WEBVTT NOTE The American Revolution: Part 1 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.960 The topic of this lecture is revolution, the American Revolution, one of the most important 2 00:00:07.960 --> 00:00:13.600 events in American history, possibly of world history. 3 00:00:13.600 --> 00:00:18.700 So far in this class we have concentrated on the natural hardships faced by the colonists 4 00:00:18.700 --> 00:00:24.080 and most especially by the difficulties that they faced from British mercantilism. 5 00:00:24.080 --> 00:00:32.000 The reality however is that the colonists were remarkably successful, resourceful and prosperous. 6 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:39.120 The population was growing, people were living longer, they were more likely to own their 7 00:00:39.120 --> 00:00:42.600 own land than anywhere else in the world. 8 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:47.280 They built houses, they built towns, they built cities, they established trade routes 9 00:00:47.280 --> 00:01:17.280 and they achieved a high standard of living by the mid 1750s. Americans had the third largest merchant fleet in the world and it was a relatively peaceful time living under the protection of the British Empire and they possessed the legal framework in their society that protected their property rights and they had the rights of English citizens which were cherished and the envy of the people of the world. 10 00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:20.080 of the World. 11 00:01:20.080 --> 00:01:28.660 Given that British mercantilist policies were hard to enforce or did not really harm the 12 00:01:28.660 --> 00:01:38.160 colonists that much, it is puzzling to many why Americans ever revolted in the first place. 13 00:01:38.160 --> 00:01:44.040 After all, taxes were low, interference was low, and the protection provided by the British 14 00:01:44.040 --> 00:01:56.840 with the parliament under the control of the Pelhamite Whigs such as the Duke of Newcastle, 15 00:01:56.840 --> 00:02:03.720 Henry Pelham himself and Robert Walpole, the American colonies were governed under a policy 16 00:02:03.720 --> 00:02:09.640 of what is referred to as salutary neglect. 17 00:02:09.640 --> 00:02:15.480 They were largely left alone except when they did something stupid or if they were engaging 18 00:02:15.480 --> 00:02:23.240 in self-destructive activities such as inflation, when one colony started inflating and another 19 00:02:23.240 --> 00:02:28.720 colony would inflate and there would just be more and more competitive inflation of 20 00:02:28.720 --> 00:02:34.080 one colony against the other, the crown would step in or the parliament would step in and 21 00:02:34.080 --> 00:02:41.080 Pass a Law, basically saying you're not allowed to print money anymore. 22 00:02:41.080 --> 00:02:45.040 So under that kind of system where they were being left alone except in cases where they 23 00:02:45.040 --> 00:02:52.800 were doing something that was self-destructive, especially between 1720 and 1750, the colonies 24 00:02:52.800 --> 00:02:59.360 were de facto independent or they were virtually independent. 25 00:02:59.360 --> 00:03:03.400 They were essentially governing themselves. 26 00:03:03.400 --> 00:03:08.600 So given the realities of the situation, we really do need to answer the question, why 27 00:03:08.600 --> 00:03:12.560 did the colonists revolt? 28 00:03:12.560 --> 00:03:18.760 Well first of all, wars and revolutions are political acts, and these political acts are 29 00:03:18.760 --> 00:03:22.640 usually triggered by other political acts. 30 00:03:22.640 --> 00:03:30.440 However, the reasons and the results of these political acts ultimately do have economic 31 00:03:30.440 --> 00:03:32.880 motivations behind them. 32 00:03:32.880 --> 00:03:39.280 Therefore to understand these political acts it is vital to understand the economic motivations 33 00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:42.120 that lie behind them. 34 00:03:42.120 --> 00:03:48.600 So I want to start here first of all looking at the old colonial policy where the colonies 35 00:03:48.600 --> 00:03:57.480 were established at a time when the monarchy in Great Britain was really dominant. 36 00:03:57.480 --> 00:04:01.360 The colonists were English citizens. 37 00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:09.940 They had English rights and they enjoyed the English system of property, law and justice. 