The American Revolution was the first colonial insurrection against a metropolis wherein settler, encouraged by Enlightenment ideas coming from Europe, decided to face England in defense of their rights and interests. The thirteen British colonies in North America were divided into two groups according to the style of life they lived: the northern colonies, engaged in industry and finance, were the American equivalent of the bourgeoisie and had more important city as Boston, while in the southern colonies, the landowners had a way of semi-aristocratic life. Do not forget, however, that the vast majority of the population came from colonial marginalization English (Protestant sects, fugitives, beggars). The colonists wanted to equalize taxes and tax rates, especially on tea, from the rest of English, in addition to representation in the London Parliament.
The taxes imposed by the King to the American colonists, after the war of 1763, was the tea. It survived the American protests, which ensured that the new Parliament decrease financial burdens. He survived only to show the colonies that Parliament retained the power to impose financial burdens. Moreover and to force the colonists to pay this tax, the British reached an agreement with the East India Company, which allowed them a monopoly on tea. This meant that prices would drop it by eliminating intermediaries and made the price of this was, in 1773, the lowest in the history of the colonies. The British thought that the colonists would so buy the tea and pay tax step. However, settlers refrained from buying tea because doing so would abide, tacitly, the tax authority of the British. Thus, when the first shipment of taxed tea arrived in Boston, local leaders met to refuse entry and to see that the British insisted, a group of local Indians dressed up and attacked the boat throwing tea into the sea. This frustrated the intentions of the British to subdue the American colonists, also served to awaken and nurture the rebellious spirit of the Americans became the Boston Tea Party a catalyst for independence.
The defense of the interests of the big landowners and the more fortunate members of the colonies was the primary reason for American independence. The colonists were accustomed to a system that allowed them to manage their own finances. With this in mind, when at the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British government decided to pay its war debts with money of the colonies, the colonists saw a threat to their finances and lifestyle. Thus, events such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the tax products considered stable and part of American trade as tea, led to dissatisfaction with the crown and became catalysts emancipation movement.
The colonial elite of North America found that increased taxes by the King, in London, violated the rights acquired through the Magna Carat in 1215 and the Revolution of Cromwell. In addition, that denied the right to go to London and have representatives in the House of Commons were violating their political principles. The idea of no taxation without representation in London called for independence of the American colonists, led by Samuel Adams and the Boston Patriots became. They met in Philadelphia on September 1774 to draft a petition to King George III asking to revoke acts that threatened to punish the crown to pay its war debts.
The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 in which the existence of the United States of America was recognized. However, the end of the war did not mean the end of the fighting, and the idea of equality between men. It eventually became the starting point of numerous protests against the status quo: rights protests of the Indians, African Americans, women, Latinos. Moreover, the independence of the United States became the first independent state in the continent, but the United States did not support the subsequent revolutions in the hemisphere and, to today, it has not yet supported any revolution. It seems that the country emerged from the quintessential liberal revolution continues, 224 years later, defending the rights of its own economic, political and social system, rather than the idea of equality.
There has been a historiographical current that has tried to reduce the scope of the events in the seventies and eighties in North America to a mere political conflict following the guidelines initiated contemporary thinkers to the facts, as Edmund Burke - there are still authors they claim there is nothing in those events allowing interpret as a revolution. It was a revolution and ideological egalitarian principles and contrary to any hereditary privilege ended permeating everything, even in everyday attitudes, even though none of the founding fathers of the United States questioned the choice of classes was inevitable and that the merit Single carried each other’s wealth and penury. In addition, of course, many of these precepts not only permeated the consciousness of Americans woke illusion, but in many men, on both sides of the Atlantic, from the very time of the events.
Originality of the American Revolution continues to be a concession to the proud Euro-centrism; it is true that the ideological basis of American writers is Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau. But they were the first to implement some theoretical models, much as had been read and accepted intellectually in Europe, it took many years to descend into the realm of legal reality in most countries of the Old World. The "greatest legislators of antiquity-left writing John Adams - wish ardently live in a time when three million people were with the full power and a good opportunity to form and establish the wisest Government and happy we can arrange human intelligence. Independence, after all, the Americans provided a unique opportunity to experiment with the government. They were, in short, which captured in a Constitution principle conceived a century earlier by Locke and developed decades later by the French Enlightenment. The government must protect these fundamental rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with which man is born rights, he has no reason to be that of ensuring that these inalienable rights are not violated. However, nobody went through your head when making a casuistry of the king becomes a tyrant. The great contribution of the Americans is in the formulation and implementation of representative democracy: the people delegated sovereignty in the constituent assemblies of each State to order that one elaborate Constitution and the Government organize themselves. Until the next election, the people will not have it monitor compliance with the principles and standards; thorough and scrupulously listed in the fundamental laws, their representatives are those who must make decisions and control the Government according to the custom of their clients and constituents.
References
Craig, Campbell. 2009. “American Power Preponderance and the Nuclear Revolution.” Review of International Studies. doi:10.1017/S0260210509008316.
McDonnell, Michael A. 2006. “Class War: Class Struggles During the American Revolution in Virginia.” William and Mary Quarterly 63: 305–344.
