The Declaration of Independence: A false Representation
During the 18th century, Britain was one of the most powerful countries in the world and being a part of the British empire, therefore, should have meant sharing in the wealth, happiness, and freedom of that empire. However, a majority of the colonists living in America at this time felt more the constraints of an overpowering mother-country than the liberty of being a part of such a wealthy empire. Towards the early 1730s and onward there was little reason for colonists to have felt rebellious; however, as time went on and more and more groups of colonists began to feel unhappy, confrontation became inevitable. Throughout the 1760s especially, many acts were passed in order to stop merchants and artisans from making money and becoming wealthy. The British empire cared very much for their trading and for that of the colonists. They wanted to stop any other European country from dominating the naval trade and in order to keep this, they had to dominate the trade of the colonies. While the merchants and villagers had compelling reasons to create a declaration and to separate from Britain, rural outlying farmers had little to no reason. From the start of the establishment of the colonies, the merchants had a hard time being
Around 1765, "American printers poured out political pamphlets, newspapers essays, broadsides, poems, sermons, songs, and doggerel" (AR 51). These groups were happy to live their lives making a small profit from the start of the colonies. The 1733 Molasses Act, duties on colonial products, and "elaborate paperwork slowed processes and therefore slowed profits for merchants in the colonies; apparently, "the purpose was not to protect producers elsewhere in the empire, it was to raise revenue" (AR 40). able to gain from the strict rules set up by British trade policies in the colonies. The British empire seemed more interested in taking money away from its colonial merchants than providing for them and thereby creating more wealth for everybody involved. From 1660 to 1672 a series of acts called the Navigation Acts created strict rules for the ways in which merchants had to do their jobs. "Any colonist who bought or sold land, became an apprentice, went to the church, married, read a newspaper, drank in a tavern, gambled, took public office, shipped good elsewhere, or went to court would feel its effects"(AR 42). Throughout much of this time, Britain would restrict the trade of the colonies to only the British empire and those within it, taking away possible profits that might have been formed with other European countries. In 1773, the Tea Act gave the East India Company a monopoly on the colonial tea trade. Due to this propaganda, spread by men who had been developing their persuasive skills for years, the farmers began to believe they were being oppressed and to see that the supposed rights they had were being denied, when in reality, they were hardly the ones being oppressed within the colonies. Not only did the merchants throughout the colonies suffer on the coasts, the artisans and villagers suffered as well. Much of the things that took struggles off the minds of the colonists were taken away. In 1774, the American economy struggled due to a ban by the Continental Congress on plays (AR 85). Like many others throughout the colonies the farmers simply followed the crowd, like sheep in a flock, and thus, the Declaration of Independence was born including people it did not truly represent. By doing this, not only did the colonies lose money through export duties, but also through the unfinishing of products.
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