Zeke Morgan

The colonial turning point with Britain

6th block

George Orwell once said, power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a

dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the

dictatorship. America was and still is, a child turned against its father. Most Americans have

these vague ideas of patriotism and nationalism. They think that this country is the best there is

and the best theres ever been. Back in the late 1700s, right after the revolution when the

constitution had just been written, the founding fathers thought that they were so much better

than the British but America still oppressed people after the declaration of independence and it

still does today. We have a racist, classist, and xenophobic system in this country that runs on

capitalism and oppresses the working class. America claims to be the land of the free but its

currently anti-immigrant. It claims to be inclusive but America didnt abolish slavery till about

90 years after the revolution and we didnt even abolish the Jim Crow Laws until 100 years after

that. There is still racially motivated police brutality and there is still homophobia. Theres still

racism that isnt even pointed out by our own government. Capitalism creates an elite 1% that

has a whole bunch of money and a huge middle and lower class. America isnt that much better

than Britain even though thats what the founding fathers tried to make it. Americans, even

before the revolution, had developed this idea that they were somehow different and that they

were better than everybody else. But when did this idea start exactly? Most people would say

when Britain started taxation on the colonists or when they passed the Intolerable Acts but the

divide between the Imperialists and the Americans had been epitomized long before any of these

events. The real turning point in American relations with Great Britain was the Seven Year War
because of the British ideology of Mercantilism, acts imposed on the colonists by the British, and

the intensified regulation on land and trade after the outcome of the war.

The British really loved power and that is seen in the way that they imperialized and took

over different territories. They felt that they had to do whatever necessary do get power and

they believed in Mercantilism. Mercantilism is the idea that money literally is power. They

thought that the more money you had, the more powerful you were and they wanted to be the

most powerful country in the world. This meant that Britain wanted to have a lot of money in its

federal bank. The Seven Year War lost Britain nearly 150 Million pounds and they really wanted

to get that money back and they didnt want to spend all that time getting it back themselves so

they did the thing that any lazy country that wanted money would do, they taxed the country that

was under their control. The colonists did not like that at all. They got pretty mad. But it wasnt

just the fact that Britain was taxing them a lot, it was the fact that they werent getting

representation in parliament which is where the expression, no taxation without representation

comes from. The colonists especially didn't like the fact that they were being taxed for things that

they needed and used everyday. This led to protests and boycotts against British goods which

riled up the colonists even more. This eventually led to the colonists getting so pissed off that

they started the American Revolution which really wasnt much of a revolution, they just

replaced one corrupt racist system with another. It wouldve been a revolution if they had truly

changed the system and the way that everything worked but instead, the founding fathers cherry-

picked what they wanted to change because while they might have been patriots, they were

racist, classist patriots and only changed the things that would benefit the white middle and upper

classes.
 So in order to tax the colonists and get more money, the British placed several acts on the

colonists and the colonists absolutely hated this. The only colonists who liked this were the

owners of British businesses who profited off of this. This started in 1764 with the Sugar act

which taxed sugar and molasses and it also amended the 1733 Molasses act so that the British

would profit more from the colonists. This was quick followed by the Stamp act which taxed

documents and the quartering act which forced the colonists to quarter British soldiers in their

home. The Townshend acts came after and then the Tea act. The colonists were done listening to

Britain at this point. They protested and they boycotted so much that the Stamp act was actually

repealed but that didnt do a lot to quench the colonists thirst for freedom. They wanted more,

they wanted representation and they were tired of oppression. This lead to the formation of the

Sons and Daughters of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party which involved colonists dressing up as

Native Americans and dumping British tea into the Boston harbor. King George didnt like this

at all so he passed the Intolerable acts in retaliation. The Intolerable Acts restricted the

Massachusetts government a lot. By then, the colonists had had enough of this so they rose up

and started the revolution. Just remember, that the reason these acts happened at all is because of

the fact that the British loved money and they wanted more so they began taxing the colonists.

The only reason they wanted more money was because of the money lost because of the Seven

Year War. So you can definitely see that all of these acts happened because of the Seven Year

War and probably wouldnt have happened otherwise.

