A History of Britain, episode 11: The Wrong Empire, chapter 6

The History of Britain, part IV, The Wrong Empire, chapter 7. Written and Presented by Simon Schama

Category:

Education

Tags:

• The Wrong Empire
• chapter 6

[MrCagivaman]

All men are created equal--------Unless you are black. Bloody Americans

[TheLiberalKnight]

@LadyAubrie Actually it was the other way around. The colonists swore their alleigance to the King, not the Parliament in London, therefore when parliament taxed them they were upset because they had no members of that parliament representing them. But more importantly, Britons considered themselves as defenders of liberty after the English civil wars and the 1688 revolution. When they were paying tax for a huge standing military, they felt as if they had betrayed that liberty.

[LadyAubrie]

@TheLiberalKnight guaranteed them some autonomy from the outset.  It's always been my understanding that a lot of colonists didn't mind paying (although, some did) - in 1763, most were ecstatic to consider themselves British. But they believed the crown owed them the right to tax themselves, and thought that direct Crown taxation was demeaning. I think it hurt their sense of British pride, and that might have been the worst blow.

[LadyAubrie]

@TheLiberalKnight True! All very true. But one can't leave out the fact that this was an entire generation of political thinkers raised on Locke and Hobbes...the idea of "Life, Liberty, and Property" was rooted deeply in the Colonial American mindset. The British Crown had never directly taxed the Colonies (though I think some MP's had wanted to for a long time, to bring the Colonies under more direct control of the Crown) and a lot of these Colonies believed that their Colonial charters had

[TheLiberalKnight]

@LadyAubrie It was about the fact that London was asking them to pay tax for their defence, which was not unreasonable. The reason it insulted many people was because Britain had been opposed to huge military spending for centuries. The Americans liked this least of all. Ironic then, that America today spends 20% of it's tax revenues on the military.

[tribetng]

@90fitzgerald09 Ho ho! Aren't you clever.

[LadyAubrie]

@LambChowder1 It wasn't just the money..."No taxation without representation" was really what was on their minds. It was more about being represented than about just taxes...

[90fitzgerald09]

god save the queen

[LambChowder1]

all this over a tea tax. small price to pay unlike speaking french

[StanierBlack5LMS]

Not really fond of this Chaps presentation of British History in this period. Seems more Anti-British bias at this point in the series.