ABSTRACT
While success in the Seven Years W ar had shown the streng th and resilien ce of Britain's fiscal-military state , coping with its consequences was soo n to reveal th e limitations of British impe rial power. T he war had involved a massive financial outlay, far larger than that required in previou s wa rs; faced with a ballooning national debt, postwar British governme nt looked to the colonies for a larger contribu tion to imperial expe nditures. R aising new taxes from Americans w as, however , to prove far more difficult th an raising taxes at horne . Within Bri tain , an efficient state, backed by a solid system of public finance and by ministries that legit imized the ir fiscal demands th rough parliamentary statute, was able to deliver hu ge sums w ithout provoking great polit ical instability . In the colonies, espec ially th e N orth American colonies, cond itions were different. T he re, th e pow er of the state was attenuated by distance and tradit ions of lax government, people were accus tomed to low taxes, and colonial assemblies dem and ed a right, parallel to th at of th e Brit ish Parliament, to consent to their taxation. Thus, when British govemments sought to exert their power at th e periphery, th ey were to face stro ng resistance fro m colonials who challenged their right to do so. After a deca de of protests, resistance turned into rebellion, and, in 1776, th e Am erican R evolution began. How , then , did th is conflict develop, w hy did it affect th e co ntine ntal but not th e island colonies, and why , finally, did it escalate into the fratri cidal war that ruptured Britain 's Am erican empire? T o appro ach th ese issues, we must first trace th e eve nts which , unfolding between 1763 and 1776, poisoned Britain 's relations with its North American subjec ts.