Theres a very important factor that contributed substantially to the Revolution and thats

the regulation of what the colonists could and couldnt do. The one thing that the colonists hated
more than anything was being told what not to do. They absolutely hated restrictive laws being

placed on them. British oppression was a huge reason that the revolution happened but to truly

understand why the British did this, we have to go back to the Seven Year War. When the war

was over, the British really wanted to avoid fighting another one because they had used a lot of

resources and as I mentioned earlier in my first point, they lost a whole bunch of money. So in

order to avoid further conflicts with the Indians, they prevented the colonists from settling west

of the Appalachians with the proclamation of 1763. The British actually might've had the right

idea here because another war wouldnt have been good for anybody. Nevertheless, the colonists

completely ignored this act which is probably one of the only acts done that was to protect the

colonists. But something you have to also think about that happened before all of this was the

Navigation act which banned colonial America from trading with countries other than Britain.

The British government regulated colonial trade for its own benefit. If you think about it, this is

a perversion of Communism because the Soviet Union and Communist China also regulated

trade to gain money. It also oppressed its people to gain power and thats what Britain did.

North Korea also does something similar even though North Korea isnt what Marx envisioned

in a Communist society but then, there never has really been an ideal Communist society on a

large scale yet. Colonial America was definitely not true Communism because the social

classes arent what they would be in the ideal Communist society but Britain definitely used a

very important aspect of Communism, which was government controlled regulation, to oppress

and control the colonists. So it wasnt just McCarthyism that made Americans hate Communism,

it was literally a perversion of that system that the British forced upon them. Another thing to

consider is that the Navigation acts were already in place before the Seven Year War but the

colonists became more individualized during the Seven Year War and they realized that the
British were oppressing them with the Proclamation of 1763 which happened because of the

Seven Year War. They were sort of living a dystopia before the Seven Year War because they

took the Navigation acts without question and didnt make a huge stink about it but then after the

Seven Year War, they realized that they were being kept in one spot and that they were literally

just there for money so they became more rebellious and thats what led to the Revolution. The

colonists finally realized that they were being oppressed and used for profit because of what

Britain did because of the Seven Year War. Thats when they began protesting and in 1775, they

started the Revolution.

The British always oppressed the colonists but the colonists only realized it when the

British lost money because of the Seven Year War and decided to restrict and tax the colonists.

They tightened their imperialist grip around the colonists which made them rise up and revolt.

And King George might not have believed in equal social classes or equal pay like Castro but he

did use a huge part of Communism which is the regulation of trade which he used for his own

benefit which other Communist government such as the Chinese Communist Party or at least the

Chinese Communist Party as it was when Mao Zedong took control. But America is not the only

country that Britain took control of for profit. Britain was one of the major imperialist powers in

the 1800s and 1900s and it started looking to the Middle East. It set its sights on Iran because of

its oil. There was a lot of bickering between Russia and Britain over who would get Iran so in

1907, they signed a then secret treaty, the Convention of St. Petersburg which meant that Britain

got the southern half and Russia got the northern. Britain was very oppressive on the Iranian

people. The huge gap between the imperialists and their victims was epitomized in Abadan, a

huge city in southwest Iran where Anglo-Persian built its oil refinery operation. Britain and
Russia, were brutal and cruel to the Iranians and this gave rise to resistance by the Iranian

people. In 1905, a democratic movement rose among the middle class and by summer 1906,

nationwide demonstrations demanded an elected parliament and and end to the absolute rule of

the Shah who was, by the way, only there because he was someone who Britain and Russia could

control. He was gullible and easy to use. Eventually, the Shah shut down all of the

demonstrations, backed by Britain and Russia, and in 1911, he shut down parliament so he had

complete control which meant that Britain and Russia had complete control because they

controlled the Shah. This is just like what happened in America except the British were much

more oppressive and had more power to shut down subversives. The only reason that the Iranians

were revolting is because of the same reasons the American Revolution happened. Elitist greed

and oppression.