38 00:04:09.940 --> 00:04:15.200 And of course that's a very fundamental background for any kind of economic activity and economic 39 00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:18.480 growth to take hold. 40 00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:26.240 You have to have the right to your property, the access to a legal system which provides 41 00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:46.160 Under the old colonial policy, the colonists really shared power with the Crown, and did 42 00:04:46.160 --> 00:04:51.000 much of the governing of the colonies themselves. 43 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:56.520 The colonists controlled the lower house of government, including legislation involving 44 00:04:56.520 --> 00:05:03.120 the purse strings or things of the nature of taxes and expenditures. 45 00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:10.560 The lower house, and they had different names, but basically similar to our House of Representatives 46 00:05:10.560 --> 00:05:17.720 or the British House of Commons, these are branches of the government that are elected 47 00:05:17.720 --> 00:05:25.720 Directly by the People, Whereas the Crown or the King appointed the Governor of the 48 00:05:25.720 --> 00:05:33.440 Colonies, and of course all the states have governors now, but the King appointed the 49 00:05:33.440 --> 00:05:42.520 Governor and most of the time the appointees were sympathetic to the wishes of the colonists. 50 00:05:42.520 --> 00:05:48.840 The upper house was also appointed by the king or the crown, but they were usually appointed 51 00:05:48.840 --> 00:05:53.740 people who were the colonists themselves. 52 00:05:53.740 --> 00:05:56.860 During this period, government was small. 53 00:05:56.860 --> 00:05:59.920 The British took care of the national defense. 54 00:05:59.920 --> 00:06:03.440 They provided the soldiers and the ships. 55 00:06:03.440 --> 00:06:04.440 Taxes were low. 56 00:06:04.440 --> 00:06:08.960 The Americans were taxed roughly 20 to 25 percent of what English citizens in Great 57 00:06:08.960 --> 00:06:11.680 Britain were taxed. 58 00:06:11.680 --> 00:06:16.160 The British Empire cost a lot of money to run. 59 00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:24.740 Government was much bigger in Britain and the cost of maintaining that empire fell heavily 60 00:06:24.740 --> 00:06:26.460 on the British citizens. 61 00:06:26.460 --> 00:06:32.480 The colonists had a much smaller government and much lower taxes. 62 00:06:32.480 --> 00:06:38.000 The Navigation Acts, which we've discussed, were generally considered reasonable for most 63 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:39.360 of this period. 64 00:06:39.360 --> 00:06:42.480 The colonists were exempt from restrictions on building ships. 65 00:06:42.480 --> 00:06:49.440 They were exempt from being involved with the trade between the colonies and England. 66 00:06:49.440 --> 00:06:54.960 They were also given special exemptions from the Navigation Acts, such as the right to 67 00:06:54.960 --> 00:06:59.120 export rice directly to Southern Europe. 68 00:06:59.120 --> 00:07:06.100 So that in this case it was, if the colonists had to export rice to Great Britain and then 69 00:07:06.100 --> 00:07:09.860 and have it re-exported to Southern Europe. 70 00:07:09.860 --> 00:07:14.820 Their rice wouldn't have been a competitive product and it wouldn't have sold, but the 71 00:07:14.820 --> 00:07:20.420 colonists got a special exemption so they could ship the rice directly from the colonies 72 00:07:20.420 --> 00:07:24.180 to the wholesale buyers in Southern Europe. 73 00:07:24.180 --> 00:07:31.660 So by that exemption, their rice business was able to thrive, otherwise it would have 74 00:07:31.660 --> 00:07:35.140 been stymied. 75 00:07:35.140 --> 00:07:43.500 The Navigation Acts were not, therefore, a major distortion for the colonial economy. 76 00:07:43.500 --> 00:07:51.580 The colonists didn't have many comparative advantages in manufacturing anyways. 77 00:07:51.580 --> 00:07:58.180 Their comparative advantage was almost entirely in terms of the production of agricultural 78 00:07:58.180 --> 00:08:20.500 The Colonists would have traded with Britain, even if there were no Navigation Acts. 79 00:08:20.500 --> 00:08:25.540 They were English citizens, they had ties to England. 