Road to the American Revolution

The Road to the American Revolution

The road to the American Revolution was set by the English trying to hard to regulate and control what we do. As you know we finally had enough and declared independence from England. This essay will show you how the road was set and what happened along the way.

During the eighteenth century England had started to use the mercantilism, this was an economic system used by major European powers where the world’s gold and silver remained fixed. The only way a nation could increase it’s wealth was to seize other nation’s gold and silver and to dominate it’s trade. To protect the wealth of a nation, it’s government had to limit foreign imports and preserve a favorable balance of trade.

When the English Civil War was happening, trading in the colonies had dropped due to Dutch shipping. To win this trade back from the Dutch, Oliver Cromwell convinced Parliament to adopt a Navigation Act in 1651, which required all goods imported into England or her colonies must arrive on a English ship with the majority of the ship’s crew English. There were more Navigation acts to add to the regulation of trade. In 1660 an act passed requiring all colonial trade be on English ships with a long list of enumerated goods. In 1663 all goods had to stop in England first before they could go to the colonies. In 1673 required colonial ships captains to guarantee that they would deliver enumerated good to England or suffer financial penalties. Finally in 1696 an act passed creating a system of admiralty courts to enforce the Navigations acts and gave custom officials writs of assistance to board ships and search for smuggled goods.

Resentment was building toward the British collectors who started to arrive in the colonies between 1673 and 1679. The Massachusetts Bay colony not only ignored but tolerated violations of the Navigations Acts. The British responded by taking legal action and nulling their charter.

While the colonies elected...