So what does Prince have to do with the American Revolution? You should increase your cultural knowledge – his band was named the Revolution and I spent thousands of hours listening to this little, purple, genius. But the real purpose here is to track the identity patterns in the evidence of the American Revolution – evidence that most of you have been taught before but were taught totally through the national narrative to come to the conclusion of the main interpretation. Colonists were Americans, Americans are good, and the British were evil. Does the evidence support any of these claims? We’ll see.
Before we begin, I want to introduce you to Frantz Fanon. Fanon was a psychiatrist in Martinique, which was a French colony. French by law, French by language, French by culture but the primary part of the population (Martinique is an island in the Caribbean so you should know what the population is like) the primary part of the population is African and not French. Fanon is African descended in a French colony. In treating patients Fanon became aware that racism played a significant role in framing the psychology of his patients. Many of the patients, he discovered, had psychological problems because the French culture in Martinique denied and sought to destroy their African self. In Black Skin, White Mask Fanon discussed the duality (dual life) that African descended French people had to endure. They were black, but they were asked by the culture to be white, wear a white mask. The white mask validated them, gave them meaning in a culture that denied the meaning of their black skinned selves. This duality, and the denial of the true self (their African heritage) caused problems for people. Fanon theorized that the only thing that could produce health would be Revolution – smash the mask and validate the black skin underneath. While this situation that Fanon described in the 1950s is relevant to race in America, there are also parallels to the colonial experience in the 1770s in North America. Here in North America, colonists began to develop their own cultural ways which deviated from British norms. They thought they were British, but in many ways, the existence of slavery, having representation based on voting instead of blood, for example, they were acting in non-British ways. The thing is they thought they were British and they thought their cultural ways were British, even when they weren’t. They had different cultural habits than the British, but they thought they were British, and being British brought them meaning, it validated who they were. But they weren’t really who they thought they were. Very confusing, and confusion often leads to conflict – hence, Revolution. Their identity was as British colonists – it was a mask, maybe for something underneath (an American skin?), but the difference between Martinique and the 13 British colonies is that the British colonists didn’t know what their skin was.
So now, with that idea about the complexity of identity, let’s look at the evidence of the Revolution. The First slide below outlines the pre-Revolutionary events of the 1760s
The Revolution is typically studied from the perspective of the aftermath of the French and Indian War, or also known as the Seven Years’ War, from 1754-1763. This war began in the colonies on the frontier between French colonists and their Native allies and British colonists and their Native allies, and then spread around the globe where France and England fought for world leadership. The British won! And the colonists, being British, celebrated.
The British spent a lot of money, a lot of money defending the colonies. Soldiers, weapons, ships, food, medicines, forts, ports, all sorts of expenses paid for by taxes raised in Britain – but not the colonies. For their defense the colonists contributed nothing. British taxpayers paid the cost, not British colonial taxpayers. This is a very important point. You need to get this. Britain paid the costs of protecting the lives, economy and territory of the North American 13 British colonies. Britain paid, not the colonists.
Payment means debt in times of war, so Britain’s British government in England, in Parliament had to figure out a way to stabilize the finances of the Empire. They needed new revenue and new sources of revenue to cover the costs of the empire. That means that Parliament realized it had to organize revenue from the colonies in a systematic and workable way. There were taxes on the colonies, Parliament had tried before, for example with acts like the Molasses Act of 1733, which taxed sugar products going into the colonies from the West Indies. The money collected would pay for the costs of the British Navy which protected the trade of the colonists. Another important point. The taxes raised by Parliament were to pay for the things the colonists got from the empire, like protection from the French, or Pirates. The taxes raised by Parliament were to pay for the things the colonists got from the empire, like government, and courts, and in some cases roads, and bridges. Taxes pay for things the community needs. Without taxes we don’t have those things. The taxes raised by Parliament were to pay for the things the colonists got from the empire. Ok?
Parliament realized that a system of taxes needed to be put in place to raise revenue from the colonists to pay for the things that colonists needed from the Empire.
At this time in British politics there were basically two parties, one that favored more involvement by the King, Tory, and one that favored more power in the Commons, Whig. The Whigs had been in control during the French and Indian War, but their leader, William Pitt, very popular in the colonies, fell out of favor at the end of the War, and the King who appointed the government’s ministers with the approval of the Commons, replaced him with a Tory, George Grenville – the colonists were not happy.
