ABSTRACT
While success in die Seven Years War had shown the strength and resilience of Britain’s fiscal-military state, coping with its consequences was soon to reveal the limitations of British imperial power. The war had involved a massive financial outlay, far larger than that required in previous wars; faced with a ballooning national debt, postwar British government looked to the colonies for a larger contribution to imperial expenditures. Raising new taxes from Americans was, however, to prove far more difficult than raising taxes at home. Within Britain, an efficient state, backed by a solid system of public finance and by ministries that legitimized their fiscal demands through parliamentary statute, was able to deliver huge sums without provoking great political instability. In the colonies, especially the North American colonies, conditions were different. There, the power of the state was attenuated by distance and traditions of lax government, people were accustomed to low taxes, and colonial assemblies demanded a right, parallel to that of the British Parliament, to consent to their taxation. Thus, when British governments sought to exert their power at the periphery, they were to face strong resistance from colonials who challenged their right to do so. After a decade of protests, resistance turned into rebellion, and, in 1776, the American Revolution began. How, then, did this conflict develop, why did it affect the continental but not the island colonies, and why, finally, did it escalate into the fratricidal war that ruptured Britain’s American empire? To approach these issues, we must first trace the events which, unfolding between 1763 and 1776, poisoned Britain’s relations with its North American subjects.
