ckaihatsu
6th July 2017, 13:06
Yeah there has been a revision of the US history, thanks to the internet and other sources. And now many people are waking up to the painful truth that their Founding Fathers (Washington, Jefferson etc) were not good like they were taught in schools but they were evil oppressors. And that there has not been any revolution in USA in 4th of July of 1776. But what happened was really a continuity of the UK Empire, in USA but with another name and with another flag. So USA has been an evil empire from the first day of its foundation. 241 years of poverty, pain and misery for the majority of the citizens of this 241 years of hell, bills, taxes, working, working, working and more working and zero pleasures
Well, 'evil' is a bit dramatic and trite -- how about 'bourgeois nation-state franchising' -- ? (grin)
The American Revolution *was* at least anti-imperialist (national self-determination), even though it was a *bourgeois* revolution.
How did it come about that in the summer of 1776 representatives of the 13 colonies, assembled at a ‘Continental Congress’, adopted the Declaration of Independence drafted by the same Jefferson, with its assertion that ‘all men are created equal’? It was an overtly revolutionary statement at a time when deference to kings and aristocrats was near-universal in Europe.
The colonies had been founded in the century and a half before with the backing of the British crown. Ultimate political authority in each lay with a governor appointed in London. But effective power lay with different groups in each colony: with independent farmers in rural New England, and the merchants and artisans in its coastal towns; with rival large landowners in New York state, who treated their tenants in an almost feudal fashion, and with merchants tied to Britain’s Atlantic trade in New York City; with the Penn family (who appointed the governor) and with a handful of wealthy Quaker families in Pennsylvania; and with slave-owning plantation owners in Virginia and North and South Carolina, who excluded poor whites from any say. There were also bitter social clashes within colonies: between landlords and tenants who rose in revolt in New York’s Hudson Valley in 1766; between the Philadelphia elite and western settlers in Pennsylvania; between ‘regulator’ small farmers and ‘Grandee’ plantation owners in the Carolinas. On top of these, there was the continual fear of slave revolts for the Southern plantation owners, such as that which occurred in South Carolina in 1739. Such conflicting interests had scuppered an attempt to establish unity between the colonies in the early 1750s.
In each colony people thought of themselves as ‘British’, not ‘American’. After all, the colonies had grown and prospered within the orbit of Britain’s ‘Atlantic’ economy. Their combined population had grown steadily until, at three million, it was a third of Britain’s. Their merchants and landowners enjoyed considerable riches, and their farmers and artisans felt better off than their forebears had been on the other side of the Atlantic. It seemed in nobody’s interests to overturn the applecart.
From a crack to a chasm
Yet the very fact of economic expansion was pushing the merchants, landowners and manufacturers on each side of the Atlantic to develop different sets of interests and, with them, divergent attitudes. 4 There was a growing fear in London that the colonies might pursue policies detrimental to British commercial interests. There was growing suspicion in the colonies that the British government was neglecting their needs. Until the mid-1770s people like Franklin, who acted as the representative of several of the colonies in London, regarded these fears and suspicions as misunderstandings. But they were not completely fanciful on either side. A clash between the colonies and Britain was inevitable at some point.
The emerging world market system was not one, as Adam Smith and his followers implied (and still imply today), without an economic role for the state. Trade networks spread across the whole system, but they were concentrated around certain cities where merchants, financiers and manufacturers not only bought and sold but also mixed socially and applied pressure on political authorities. Their interests were served by the growth of rival national states, each with a much tighter political structure than that which had characterised feudalism, and with a national language to go with it. It was inconceivable that Britain’s capitalists would not apply pressure on the gentry who ran its parliament to advance their interests—and it was equally inconceivable that the capitalists of the American colonies would fail to respond with political counter-measures of their own.
In both economics and politics, particular events often bring much longer term trends into sharp focus. So it was in the 1760s and 1770s. The Seven Years War of 1756-63 between Britain and France had centred on control of colonies, especially in North America, and of the trade that went with them. Britain defeated France in the West Indies, took control of Bengal and conquered Canada, laying the basis for a world empire. But there was a mighty bill to be paid for doing so.
A logical move for British ministers was to make the American colonists pay some of the costs of the war. After all, they reasoned, the colonies had gained enormously since a French scheme to take control of the Mississippi valley and prevent the colonies expanding westwards had been thwarted.
So Britain imposed a series of taxes on the colonists—a tax on molasses (raw sugar used in making rum) in 1764, a ‘stamp tax’ on a range of transactions in 1765, a Quartering Act which made the colonists pay for the cost of keeping British troops in America, and a tax on imports in 1767.
Each of these caused enormous resentment. People were short of cash at a time of economic depression, and the taxes threatened to damage certain industries. France was no longer a military threat, and the British government wanted the extra income to lower taxes on big landowners in Britain. Above all, the colonists were having to pay taxes for policies in which they had no say.
