began its history as an appendage of Europe. Except for the American Indians and the slaves brought over from Africa, all of its original inhabitants were European. They spoke European languages and brought with them European habits, ideas and achievements. The settlers of the 13 original colonies had left the mother country to look for new opportunities over 4,800 kilometres abroad. Though their motivations varied from the religious to the commercial, they had physically departed from England to begin anew in a new world. Britain itselfa six-to-eight-week journey away by shipbecame an increasingly remote concept for subsequent /sbskwnt/ generations of colonists /klnists/ who had never set foot in the country. Thus, the fact of American independence was revolutionary indeed. Most colonists had shared a sense of British identity throughout the first 150 years of settlement, and breaking with the only state authority that many of them had ever known was a difficult decision to make, let alone execute /ekskjut/. No society had ever done what the American revolutionaries attempted to do: unseat an aristocracy /rstkrsi/ and defeat the world's most powerful navy and a great army, while establishing a new republican government without falling prey to the forces of chaos /kes/ and despotism /desptzm/. This movement began as a transatlantic/trnztlntk/ dispute over parliamentary /plmentri/ authority and policy, as American colonists chafed /teft/ against British measures to reconsolidate their hold over their North American empire. This difference of opinion grew into a crisis of authority when colonists expressed their opposition by rioting, burning effigies of English officials, organising vigilante /vdlnti/ associations, and pledging boycotts of imported goods. The colonists did not initially think of themselves as waging a war for independence, but rather believed they were defending their natural rights as Englishmen to resist misguided and corrupt government officials and representatives. With every new British assertion of authority, the colonists redoubled their activism, and the stakes got higher and higher. The colonists' faith in their sovereign, King George III, was dashed by his rejection of their appeals and his condemnation of their protests as an unlawful rebellion. Once they lost all faith in the righteousness and reason of the monarchy, the American Patriots /ptrits/ rejected it outright and set forth not only to win independence, but also to build a new kind of society in place of the old. We can list 5 causes of the American Revolution or War for Independence:
1.) the mercantilist policies of the
British government, which were exemplified by various acts for the regulation of trade and taxes. For 100 years, England had passed laws to regulate colonial trade in the interest of a mercantilist policy designed to ensure that imperial commerce benefited the mother country. These laws supposedly bound American colonists to trade only with English merchants and ship their products only in English vessels, even if the Americans could find better prices through foreign traders. Yet until 1763, the imperial government in London had allowed those laws to go largely unenforced, and the colonists had since become accustomed to a sense of self-determination during this period of so-called "salutary neglect/sljtri nlekt/. However, while Britain may have been especially powerful after the French and Indian War, it was also quite broke financially. At war's end, the British sought to recoup /rkup/ some of their costs from the Americans. The British failed to appreciate just what a century of salutary neglect had done: the colonists interpreted the new Parliamentary acts after 1763 as violations of their liberty, unacceptable infringements of their rights as free Englishmen. When British officials tried to take such freedoms away, Americans not only protested, but they began to think and speak of those freedoms as their essential rights. The oldest of these acts were the Acts of Trade and Navigation (1651) which prohibited trade between England and the colonies in other than English-owned or English-built ships and forbade the exportation of certain articles such as tobacco, sugar, cotton, to any country except England. In 1764, Parliament passed the Sugar Act, which reduced the tariff on certain imports, but levied /levid/ additional duties on sugar, wines, coffee, silks, and linens brought into the colonies from the Spanish and French West Indies. The Sugar Act was designed not only to regulate, but also to increase revenues. Its ultimate effect was to create anxiety among colonists whose economic livelihoods were substantially threatened by the new (or newly enforced) taxes and regulations: these were primarily the inhabitants of port towns along the coast. In 1765, Parliament followed up with the Stamp Act, a direct British tax on a wide variety of printed materials (everything from playing cards to court documents, land deeds, books, newspapers, and even dice). Because each of those documents had to contain the official government stamp, colonists had to pay the tax whenever they wanted to purchase any of the printed items. The Stamp Act marked a departure from all imperial regulations that preceded it, as it was the first time the British sought to gain revenues by taxing colonial commerce directly (an "internal tax") instead of regulating trade (an "external tax"). Some of these revenues were supposed to go towards the cost of stationing British troops in North America, to ensure security and stability. American colonists responded to the Stamp Act with outrage. They quickly became alarmed at the prospect of a permanent standing army in their midst. Local elites were offended by Parliament's challenge to their own authority. And a large cross-section of Americans who read books or newspapers, played cards or dice, or purchased any of the printed items specified in the Stamp Act were angered not only by the financial burden incurred, but by the principle of the matter: Parliament had directly taxed the colonists without their consent or the consent of their representatives. The Stamp Act aroused a violent storm of opposition. A mob surged /sd/ through the crooked streets of Boston and gutted /t/ the mansion of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson. From New Hampshire to Georgia the Act was flouted /flat/ (to intentionally not obey a law), the agents who sold stamps were driven from their offices, and the stamps themselves were publicly burned. The Stamp Act can be counted as the second cause of the American Revolution.