80 00:08:25.540 --> 00:08:32.340 England was very close in terms of Europe to the colonies, so they would have traded 81 00:08:32.340 --> 00:08:37.420 a great deal with England even if there were no Navigation Acts. 82 00:08:37.420 --> 00:08:47.660 And even with all that, if there were a stringent aspect of the Navigation Acts or any real 83 00:09:17.660 --> 00:09:24.700 of British policy, or of simply resorting to manufacturing their own goods rather than 84 00:09:24.700 --> 00:09:26.100 buying from the British. 85 00:09:26.100 --> 00:09:32.140 So if British mercantilist policy was too stringent, they would just simply ignore it. 86 00:09:32.140 --> 00:09:39.380 Okay, now as we get further into the colonial period and closer to the revolution, we encounter 87 00:09:39.380 --> 00:09:48.220 after a new colonial policy, which is where England is less under the control of the monarch 88 00:09:48.220 --> 00:09:54.700 or the king or the crown and more under the control of democracy or the parliament. 89 00:09:54.700 --> 00:10:00.100 The king controlled England when the colonies were founded, but there was a transfer of 90 00:10:00.100 --> 00:10:04.180 power from the crown to the parliament around 1690. 91 00:10:04.180 --> 00:10:10.420 Of course, as I said, the English people were heavily taxed. 92 00:10:10.420 --> 00:10:20.860 They were gaining opposition to the cost of this empire building by Great Britain. 93 00:10:20.860 --> 00:10:28.260 And so there was a lot of infighting and ultimately a transfer of power from the Crown to Parliament. 94 00:10:28.260 --> 00:10:36.580 The parliament had, instead of the king's ministers, the parliament had a privy council 95 00:10:36.580 --> 00:10:42.420 which was charged with reviewing all legislation passed in the colonies and this privy council 96 00:10:42.420 --> 00:10:48.980 would of course delay the legislation from going into effect because they had to review 97 00:10:48.980 --> 00:10:55.220 it and they could extend that delay if they wanted to and they could even veto laws that 98 00:10:55.220 --> 00:11:11.500 In the old colonial policy, the king answered to all English subjects. 99 00:11:11.500 --> 00:11:18.060 The king viewed all people living under his realm to be his subjects, so he was interested 100 00:11:18.060 --> 00:11:21.780 in all of their interests. 101 00:11:21.780 --> 00:11:27.520 But the Parliament only answered to the voters in England itself. 102 00:11:27.520 --> 00:11:33.060 We didn't have any representatives in Parliament, so Parliament's focus was more on the English 103 00:11:33.060 --> 00:11:37.380 people themselves rather than the colonists. 104 00:11:37.380 --> 00:11:43.320 And now Parliament was in charge of passing laws on the colonies, and they had a bureaucratic 105 00:11:43.320 --> 00:11:47.740 structure to monitor and enforce their will. 106 00:11:47.740 --> 00:11:54.860 government under certain administrations wanted very strict enforcement of its will and its 107 00:11:54.860 --> 00:12:03.860 officials often resorted to very punitive actions precisely at the wrong place and time. 108 00:12:03.860 --> 00:12:14.840 And this change in the monitoring structure of the colonies caused the atmosphere to change 109 00:12:14.840 --> 00:12:21.880 Change from one of freedom in the colony to one of bitterness. 110 00:12:21.880 --> 00:12:29.040 There's a building process in this change in atmosphere and there's a series of events. 111 00:12:29.040 --> 00:12:34.520 It's a rolling series of British actions, American reactions. 112 00:12:34.520 --> 00:12:43.160 What I'm going to do is to fold up all of these events and this legislation into what's 113 00:12:43.160 --> 00:12:49.140 categorizes the three crises leading up to the American Revolution. 114 00:12:49.140 --> 00:12:55.000 The first crises centers around the French and Indian War, or what was called the Seven 115 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:58.400 Years War in Europe. 116 00:12:58.400 --> 00:13:04.960 In this war, where the British were able to defeat the French and Indian combination in 117 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:12.500 the West, and where Britain gained control of the area west of the Appalachians, they 118 00:13:12.500 --> 00:13:19.260 They gained control of Canada and also of Florida, a major expansion of the British 119 00:13:19.260 --> 00:13:22.500 Empire. 