Were the colonist justified in declaring independence from great britain?

Question

please tell why

Answer 1

Well it is a little late any ways if it was not lol.

seriously though YES I think so very much. I wish Canada and Australia had done the same thing. We may had become one large country the USA and Canada had things gone differently when Benedict Arnold Before he was a traitor tried to take Quebec.

Had they succeeded then most of Canada would have fallen into the Colonist hands.

Why did we have the right because they were imposing taxes without representation. Remember that lesson from school as a child? No Taxation without Representation? They were taxing tea at a very high rate that it led to a group of supposed men from the Masons that dressed as Native Americans and boarded a British ship on the bay in Boston and dumped it out all over the water. Then there was the Boston Massacre where the people were protesting and British soldiers fired into the unarmed crowd and it was known as "the shot heard round the world" known as the start of the revolution in America.

England tried to dictate policies here when they really had no idea what it was like to live here. After a few generations had been born and raised there, they had no concept of loyalty to a crown, they were on the Frontiers of a new world and Natives everywhere. They wanted independence. Ironic though how the South wanted the same thing but that was a Civil war and not a revolution, yet when we fought against the British, the legitimate government of the time it was a Revolution not another civil war or unrest. I wonder why that is? I will have to ask that question here next.

I hope that helps answer some of the reasons they felt justified. It is also Ironic that all these years later England is our closest Ally!! The South still has more animosity of the North than the US does of England in general of course.

Answer 2

Representation: Ritz provided some good info but is missing the key that makes it all unapplicapable. The Americans were offered full representation in Parliament more than once and said no every time. The whole no taxation without representation did not mean no representation in Parliament at all, it meant a Parliament of their own. The goal was a Parliament in the American colonies that was equal to the one in London and that also answered only to the King. That is why the Declaration is written to the King despite all the offense being things done by Parliament-it was to show who they thought had dominion over them and who did not.

Tea: the East India Trading Company was given a monopoly in the Americas. That coincided with the increased tea tax. Even with the tax, the price controls on tea made it cheaper than it had been previously.

Unfair Taxes: The UK was horribly in debt at the time of the revolution. A huge portion of the debt came from protecting the Americans and fighting wars for them. The Americans had the lowest tax rates of anyone under the UK, including people in England.

Expansion: One big issue was the standing army in the colonies. The Americans said this was to crush them if they rebelled (cant imagine why that might be necessary...) In actuality it was to defend the colonies against Native aggression from the West. The Americans wanted to ignore the deal made between the UK (their governing body at the time) and the natives that gave them a portion o the land. The Americans wanted the army gone not for their own protection, but so that they would be free to enter the Native's land and annex it for the new America.

War: Only about 1/3 of American colonists (in the areas that did rebel) were pro-revolution. That left about 1/3 as Tories, and about 1/3 not caring. The Tories were horribly mistreated. Their land and property was seized, they were executed, their families were run out of the colonies, etc. Its a classic case of a group (usually a plurality) getting control of the swing vote and using it to oppress another group.

All-in-all it worked out well, and there were some good cases for war. However, most of the main supporters of it were really just looking out for their own self-interest, not that of the country. Many people were misled into war and many people were killed for no reason.

It was a war. Youd be hardpressed to find any war that is not just like this. All wars are justified for some, but are merely political/economic opportunities for others.

Answer 3

Well, for their good ole complaint of taxation, they did turn around pretty quickly and stick the new Americans with taxes to pay for the war expenses, then keep taxes around after the debts were paid off. And as for it being this wonderful very popular revolution, a 100,000 people left the colonies after independence was declared, most going to Canada. That happens to be the same amount of people as what served in the American military, so it was not the most popular idea. Great Britain did not want expansion into the Ohio valley at the same timetable as the colonist, so at least people like George Washington and the other "founding fathers", who wanted to push out the Indians and buy up large amounts of the new lands from the states, got what they wanted out of it.

Answer 4

No. The British did not run the thirteen colonies the same way they ran Ireland, and the American colonists didn't really have it all that bad under British rule. There already was freedom of religion and freedom of assembly, even freedom of speech as long as you didn't criticize the British Royal family, a small price to pay.