The third cause was the British
interference with the interests of land-hungry colonists. In 1763, England had issued a Royal Proclamation prohibiting colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains, in order to avoid potentially costly and protracted /prtrk.td/ (lasting for a long time) frontier wars between settlers and Indians. This, of course, angered white settlers who had already pushed into the backcountry of Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as the elite /lit/ eastern planters who had already speculated in the purchase of extensive land claims beyond the Appalachians /plenz/. Like all revolutions, the one which occurred in America between 1775 and 1781 had its ideological /adildkl/ basis, which can be named its fourth cause. Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson drew their inspiration from philosophers of the Enlightenment. John Locke is often referred to as the "intellectual godfather" of the Revolution. There is no question that his ideas had a profound influence on the movement for independence. Locke's Second Treatise on Government was a book that Thomas Jefferson read at least three times. Finally, the conflicting theories of representation and sovereignty were the fifth cause of the American Revolution . Colonial leaders believed that a true representative /reprzenttv/ must be an actual representative who lived in the district whose interests he defended. The British believed in virtual representation: according to them, every aristocrat /rstkrt/ in the empire was represented by the British nobility and every commoner by the members of the House of Commons, regardless of district location. On the issue of the sovereignty of Parliament, colonial philosophers rejected the theory of absolute sovereignty, whereas British constitutionalists had gradually come to believe that Parliament was legally omnipotent /mnptnt/. In March 1770, a company of British soldiers in Boston became panicky and opened fire on a disorderly mob. When the smoke cleared away, 4 Americans lay dead. This event became known as the Boston Massacre /mskr/. In December 1773 occurred the Boston Tea Party, when a band of citizens dressed as Indians dumped tea into the harbour in resentment against a monopoly which the British government had granted to the powerful East India Company. Britain retaliated /rtliet/ by closing the port of Boston until the tea was paid for, increasing the power of the kings officials in Massachusetts, and ordering transportation of political offenders to England for trial. The colonists referred to these measures as the Intolerable Acts. This was the breaking point and battles began. King George III condemned the colonists as a people in open and avowed /vad/ rebellion. The next time the colonists addressed the King, a Congress had been summoned and they communicated via /va//vi/ the Declaration of Independence. In this document, Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers charged George III with 27 carefully enumerated transgressions /trnzrenz/ that they felt justified their move toward independence. The Declaration was signed on July 4th 1776. When they finally and reluctantly rejected their king as a tyrant /tarnt/, the American Patriots rejected monarchy altogether, setting a course towards a radically new form of republican government. The Founding Fathers were exceptionally bright people; they were well-read and had admirable /dmrbl/ hopes and dreams. However, they were human beings, flawed /fld/ and fallible /flbl/ with their own set of contradictions and shortcomings. These same contradictions and paradoxes abounded in the republican ideology they adopted. For 18th-century republicans, a person with "virtue" owned property, possessed an intrinsic /ntrnzk/ sense of morality, and was willing to subordinate /sbdnt/ his own interests for the interests of the community. Republican government was, by design, antithetical /ntetkl/ (exactly opposite) to monarchies or aristocracies in which a rigid hierarchy /harki/ predetermined the social structure and a small number of powerful people ruled over the masses with little to no oversight. Yet, the United States utilised slave labour and denied women any direct voice in government. Republicanism was not the same as democracy. The United States was not formed as a democracy in the classic sense, and the word itself does not appear anywhere in the Constitution. Originally, a democracy was