120 00:13:22.500 --> 00:13:29.100 But this was seen by the British as an act of protecting the colonies. 121 00:13:29.100 --> 00:13:36.980 But the colonists, who were often soldiers and people who helped the British during the 122 00:13:36.980 --> 00:13:43.300 in the war, saw it as them helping the British protect the Empire. 123 00:13:43.300 --> 00:13:52.620 So it was a victory but both the British government and the American colonists saw it as sort 124 00:13:52.620 --> 00:13:58.900 of as their victory and they wanted some kind of payoff and the Americans wanted the payoff 125 00:13:58.900 --> 00:14:08.900 of Being Able to Move into the Western Lands as New Settlements of Fertile Land Areas to Settle 126 00:14:08.900 --> 00:14:13.900 The British wanted to lower the cost of their defense. 127 00:14:13.900 --> 00:14:23.900 The military cost of the empire was large, growing, and the British citizens were bitter about all that. 128 00:14:23.900 --> 00:14:30.740 and so in order to limit the cost of defense the British wanted to limit 129 00:14:30.740 --> 00:14:36.220 settlers from going into the land west of the Appalachian Mountains so they had 130 00:14:36.220 --> 00:14:43.540 a proclamation line of 1763 along the Appalachian Mountains which would prevent 131 00:14:43.540 --> 00:14:51.100 settlement west of the mountains the Ohio River Valley for example and by 132 00:14:51.100 --> 00:14:55.420 by preventing new settlements that meant that they wouldn't have to build forts and station 133 00:14:55.420 --> 00:14:57.620 troops to the west. 134 00:14:57.620 --> 00:14:59.780 So that would reduce their cost. 135 00:14:59.780 --> 00:15:04.340 And they also wanted to increase revenues by taxing the colonists. 136 00:15:04.340 --> 00:15:07.660 And so they're really stepping in here. 137 00:15:07.660 --> 00:15:15.380 In 1764, they passed the Sugar Act, which taxed non-British sugar from the West Indies. 138 00:15:15.380 --> 00:15:22.660 So if Americans wanted to buy French sugar and import it into the colonies in order to 139 00:15:22.660 --> 00:15:33.100 make rum and also for use of sugar itself, they would have to pay a higher tax and they 140 00:15:33.100 --> 00:15:39.500 were getting a good deal from the French in terms of buying sugar from the French sugar 141 00:15:39.500 --> 00:15:44.020 colonies which were more efficient than the British at this time. 142 00:15:44.020 --> 00:15:50.580 And so by adding the tax, it meant that Americans were going to pay a higher price of sugar, 143 00:15:50.580 --> 00:15:53.420 which of course we still do today. 144 00:15:53.420 --> 00:15:58.700 The Sugar Act also added to the list of goods Americans could not trade overseas and it 145 00:15:58.700 --> 00:16:01.740 increased the burdens of tariffs. 146 00:16:01.740 --> 00:16:08.140 In 1765, the parliament passed the Stamp Act, the famous Stamp Act. 147 00:16:08.140 --> 00:16:12.940 This was a revenue tax that required a stamp be placed on all paper documents. 148 00:16:12.940 --> 00:16:22.240 So if you wanted a will or a contract drawn up, you would have to buy a particular stamp 149 00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:28.340 and have it affixed to that document or otherwise you could supposedly get in trouble. 150 00:16:28.340 --> 00:16:33.340 But you also had to have stamps on newspapers and on playing cards, virtually any kind of 151 00:16:33.340 --> 00:16:39.880 paper document you had to have a stamp and you had to pay for the stamp with gold or 152 00:16:39.880 --> 00:16:46.880 for Silver Coins and that money was sent back to Great Britain. 153 00:16:46.900 --> 00:16:53.900 This infuriated the colonists like the Sugar Act. Benjamin Franklin said that this was 154 00:16:55.320 --> 00:17:02.320 an invalid tax because it was an internal tax. Both English citizens and American colonists 155 00:17:02.320 --> 00:17:10.000 Americans and American columnists viewed internal taxes as illegitimate. 