Also, I think that the British government would have handled the Indian and slavery problems better than the new U.S. government did. The British parliament was moving towards the abolition of slavery in the late 18th century and it was less inimical to the Indians because it valued Indians as partners in the fur trade which it was heavily invested in. Incidentally, the Canadians ended slavery in 1798.

Had the American colonies remained part of the British Empire there would probably never have been an organized crime problem in the U.S. like the Mafia. It's neglible in England and Canada. Nor would we be arguing over public health care today since England and Canada have public health care systems (although not managed quite as well as in the Scandinavian countries).

Perhaps, the only downside is that Americans would never have had a chance to move as far west as they did. I don't think the British would have purchased the Louisiana territory from France like Thomas Jefferson did in 1803. So American expansion westward would have ended pretty much at the Mississippi.

Answer 5

Hmmm.... Well, i'm British so its interesting to read other answers to your question, but i'll give you one from a different perspective. Which no doubt will get me many thumbs down, but here goes.

The colonists were not that justified in breaking from Britain since the claim of "no taxation without representation" doesn't exactly ring true. This is because the colonists were offered representation in Parliament a number of times by various Prime Ministers but it was THEY who DECLINED it.

The tax itself seemed quite fair since Britain had been fighting the Seven Years War and had fought the French in North America, protecting the colonists, and now its coffers were quite low. After all, this was really the first world war and it seemed only just that the Americans give a little back for Britains aid.
This tax was in fact the lowest in the British Empire. The average Briton paid £26 a year in taxes and throughout the rest of the dominions it was roughly the same, give or take a pound. In America the average colonial paid just £1 per year which was happily agreed to.

In terms of the infamous "Boston Tea Party", this was not a group of ordinary Americans protesting a the high tax on tea, but the wealthiest families in Boston angry at the British East India Co. LOWERING its tea tax. These families had achieved wealth and power through smuggling, especially smuggling tea and undercutting the East India Co. With the prices dropped they could no longer make a profit which threatened their status. Hence the Tea Party being more business damage than the first stirrings of rebellion.

This, however, leads to the arrival of East India Co. troops to protect its investment which, inevitably, leads to various rumblings about a British takeover. Combine this with Parliament censoring the colonials for their desire to claim lands that had been promised to the native American tribes (rumours then abound of Indian "atrocities" which in the eyes of the colonists gives them justification) and then the fuse is lit.
The massacre at Boston really is a case of they say-we say because most of the troops working in the name of the Crown(many of them weren't actually British) claim that they were attacked by amob,shot at first and simply returned fire. Whereas the civillians claim it was these troops that fired first (this situation was to be repeated 196 years later in Ireland).
These soldiers were tried for murder and were acquitted. They were defended by John Adams.

Really,all things considered not a great deal of justification behind the declaration of independence.

Answer 6

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I've never heard of this woman. And if she washes up in the UK, I expect she won't get very far. There may be a very few people who will fall for her spiel, but then maybe they deserve to, if they are so easily fooled and have money to waste? Most of us in the UK are still struggling through a seemingly endless recession and a Winter that just won't end; we're holed up in our houses and only going out to get the shopping. And no-one has huge amounts of money to spend on anything, let alone on some loony's "ceremonies".

Answer 7

no it was all colonial propaganda. they were making it seem like things were worse than they were in reality they were just a bunch of cry babies. the parliament fought the french and indian war to protect the american colonists and they just put taxes on them to help pay their debt. without britain, the colnists would have been nothing in my opinion.

Answer 8

She will not last long we British are good at spotting frauds okat so we might have missed a couple David Cameron Jimmie Saville but on the whole we can spot them a mile off and given we have enough of our own why do we have to import them.

Answer 9

Yes. Because of taxation without representation. Unlike India or most other British colonies, the American colonies were populated mostly by Britons. Yet they had no members of Parliament representing them, were unable to vote for MPs and had only royal governors "representing" their interests to the crown. Colonial legislatures were able to deal only with matters of local interest, and several of the colonies actually were set up as businesses to exploit the New World for the profit of their investors. (Kinda reminds you of Halliburton, doesn't it?)

Answer 10

Of course they were. Just read the Declaration of Independence. It says it all.

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/