complex mythology has been
built up around the American Revolution: it is a national story of great
significance to the way the United States views itself. But the mythology
is just that - a mythology. Contrary to the picture presented in American
primary schools, the Americans were not a separate, turkey-eating people,
subjugated by the cruel, tyrannical and essentially foreign British.
In fact, many colonists thought of themselves as British. Historians accept
that the American Revolution had a wide variety of motives and causes: these
included slightly differing political traditions, the economic interests
of both parties, the trading interests of those directly or indirectly involved
in transatlantic commerce, the large debt Britain had accumulated in the
wake of the Seven Years War, and a fair amount of mutual misunderstanding
as well.
The British colonies had been around for 150 years in the
1760s - Virginia was the first to be founded in 1606. By 1763 a sizable
spread of land had been carved out for Britain, and the colonies were prospering.
Most importantly, the Seven Years War had just finished, leading to a complete
withdrawal from the American mainland on the part of France, and, for the
Spanish, losses of all but a rump of formerly French holdings west of Florida.
The two great territorial rivals of the British colonies had been removed
as a threat. The future looked bright and secure for the Americans, with
the prospect of unlimited westward expansion held back only by the British
response to Indian raids, the Proclamation Line along the Appalachians which
prevented further settlement of the continent's interior.
The 13 mainland colonies between South Carolina and Maine,
in particular, had grown from British settlements established for trade and
prestige, highly dependent on the motherland, into semi-autonomous states.
The 10 other colonies were in a very different situation, with small white
populations almost exclusively growing sugar for sale to Britain in the Caribbean
colonies, a very limited population with underdeveloped civil government
collected in small areas of Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia little more than
a military outpost.[1] It is no accident that it was the aforementioned 13 colonies[2] that
rebelled so yeah