156 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:16.960 That the Crown, especially from England, would place an internal tax and internal taxes would 157 00:17:16.960 --> 00:17:23.840 be on the buying and selling of goods or a tax on labor, like the income tax, they viewed 158 00:17:23.840 --> 00:17:29.840 that as an illegitimate tax and the only kind of taxes that the government was able 159 00:17:29.840 --> 00:17:40.000 to raise was an external tax where the government put a tax on imports or exports so the government 160 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:46.920 was protecting the border so they were allowed to tax at the border in order to provide for 161 00:17:46.920 --> 00:17:57.640 that defense but internal taxes were basically off limits unless it was a special situation 162 00:17:57.640 --> 00:18:03.640 For more money needed to be raised for emergency purposes, you could impose temporary internal 163 00:18:03.640 --> 00:18:04.640 taxes. 164 00:18:04.640 --> 00:18:06.640 But other than that, people didn't like this idea. 165 00:18:06.640 --> 00:18:10.720 Well, the British didn't like Franklin's argument either. 166 00:18:10.720 --> 00:18:15.760 But there was also the famous no taxation without representation argument that the colonists 167 00:18:15.760 --> 00:18:19.240 raised. 168 00:18:19.240 --> 00:18:23.360 After all, Americans were being taxed and they had no say so in it. 169 00:18:23.360 --> 00:18:30.080 The history of the colonies had been that American colonies themselves and the lower 170 00:18:30.080 --> 00:18:34.520 house of the colonial government would impose the taxes. 171 00:18:34.520 --> 00:18:39.560 They would vote on it and the representatives of the people would vote on those taxes. 172 00:18:39.560 --> 00:18:46.560 So there was a long standing tradition in England and in the colonies that if you were 173 00:18:46.560 --> 00:18:53.000 going to be taxed you would have representation and the colonists were clearly not represented 174 00:18:53.000 --> 00:19:00.560 in the Stamp Act or the Sugar Act. They were being taxed by somebody else's representatives. 175 00:19:00.560 --> 00:19:09.780 This Stamp Act really irked professions like lawyers, editors, writers and printers because 176 00:19:09.780 --> 00:19:16.960 all of their production basically was being taxed. Most importantly, these are the type 177 00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:25.420 of People, lawyers, editors, writers, printers, who were very important in organizing a group 178 00:19:25.420 --> 00:19:31.960 and a movement organizing in opposition to the tax. 179 00:19:31.960 --> 00:19:38.880 So in response to that, Americans boycotted English goods so that they formed official 180 00:19:38.880 --> 00:19:46.240 boycotts, very successful in most of the colonies, not all, but the fact that Americans weren't 181 00:19:46.240 --> 00:20:11.960 The Colonists made their own houses and they made their own food and they grew their own 182 00:20:11.960 --> 00:20:13.600 food. 183 00:20:13.600 --> 00:20:22.080 When it came to bread and beer and rum and meat, vegetables, they were producing all 184 00:20:22.080 --> 00:20:24.080 of their own stuff. 185 00:20:24.080 --> 00:20:28.840 They could put off the buying of English goods, but the English merchants weren't too happy 186 00:20:28.840 --> 00:20:29.840 about that. 187 00:20:29.840 --> 00:20:40.440 So parliament ultimately backed down and reduced or eliminated the negative aspects of both 188 00:20:40.440 --> 00:21:06.440 The Second Crisis Follows Directly on the Heels of the First World War 189 00:21:10.440 --> 00:21:17.320 The First Crisis, and it consists of things like the Quartering Act of 1765, and you'll 190 00:21:17.320 --> 00:21:22.880 all note that this is very much related to the Third Amendment to the Constitution, the 191 00:21:22.880 --> 00:21:31.160 Third Bill of Rights, which prevents the quartering of soldiers in private homes. 192 00:21:31.160 --> 00:21:34.480 We think to ourselves, what's up with that? 193 00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:35.480 When does that ever occur? 194 00:21:35.480 --> 00:21:42.720 It occurred back just prior to the American Revolution where Britain required the colonies 195 00:21:42.720 --> 00:21:47.760 to pay for the upkeep of all the soldiers stationed in the colony. 196 00:21:47.760 --> 00:21:54.820 So they had to pay for the food, clothing and shelter of British soldiers and this often 197 00:21:54.820 --> 00:22:01.060 meant that British soldiers were allowed to stay in inns and saloons, public buildings 198 00:22:01.060 --> 00:22:05.660 and even private houses. 199 00:22:05.660 --> 00:22:09.700 And so this is something that the colonies were upset about. 