HSTORY AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

HSTORY AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION - Essay Example As a consequence they were in desperate need to pay their debts, for which they levied a variety of taxes. The so-called Navigation Acts were perhaps the first decision of the British Parliament to be received coldly by the American Colonials. These acts, technically several of them, dated back to the 1650’s and sought to mandate that all traded goods coming from the European continent and headed for the American Colonies must first pass through Great Britain so as to ensure that British merchants would benefit from the trade. They had for decades been ignored by the Americans who, in violation of these acts, simply traded as they wished (Beard 1944, p. 91). With the ruinous debt Britain faced after 1763, the Crown sought to pay that debt by taxing the colonies. If the acts had been applied uniformly to all subjects of the British Empire, then perhaps the Americans would not have been bothered by them. The opposite was the case. â€Å"The ‘main material part’ of the Navigation Acts [was] acceptable†¦Americans were not opposed to regulations of their general commerce by Parliament, ‘providing such regulations were bona fide for the benefit of the whole Empire, not for the small advantage of one part to the great injury of another’† (Doren 1938, p. 490). That was the background. The Molasses Act of 1733 had sought to tax molasses made in the French West Indies to the benefit of the more expensive British-made variety. The Americans, many of whom themselves shipped in the illegal molasses, openly refused to obey the 1733 legislation. In 1764 Parliament passed the Sugar Act, which â€Å"reflected a shrewd effort by the ministry to balance American and British interests† (Henretta 2000, p. 149). The speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives argued that the duties on sugar constituted a tax, so that the Sugar Act was ‘contrary to a fundamental Principall of our Constitution: That all Taxes ought