American Revolution?

Question

How did great brittain act as a hegemon during the 18th century??

Answer 1

Comparatively speaking, the American colonists did not have it all that bad under British rule. The British did not run the American colonies the same way they ran Ireland. Freedom of relgion and freedom of assembly were allowed, and freedom of speech was allowed too as long as you did not criticize the King and Queen.

What's more, it was actually the rich American colonists who revolted against Britain and not the poor and middle-class ones; the complete opposite of the French Revolution where the revolutionaries were mostly poor and lower middle class people who were constantly threatened with the possibility of starvation.

Nevertheless, many American colonists did not like British laws which prohibited manuafacturing in the American colonies and required that all manuafactured goods be made in England. They felt that it was cheaper to make clothes from cotton or farm tools from iron ore at home rather than to ship the cotton and the iron ore to England and have it made there, and sent all the way back to America. Wealthy merchants in the northern colonies saw a lot more money to be made if manufacturing could be done in the colonies.

Then, there was the slavery issue too. Southern white colonists were very conservative and wanted to keep slavery. They may have sensed that Great Britain was slowly on the road to abolishing slavery. In fact, Daniel Dafoe, the author of "Robinson Crusoe" critized the inhumane way slaves were being treated in the American South in the "London Times" as early as the 1720's. Not too long after the American Revolution, in 1798, Canada, still a British colony, abolished slavery and freed its Black slaves most of whom lived in Novia Scotia. On the other hand, white slave owners in the newly independent United States would try to hold on to slavery right up to 1861.

Answer 2

"Brennus" needs to do a lot more research! Wasn't quite so pleasant trying to live under British rule. Where does he think the First Ten Amendments to the Constitution, The Bill of Rights, came from? The Congressmembers/people of the newly formed United States would not accept the Constitution without them! Read them, think about it- and then you'd understand exactly why our ancestors fought such a hard long war; and realize what was really important to them!