200 00:22:09.700 --> 00:22:15.660 More troops began being stationed in the colonies, both because of the opposition and because 201 00:22:15.660 --> 00:22:21.520 the law basically said, you know, if you ship some soldiers over to the American colonies, 202 00:22:21.520 --> 00:22:22.520 you don't have to pay for them. 203 00:22:22.520 --> 00:22:27.420 So, you know, you see a natural tendency for the British to want to send more soldiers 204 00:22:27.420 --> 00:22:34.380 because of the the opposition that Americans had been to their policy as 205 00:22:34.380 --> 00:22:39.100 well as the fact that we are forcing them to pay for the cost and also the 206 00:22:39.100 --> 00:22:47.700 Townsend duties which in 1767 raised the taxes on imports and a wide variety of 207 00:22:47.700 --> 00:22:53.580 goods and they also greatly increased enforcement with more bureaucrats an 208 00:22:53.580 --> 00:23:02.860 An Army of Bureaucrats, New Courts with Bigger Budgets to Officiate Over Lawbreakers, and 209 00:23:02.860 --> 00:23:11.580 also allowing the issue of search warrants, of course another topic that's fairly timely, 210 00:23:11.580 --> 00:23:18.100 but easier access to search warrants so that British officials could search private homes, 211 00:23:18.100 --> 00:23:26.420 Private Businesses, warehouses for the possibility of illegally imported goods or goods that 212 00:23:26.420 --> 00:23:40.660 hadn't been taxed. Americans rebelled here with both boycotts and mob violence. For example, 213 00:23:40.660 --> 00:23:50.580 They would kidnap a British official or a customs agent of the British government and 214 00:23:50.580 --> 00:23:56.160 lock them up in some building and a ship would come into harbor, the goods would be offloaded, 215 00:23:56.160 --> 00:24:01.540 they would be sent either to a warehouse or to the interior of the country and once the 216 00:24:01.540 --> 00:24:08.780 ship was safely out of sight, the customs official would be released. 217 00:24:08.780 --> 00:24:11.460 This was something the British didn't appreciate. 218 00:24:11.460 --> 00:24:15.220 More soldiers were brought in to protect the agents. 219 00:24:15.220 --> 00:24:18.780 The soldiers were, of course, harassed. 220 00:24:18.780 --> 00:24:20.780 They were not welcome. 221 00:24:20.780 --> 00:24:28.420 Ultimately, this led to the Boston Massacre in 1770, where a group of soldiers who were 222 00:24:28.420 --> 00:24:33.780 marching through Boston were being heckled and rotten tomatoes were being thrown at them 223 00:24:33.780 --> 00:24:34.780 and so on and so forth. 224 00:24:34.780 --> 00:24:44.460 and the British soldiers opened fire on this unarmed mob of town citizens and several of 225 00:24:44.460 --> 00:24:53.180 them were shot, many of them were injured and a couple of them actually died during 226 00:24:53.180 --> 00:25:01.420 this massacre and of course as a result of all of this opposition of the new boycotts 227 00:25:01.420 --> 00:25:10.780 against British Goods, the harassing of the soldiers, the harassing of the customs officials, 228 00:25:10.780 --> 00:25:17.200 the British again backed down because English merchants had to sell it to the American market 229 00:25:17.200 --> 00:25:18.200 or go bankrupt. 230 00:25:18.200 --> 00:25:27.540 So once again, the Americans were successful with not open revolution but of these voluntary 231 00:25:27.540 --> 00:25:36.020 Boycotts of British Goods and the heckling of the soldiers and so on and so forth to 232 00:25:36.020 --> 00:25:39.740 basically get parliament to back down. 233 00:25:39.740 --> 00:25:45.980 And we'll bring this lecture to a close, but you can see we're building to this process 234 00:25:45.980 --> 00:25:53.100 where parliament is acting more and more belligerent to the colonies. 235 00:25:53.100 --> 00:26:01.020 We're trying to figure out a way to start exploiting these colonies. 236 00:26:01.020 --> 00:26:08.380 Under the old parliaments and the crown, the colonies were able to survive through this 237 00:26:08.380 --> 00:26:14.860 process of salutary neglect and other ways of evading the negative effects of British 238 00:26:14.860 --> 00:26:16.700 mercantilism. 239 00:26:16.700 --> 00:26:24.960 But after 1750, as we get into the 1760s, you see that parliament is trying to somehow 240 00:26:24.960 --> 00:26:28.900 exploit the colonies for additional revenues. 241 00:26:28.900 --> 00:26:33.020 And we'll pick it up with a third crisis in the Boston Tea Party in the next lecture.