Why did the American colonists fight the American Revolution?

0:05[MUSIC] My graduate advisor, John Merin in his undergraduate classes used to say, in 1760, a great Britain had a 15 game lead with 20 games left to play, there's no way they can blow this. How did they do so? Well, stick around, and said you'll find out. I think that it's counter-intuitive. It's unlike what we would expect, but the only way to understand the coming of the American Revolution is to first understand how deeply and sincerely convinced colonial Americans were that they were British and that they were loyal subjects of the British King, because to be a loyal subject of the British king by the sixth decade of the 18th century meant that you had a certain standing and certain rights, and could have certain

0:43expectations of government. The only reason they felt that they had that standing and those expectations and rights was because they were British. It was when the British came to doubt the colonial Americans, British and began to deny that access to those rights under that standard, and insist that they were something other than and less than British that American Polonius began to organize around the idea that they could not be safe any longer in British empire, but the only way that they could even understand how to articulate what was angry and what they felt that was being done to them was wrong, was to first believe that they were British and therefore were entitled to all of the things that

1:17came from what they understood to be British liberties [inaudible]. Why is it important to be British in 1760? Why would Americans or people living in there wanted to be British? The way that they would explain it is that the key benefits of being British are first that you're not French, and therefore not Catholic, that Britain is a Protestant nation and a Protestant empire, and therefore is enjoined in a great and righteous and holy war against the forces of Antichrist, represented on Earth by the Pope in Rome and the most powerful Catholic prince in, which is the King of France. That being Protestant also then went with the values that made Protestantism the only proper version of the Christian faith, that it was an

2:01open and enlightened religion of the book, not a religion of the word, of the book of understanding of comprehension, of civilization, as opposed to one of superstition and darkness and ignorance, all of which were fertile ground for despotism and oppression. Interestingly, in many ways, they saw that kind of ideal Christianity is also connected with all sorts of economic rights and property rights. The Protestants who came from open and enlightening civilized, progressive religion was also a person who then could pursue his own ideals and interests in both spiritually but also economically and material. It was Protestants, therefore, who could stress that the importance of liberty of conscious and liberty of freedom also came with

2:48the importance of liberty and freedom in general. The only way to be truly free from my potentially oppressive state is to not be dependent upon that state. The key way to not be dependent upon that state was to be able to have secure possession of your own property or your own wealth protected in the state's efforts to try and take it from, because people with their own property and their own wealth had the freedom to think for themselves, to act with themselves, and to criticize when necessary. That's where we get this very famous phrase that everybody listening to a state have heard of this idea of no taxation without representation.

3:21That was the key way in which people in Britain and in the colonies going all the way back to the 16th or 17th centuries, understood as the key way to protect their rights of [inaudible], and the thinking was that if you live in a state, if you live in a government, and the government needs to do all kinds of things that increasingly in the 17th century are becoming more expensive, it's reasonable that a government should tax that, we subjects to enjoy the benefits of the government and enjoy the protections and freedoms that government affords should contribute to the well being of that government and the way they do that is by the government taking a portion of their property and taxation and making use of it, that's what taxation is. That's

3:58what your parents are listening to when they pay taxes, they're acknowledging that the government they like to take a portion of the property to serve the broader public field. The question is how much and who gets to determine? What if a government becomes so powerful they can tax all of it to the point where you no longer have enough property to sustain your own freedom and then become right for desparative impression and that's where this notion of how to protect property becomes such a key card in the part of British liberties. The way the British they can both accept legitimate taxation, but also be safe in the property is if two things are true. One is that those who are determining how much taxes are to be

4:39paid are chosen by the taxpayers or elected benefits. The second thing is, those who are doing the taxing are required to pay the same taxes, they're requiring with other people. If you have both of those things you have taxation, can give your representation, and the taxpayers are choosing those who tax them, and with people who are doing the taxing are not expecting anyone to pay taxes, they themselves also don't have to pay. That places a limit on how much governing the tax because the taxes will be hurting themselves if they tax too much, and if the people who [inaudible] accept to bill them out. Those are cardinal ideals of British liberty, but freedom to practice the proper Christian religion of Protestantism belief and the

5:18freedom to be securing of property which go hand in hand. Those are things that the British believe in century, only their government, only their form of monarchy, not an absolutist monarchy, but a limited monarchy. It doesn't claim to be above law and above fundamental right, that only British people get to endure. It's those rights Columnists insist that they have by virtue of being British too. When it becomes clear to me over the course of the 1760s and 1770s that Britain doesn't really think that those same British rights extend to British people living in the Columnist. The things can be done to them that would be unthinkable to do to British people living in Britain. The Columnists have to think about how they best

5:59can protect their rights they thought had been protected, but now seem to no longer be. [MUSIC]