 1774 to 1780, he represented the city of Bristol in Parliament, a municipality that opposed war with the colonies as being bad for business. Burke did not agree with Pitt the Elder that Parliament lacked any jurisdiction to levy taxes on the colonies, and he was also unmoved by the latter's proclamation of their natural rights being violated. Rather, Burke focused on the practical aspects of trying to tax them. In a speech to Parliament on April 19, 1774, he argued if the colonies continued to be antagonized by Parliament, the result was going to be a shooting war and disintegration of the British Empire.
Burke failed to convince Parliament with this line of reasoning. He tried again in a speech delivered March 22, 1775 by noting that it would be a terrible blow to the British economy to go to war with the colonies. That aside, such a war might end up causing one or more European powers to intervene, which in the end is exactly what did happen. Since the colonies were too distant to have their own MPs, Burke proposed voluntary donations rather than mandatory taxes. His motion was defeated 270-78. Less than a month later, the Battle of Bunker Hill began the US War of Independence.
The Earl of Chatham warned that suppression of the colonies by force would revive the "tyranny" of Charles I and James II. In a dramatic speech on November 20, 1777, Chatham declared that victory over the Americans was impossible. "My lords, you cannot conquer America. You may swell every expense and every effort still more extravagantly, pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow, traffic and barter with every pitiful little German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles...your efforts are forever vain and impotent, doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely, for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms. Never, never, never!"
Chatham's speech came a little over a month after John Burgoyne's army was forced to surrender at Saratoga in New York; due to the slow speed of trans-Atlantic communications, England was only learning of this news around the time of the speech. France declared war on February 6, 1778. Lord North offered to resign as PM, the king urged him to stay on. Chatham, his health waning, died on May 11. Spain entered the war in June 1779 and besieged Gibraltar. A joint Franco-spanish fleet entered the English Channel in August and a Royal Navy squadron scrambled to meet the invader. Fortunately disease struck the allies and they were obliged to retreat. Russia, Denmark, and Sweden agreed to an armed neutrality pact in March 1780 that would resist the British practice of boarding vessels to search for enemy goods, and other nations followed.
The Royal Navy continued to search Dutch vessels and found evidence of negotiations between the Americans and the city of Amsterdam. London demanded the Dutch punish the city officials of Amsterdam. When this demand was refused, Britain declared war on the Netherlands at the end of the year.
The situation was looking increasingly grim and the Gordon Riots in May 1780 did not improve matters. A major Atlantic hurricane in September sank numerous Royal Navy vessels and seemed an ill omen from the heavens. Calls for peace with America increased. When Lord Cornwallis's army surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781, Lord North cried "Oh God, it's all over!" but the stubborn George III wanted to continue the war. When the French and Spanish seized several British outposts in the Mediterranean and Caribbean during the fall and winter months, mass meetings throughout England calling for peace broke out. On March 18, 1782, Lord North sent the king a letter informing him that his policy towards America and his attempt to gain supremacy over Parliament had both failed.
George III drafted a letter offering to abdicate, but ultimately never sent it. He accepted a new ministry which began the process of peace negotiations. The independence of the US was acknowledged, its territory extended to the Mississippi, Florida and Minorca returned to Spain and Senegal to France. The peace treaty met with mixed reactions. Most Englishmen were relieved to have the disastrous war over with, but were also unhappy with the amount of territory Britain had given up to the US, France, and Spain. Shelburne resigned on February 24, 1783. With the American war over, India became the main focus of British foreign policy...
By the way how did the aftermath of the American revolution affect British colonial policy, did it cause any noticable changes
The war in essence birthed not one but three nations. Canada emerged from Loyalists who moved north, while Australia was founded due to the need to have a new dumping ground for convicts.
>The Gordon riots of 1780,
The worst urban riots in British history. Only the blitz would do more damage to the city.
Children were weaned on tales of papist cruelty, while gunpowder plot sermons provided annual inoculation against the perceived antichrist in Rome. During the Gordon riots, some people seriously believed that there were 20,000 gunpowder-hoarding Jesuits skulking in tunnels under the Thames.
The turning point came in the summer of 1828 with a byelection in County Clare. Daniel O’Connell, a charismatic, almost messianic figure whose hero was Simón Bolívar, ran for Westminster on the ticket of emancipation. Such was the gravity of the campaign that the local Catholic Association pledged to abstain from whisky. Wine, porter and cider were permitted, naturally, but anyone caught with a dram was unceremoniously dunked in the river. O’Connell was “a man of the people”, wrote the German traveller Prince Pückler-Muskau (once announced by a hapless footman as Prince Pickling Mustard)
>started by the Scots
Of course.
frick off you dumb c**t
should be understood at that time, like with all European countries, membership in the state church was necessary for the full rights and privileges of British citizenship. no one could serve in the armed forces above the rank of noncom, hold a title of nobility, be elected to Parliament, or hold a government post unless they were a practicing Anglican. The 1689 Act of Toleration also did not apply to Ireland; Dissenters had fairly significant civil disabilities and Catholics had absolutely no rights at all.
>...unless they were a practicing Anglican.
Only in England, in Scotland the same applied but you had to be a Calvinist.
>same moron spewing his error riddled blog post again
get a fricking life you dumb fricking c**t, you are not nearly half as smart as you think you are. You try to make high effort posts but fail miserably no wonder its all unsourced because if you had bothered to read anything other than a childs book you'd realise how much of an ignorant self absord reddit fricking Black person you are.
point out errors in his post then
that distinct smell of samegay...