Grenville realized that the colonists had to start paying for the costs of the stuff they got from the empire and a new system of administering the colonies had to be put in place. Why? Because the colonists had never paid the taxes that were already on the books, like the Molasses Act. They didn’t pay taxes on sugar because colonial merchants could easily smuggle goods past the customs collector and the British were so busy fighting the French and/or Pirates that they hardly ever enforced the law against smuggling. But it didn’t change the fact that to Grenville, it was time for the colonists to grow up and pay their own way, to grow up and pay for the costs the empire paid for courts, and government, and protection and other things. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? It is. Remember that. British policy is based on reason, not tyranny, whatever tyranny means.
And here is another problem Grenville faced. Even when some of the colonists smugglers were arrested they were tried in Admiralty Courts located in 4 colonial cities, made up by juries of colonial merchants who gave the verdict on the smugglers. BUT THEY WERE SMUGGLERS, TOO! So no one ever got convicted and smuggling continued and no taxes were paid.
Grenville realized that the colonists didn’t like the 1733 Molasses Act because it was a pretty high tax on sugar, so in new legislation he got passed, Sugar Act of 1764, the tax on sugar was lowered to a really low amount. What? Lowered? Yes, lowered, the British Parliament lowered taxes on Sugar and they made it so low that smuggling just wouldn’t be worth it – except that colonial merchants were used to paying $0 in taxes, so even a low tax, was more than they ever paid. So the colonists didn’t like this. But Grenville used the law to compel them to pay. Part of the law set up funds to have more enforcement of the new tax and set up a new court, with rulings by a judge not a jury, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. That’s in Canada, not Boston, New York, Philadelphia or Charleston where the other Admiralty Courts had been. In this new Admiralty Court, the Crown would get convictions against smugglers, and, prison time was going to be in England itself – not in the colonies where your family could at least bring you food and keep you from starving. So if you were a smuggler, a colonial merchant, you knew not paying this small tax was a death sentence. Yikes.
The new revenue from the Sugar Act would go for protection of colonial trade by the Royal Navy. Good for colonists, now potentially paid for by the colonists.
The Currency Act insured that the colonists used the money of the empire, and not like some of the colonies, their own printed money. This way they could pay their taxes.
The colonists grumbled and complained. And then the straw that caused pandemonium in the merchant community of the colonies. The Stamp Act.
Stamps had been a common way to make a tax in many parts of the empire, particularly at home in England. A merchant of common paper items has to buy a stamp, place the stamp on the item, to verify the tax is paid, and then pass the cost of the tax onto the price of the item and the consumer. Easy, and easy revenue. Benjamin Franklin was in London when the Stamp Act was passed and actually wanted to be put in charge of the program (he got a fee for every stamp sold, so he would make a lot of money!) But Franklin didn’t react like other merchants back in the colonies. Even though taxes raised by the Stamp Act went to pay for services provided to the colonists by the Empire, services provided to the colonists by the Empire, perfectly reasonable, the colonial merchant erupted in demonstration against these Parliamentary Acts. Colonial inhabitants, spurred on by the merchant community, rioted. They burned tax collection houses, harassed collectors and British officials and in some cases tarred and feathered them – hot tar poured on skin, and then fluffed with feathers – as deadly as asking for a golden crown from a Dothraki. Am I right, GOT fans? Eh?
Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems.
The merchants saw the protests were getting out of hands, so to get things back under their control and out of the hands of the lowly masses, they called for an assembly of notables to convene to give an organized Colonial response to this tax and Revenue Plan situation.
They called for a Congress of Delegates to meet in New York City, in September of 1765. Only 9 colonies sent delegates, as some of the Royal Governors of Royal colonies forbid the King’s subjects to attend a Congress against laws passed by King, Lords, Commons (Parliament – and you see everyone represented in that Parliament, even the colonists who were common by the Commons – if you follow the British definition of representation that is).
