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The Failure of Conciliation: Britain and the American Colonies 1763-1783The Kyoto Economic Review
Vol. 79, No. 2 [167] [December 2010]
, pp. 2-20 [19 pages]
Published By: Kyoto University
//www.jstor.org/stable/43213389
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Journal Information
To revive the innovative spirit of its founders, starting 2004, The Kyoto University Economic Review will become an open refereed journal and its name will be slightly altered to The Kyoto Economic Review [hereafter, KER]. KER was founded in 1926 as the first Japanese economic journal in Western languages.
Publisher Information
Since its foundation in 1897, Kyoto University has worked to cultivate academic freedom under a spirit of self-reliance and self-respect, and to open up new horizons in creative scholarly endeavor. The university has also sought to contribute to peaceful coexistence across the global community.
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Why did the colonists rebel and the British resist? | Previous | Next |
Digital History ID 3216 |
At the same time, Britain feared that if it lost the American colonies, it would lose the entire British Empire. In 1776, Britain did not have 13 New World colonies, it had 30. The American Revolution raised the specter of the loss of Ireland and the British West Indies.
The Complexity of the American Revolution
A defining characteristic of the American Revolution is its complexity. The American war for independence was partly a product of the colonists' sense of a distinctive identity as inhabitants of a republican society. But the revolution also helped to nurture a sense of a uniquely American identity. The Revolution was a colonial war for independence, but it was also a struggle over "who would rule at home."
The struggle for American independence was led by prominent lawyers, merchants, and planters. But the Revolution's success ultimately depended on the willingness of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans to risk their lives and economic well-being in the patriot cause. The Revolution represented a conservative effort to preserve liberties that British policies seemed to threaten. But the Revolution was accompanied by social and intellectual transformations that fundamentally altered the nature of American politics and involved ordinary people in politics to an unprecedented degree.
The Revolution was truly multifaceted. There was a rebellion of the colonial gentry against British aristocrats who refused to accept them as equals and who viewed them with condescension. There was also a rebellion by merchants and shippers who chafed at British trade restrictions and royal monopolies. There was a conservative revolution, which sought to defend traditional liberties against British encroachments. There was a radical revolution, inspired by the call for liberty and equality in the Declaration of Independence, which sought to create a society that could serve as a model of freedom for the rest of the world.
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