a form of government in which the citizenry directly participated in the function of government. The only time such a government ever existed was in 508 B.C. in Athens, and even then it only encompassed a democracy for males over the age of eighteen. After the Revolution, American people elected representatives to presumably /przjumbli/ speak and act on their behalf. Besides, many Founding Fathers did not want a pure democracy; they thought that some sort of executive power was necessary, along with an "upper house" of the government to serve as a sort of "buffer" between the masses and the powers that governed them. Despite these considerable restrictions, the United States became a wholly new system of government in a world primarily dominated by rigidly hierarchical, aristocratic systems. As regards, religion, the Founding Fathers decidedly broke from an Old World monarchy that was inextricably /nkstrkbli/ intertwined with its state church. Thus, they adopted a form of government that incorporated religious liberty, so that Christians, members of other faiths, and non- believers alike could fully participate as American citizens. The Constitution which now rules the United States was drafted from May to September 1787. According to this legal instrument, the government of the United States consisted of executive, legislative and judiciary branches. The people chose the members of the House of Representatives and participated in the election of the Electoral /lektrl/ College. A powerful executive was created with authority to veto acts of Congress and to use his own agents to enforce the laws. The federal Supreme /suprim/ Court had the power to nullify /nlfa/ those acts of Congress and state legislatures /ledsltrz/ in conflict with the Constitution, which was declared the supreme law of the land. How do US presidential elections work? Every four years, on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, citizens go to local voting booths to cast their vote for the next president and vice president of their country. However, the results of the popular vote are not guaranteed to stand because the presidential election is really decided by the votes of the Electoral College. The Electoral College is the process through which 538 electors come together every four years to give their official votes for President and Vice President of the United States. This number is reached by adding 435 estate Representatives, 100 Senators, and 3 electoral votes for the District of Columbia. In order to win in the Electoral College, a candidate needs 270 votes. On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, the electors meet in their respective state capitals to officially cast their votes for president and vice president. These votes are then sealed and sent to the president of the Senate, who on January 6th opens and reads the votes before both houses of Congress. The winner is sworn into office at noon on January 20th. If there is no winner in the Electoral College, the House of Representatives elects the President and the Senate elects the Vice- President. The Electoral College process was actually put in place to ensure a nationwide system of fairness. The Electoral College process (and its outcome) may seem a bit shocking. In the 2000 US presidential election, for example, more Americans voted for Al Gore, but George Bush actually won the presidency because he was awarded the majority of Electoral College votes (50,992,335 and 50,455,156 votes for each candidate, respectively.) This is a political upset that has occurred several times since the first U.S. presidential election; actually, four presidents have been elected by the Electoral College after losing the popular vote. 1 INTERESTING FACT + 1 FUN FACT When enumerating the inalienable /nelinbl/ rights of "all men," including "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson drew on a phrase from John Locke: "life, liberty, and property." Jefferson substituted the word "happiness" for "property" because he did not consider property to be an inalienable right. Besides, the belief of the time was that that property produced "happiness." Diplomat, scientist, inventor, businessman, and humourist Benjamin Franklin composed a list of some 200 synonyms for "drunk." Published at least four decades before the American Revolution, it included terms such as "soaked," "cut, "his flag is out," "middling," "been in the sun," and "cherry- merry."