In Britain, colonists argued, the House of Commons could veto any government proposal on finance. Surely the assemblies of the different colonies should have the same power in the Americas. Otherwise, their fundamental ‘liberties’ were being trampled on. The language of protest was not yet revolutionary. People saw themselves as defending their ‘liberties’ as ‘Britons’. But it led them to unite and mobilise for the first time against Britain.
Harman, _A People's History of the World_, pp. 265-267
Well, 'evil' is a bit dramatic and trite -- how about 'bourgeois nation-state franchising' -- ? (grin)
The American Revolution *was* at least anti-imperialist (national self-determination), even though it was a *bourgeois* revolution.
How did it come about that in the summer of 1776 representatives of the 13 colonies, assembled at a ‘Continental Congress’, adopted the Declaration of Independence drafted by the same Jefferson, with its assertion that ‘all men are created equal’? It was an overtly revolutionary statement at a time when deference to kings and aristocrats was near-universal in Europe.
The colonies had been founded in the century and a half before with the backing of the British crown. Ultimate political authority in each lay with a governor appointed in London. But effective power lay with different groups in each colony: with independent farmers in rural New England, and the merchants and artisans in its coastal towns; with rival large landowners in New York state, who treated their tenants in an almost feudal fashion, and with merchants tied to Britain’s Atlantic trade in New York City; with the Penn family (who appointed the governor) and with a handful of wealthy Quaker families in Pennsylvania; and with slave-owning plantation owners in Virginia and North and South Carolina, who excluded poor whites from any say. There were also bitter social clashes within colonies: between landlords and tenants who rose in revolt in New York’s Hudson Valley in 1766; between the Philadelphia elite and western settlers in Pennsylvania; between ‘regulator’ small farmers and ‘Grandee’ plantation owners in the Carolinas. On top of these, there was the continual fear of slave revolts for the Southern plantation owners, such as that which occurred in South Carolina in 1739. Such conflicting interests had scuppered an attempt to establish unity between the colonies in the early 1750s.
In each colony people thought of themselves as ‘British’, not ‘American’. After all, the colonies had grown and prospered within the orbit of Britain’s ‘Atlantic’ economy. Their combined population had grown steadily until, at three million, it was a third of Britain’s. Their merchants and landowners enjoyed considerable riches, and their farmers and artisans felt better off than their forebears had been on the other side of the Atlantic. It seemed in nobody’s interests to overturn the applecart.
From a crack to a chasm
Yet the very fact of economic expansion was pushing the merchants, landowners and manufacturers on each side of the Atlantic to develop different sets of interests and, with them, divergent attitudes. 4 There was a growing fear in London that the colonies might pursue policies detrimental to British commercial interests. There was growing suspicion in the colonies that the British government was neglecting their needs. Until the mid-1770s people like Franklin, who acted as the representative of several of the colonies in London, regarded these fears and suspicions as misunderstandings. But they were not completely fanciful on either side. A clash between the colonies and Britain was inevitable at some point.
The emerging world market system was not one, as Adam Smith and his followers implied (and still imply today), without an economic role for the state. Trade networks spread across the whole system, but they were concentrated around certain cities where merchants, financiers and manufacturers not only bought and sold but also mixed socially and applied pressure on political authorities. Their interests were served by the growth of rival national states, each with a much tighter political structure than that which had characterised feudalism, and with a national language to go with it. It was inconceivable that Britain’s capitalists would not apply pressure on the gentry who ran its parliament to advance their interests—and it was equally inconceivable that the capitalists of the American colonies would fail to respond with political counter-measures of their own.
In both economics and politics, particular events often bring much longer term trends into sharp focus. So it was in the 1760s and 1770s. The Seven Years War of 1756-63 between Britain and France had centred on control of colonies, especially in North America, and of the trade that went with them. Britain defeated France in the West Indies, took control of Bengal and conquered Canada, laying the basis for a world empire. But there was a mighty bill to be paid for doing so.
A logical move for British ministers was to make the American colonists pay some of the costs of the war. After all, they reasoned, the colonies had gained enormously since a French scheme to take control of the Mississippi valley and prevent the colonies expanding westwards had been thwarted.
So Britain imposed a series of taxes on the colonists—a tax on molasses (raw sugar used in making rum) in 1764, a ‘stamp tax’ on a range of transactions in 1765, a Quartering Act which made the colonists pay for the cost of keeping British troops in America, and a tax on imports in 1767.
Each of these caused enormous resentment. People were short of cash at a time of economic depression, and the taxes threatened to damage certain industries. France was no longer a military threat, and the British government wanted the extra income to lower taxes on big landowners in Britain. Above all, the colonists were having to pay taxes for policies in which they had no say.
In Britain, colonists argued, the House of Commons could veto any government proposal on finance. Surely the assemblies of the different colonies should have the same power in the Americas. Otherwise, their fundamental ‘liberties’ were being trampled on. The language of protest was not yet revolutionary. People saw themselves as defending their ‘liberties’ as ‘Britons’. But it led them to unite and mobilise for the first time against Britain.
Harman, _A People's History of the World_, pp. 265-267