The first order of business of the Congress was to select a face for the Congress, well someone to be the presiding officer of their proceedings, who would serve as the face of the Congress. Two names were put in Nomination. Timothy Ruggles, a Massachusetts official who had actually been an officer in the Royal Army – not the colonial militia mind you, but the real army. No one could deny his loyalty and patriotism for the Empire. And then there was James Otis, the other nominee. Otis was a lawyer (lost my vote already) who was already on record against the Revenue Plan (and whose family and connection formed the core of the Boston Merchant (smugglers) community. One represented the best of the Empire and one represented the interests of the colonies (and merchant law-breaking radicalism). The choice seemed clear, loyalty or radical rejection of Parliament. And what did they choose? Well, from what we have always been taught about the America First Revolution, you would figure, of course they chose Otis. But they didn’t. They chose Ruggles. They chose Loyalty …. And made that abundantly clear in the addresses and petitions sent by the Congress to London. We are loyal British subjects, but then the Fanon-like duality began to creep in. They were British, in their minds, but not all of their ideas were in keeping with being British. And you can see it in the Declaration of Rights produced by the Stamp Act Congress.
In that document, after expressing how loyal to the empire the very British colonists were, they deviated from the standard British political science about who and what they were. The colonists acknowledged towards the King, the “same allegiance to the crown that is owing from his subjects born within the realm” – they were just as British as if they had been born in Britain and loved their King! BUT, and this in terms of cultural identity, was a big but.
When it came to Parliament and the Commons, the colonists only owed “all due subordination to that august body.” Meaning? That sometimes we go by Parliament and sometimes not, and their reasoning followed in very un-British means by defining representation, not by the fact of blood, by which they all were common and therefore represented by the law making Commons, but by the act of voting as the signifier of representation. Meaning, voting selected representatives to make law and not blood. This is not the British definition of representation and makes all the claims of the Congress to be loyal British colonists weird, just weird. How can they be British, but reject British things. It is the duality of colonial life, perhaps, Colonist skin, British mask.
The delegates claimed, “the undoubted right that no taxes be imposed upon them but with their own consent given personally or by their representatives.” The colonists maintained their reps were in their local common assemblies and not in the Commons of England.
We are one thing, but we are different than that thing – which, of course, makes no sense.
Confusion and bewilderment reigned back in England, and the American Revenue Plan was repealed. Grenville was out and the Whigs came back into power.
But the Whigs realized that revenue had to be raised from the colonies and that the colonies couldn’t just refuse to follow Parliament because they got it all wrong about who represented whom. In 1766 Parliament passed a definitive law to support its “virtual” representation. Parliament had the right to make law “for all cases whatsoever” everywhere and anywhere in the Empire under the Declaratory Act of 1766. And then they set about making more taxes, called the Townshend Acts.
The colonist didn’t like these acts, either. And this time, instead of a Congress, tried to get everyone in the colonies, all the loyal British subjects, to stop buying British made goods. That’ll show them how British the colonists are! It wasn’t really a success, but it did make Parliament get rid of the Townshend Acts – except for one. On Tea. You know, the Tea Act. But listen, Parliament agreed to try again. Colonists didn’t like the Revenue Plan? Get rid of it. Colonists didn’t like the Townshend Acts? Get rid of them. Is this tyranny? Hardly, at least not on the part of the British – you could make the argument that the British colonists were a bit of a brat, though.
So why not Tea? To make a long story short, the tax on tea was propping a business too big to fail, and so the British had to maintain it. And it also needed to be kept to send a message, a Declaratory message to the colonists that Parliament had the right to tax the colonies – as the King said to his new Tory Minister Lord North (in office from 1770-1782), “So as to retain the Right!”
But the colonial merchants only wanted the benefit of Empire and not the cost. So they dressed up as someone else and destroyed a boatload of tea in Boston Harbor. Think of that. Did they know this act of terrorism was wrong? Is that why they dressed as Native Americans? Or is this a suggestion that they had thrown away their British mask and were now in their American skin? Whatever it was, the British were tired of being reasonable with the British colonists, and punishment was now necessary.
To bring the colonists back into good behavior Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774 to punish the Boston area for the acts of terrorism committed there against lawful British Government. Massachusetts would pay for what the terrorists did. Its government and courts would be re-organized and crown troops would insure a return to peace. All in all pretty reasonable. But not to the Colonists. They were scared and they should have been. And so they called a Congress. What else would they do?
And we’ll talk about that Congress next time.
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