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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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Britain going broke to fight France to assert control of North America, then when they try to increase taxes to make fewer losses on maintaining the colony they get infeasible demands (representation in parliament would have been hard logistically due to the time and danger involved in crossing the Atlantic making it so that the representative either is disconnected from parliament or their constituents), which France pounce on and go broke fighting Britain for control of North America leading to France increasing taxes at home leading to France falling apart.
And people act surprised when the US is a dumpster fire with high political influence now
Not even increase, just start collecting...
England knew it would be difficult to enforce control of North America, so they didn't collect taxes and turned a blind eye to smuggling. It was an incentive to make North America more industrious, and thus easily to control through people loyal to England.
But it was never going to be "no taxes forever".
So the Brits said they were going to collect taxes, and told legal businesses to stop smuggling.
They told the Brits to fuck off. So the Brits seized a bunch of smuggled tea, taxed it, then shipped it to America to sell themselves.
So the smugglers paid people to dress up as Natives and throw all that tea into the Boston harbour as a middle finger to the Brits.
Then all those wealthy American smugglers told the common American that it was the Brits oppressing them, and their only option was to die in huge numbers so the wealthiest wouldn't have to pay taxes that would have directly benefited the colonies.
Like. Compare how American colonies were treated to any other colony. Even Canada and Australia.
America always got the best treatment, but we always bitched the most.
It's a very different story than what we learned in school. The primary reason America was formed, was the rich didn't want to pay any taxes. And they made up the majority of people who made up our ridiculous political system.
Hell, Washington is portrayed as loving America over everything. The truth is he was flat broke and ran for president for the salary. Dude had to take out a loan to attend his own inauguration. He did zero campaigning, and compared the process as "marching to my own execution".
He was there when the Constitution was written, but gave zero fucks about it and didn't even talk.
He didn't love the idea of America, he loved money.
Part of the problem was that the American colonists were also doing things that made the colonies far more expensive to run.
The North American front in the Seven Years War was relatively major, costing the British a lot more than just fighting in Europe. The Dominions of the United Kingdom also started looking for independence after they were asked to participate in World War I.
You also had American colonists fragrantly violating the treaties that the British made with American Indian tribes regarding borders. A poor farmer in the Revolution might be fighting for the right to settle in the Ohio Valley or Kentucky.