The American Revolution

The American Revolution had a number of underlying causes, some of which were unavoidable and others which perhaps could have been resolved, but one undeniable beginning was the movement known as anglicization. Before the 1700’s each colony had been acting mostly on its own. They all had different cultures and mixtures of peoples and beliefs. In fact they were becoming increasingly diverse until the early 18th century, when the colonies had stable enough economies and settlements that they started wanting the finer things in life, and they weren 't just worried about survival. This meant that they started importing more goods from England, not just food but fashion, and style. This quickly moved to the “import” of ideas. Whatever the hot political topic in England was, that was what Colonists were talking about around their dinner tables too. This meant that the colonies were becoming more similar, and in ways it acted as a unifying force for areas which previously had been defined by their differences. Although anglicization made the colonies more similar to England in some ways it also highlighted the political differences and played a key role in the conflicts which lead to revolution.

The connection between Britain and her North American colonies was growing stronger in the 18th century. After 1740 there was a growing import of British goods, the colonists still very much considered themselves british and they wanted popular british items. Not only did people dress in London fashion and follow popular british style but newspapers and print were borrowing english ideas and models. Some forms of anglicization were actually accidental and reflected the negative social structure of England that the colonies had been moving aw...

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...oking at these differences that they became acutely aware of the ways in which they were not being treated fairly. First they were having taxes imposed on them without representation, and when they tried to express their concerns and grievances they were ignored. This pattern of tightening control and then not listening to colonial issues, was something that the colonists were fed up with and drove them to speak out against imperial policies. When being vocal wasn’t enough they started to take action. There are many points at which one could say that revolution truly became inevitable, the most common being the Boston Massacre, but it is clear that the threads that all come together to form the revolution started here. With anglicization, and the realization that american colonists were not the same as british citizens, and the britain would never see them as equals.