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No revolution, of course, can be fully exported. A vast array of factors that include the political and social backgrounds of a people will shape the precise course of any and all revolutions. So it was in America, where the colonists were not an alien people with a culture very different from that of the motherland. They were for the most part British in origin, English-speaking, Protestant, rural, and agrarian in their principal characteristics. They were proud of their Anglo-Saxon heritage and of the empire of which they were a part--proud, too, of the role they had played in helping to seize Canada and to crush French power in North America in the FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR (known as the SEVEN YEARS\' WAR in Europe), which ended in 1763.
At that time the colonists gave little thought to cutting loose from their imperial moorings. They considered the British political system the best in Europe, noted for its equilibrium between King, Lords, and Commons assembled in Parliament. They imported British books, furniture, and clothing; wealthy planters and merchants imitated the manners of the English aristocracy. Even with the restrictions imposed on their external trade by the NAVIGATION ACTS--or perhaps because of them--they had prospered in their direct economic intercourse with Britain, the most industrialized country in Europe. Nor was their trade rigidly confined; they were also permitted to sell an assortment of valuable products such as grain, flour, and rice on non-British markets in the West Indies and in southern Europe.
In 1763 the colonists were an expanding and maturing people; their numbers had reached a million and a half, and they were doubling every quarter of a century--multiplying like rattlesnakes, as Benjamin Franklin said. If most provincials were sons of the soil, Americans could nonetheless boast of five urban centers, \"cities in the wilderness\"--Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Charleston, and Newport. The cities served as filters through which new ideas of the European Enlightenment entered the colonies, helping to generate an inquisitive spirit about humankind and the total environment. Newspapers and colleges in the cities and towns served as disseminators of the thought and culture of what was truly an Atlantic civilization. A new mobility, together with a receptivity to new ideas, was a hallmark of American society. It came about because of high wages, cheap land, and an absence of legal privilege. Americans were--except for their African slaves--one of the freest people in the world. Another sign of that freedom was their almost complete control over their internal political and domestic affairs, exercised largely through their popularly elected lower houses of assembly, which in turn served as nurturing ground for such future Revolutionary leaders as John ADAMS, John DICKINSON, Thomas JEFFERSON, and George WASHINGTON.
Although the colonists had reached a high level of maturity, there was not at mid-century a meaningful American nationalism. The life and institutions of the parent state continued to provide the central focus of colonial culture. The word American appeared infrequently; people were more likely to describe themselves as English or British, or as Virginians or Pennsylvanians. Nor did the provincials display a marked degree of intercolonial cooperation; their own rivalries and jealousies over boundaries, western land claims, and military contributions in the imperial wars all tended to retard American national feeling, as may be seen in the rejection of the Plan of Union presented by Benjamin FRANKLIN to the ALBANY CONGRESS in 1754.
Nothing, however, unites a people like a commonly perceived threat to their way of life; and after 1763 the colonists felt endangered within the empire. There is a real irony in the way the American Revolution began, for the very elements that had wedded the colonists to the mother country--especially their political and economic freedoms--were viewed in London as signs that Britain had lost control of its transatlantic dominions, that the colonists were fast heading down the road to full autonomy or absolute independence. Those sentiments, growing steadily in the 18th century, crystallized during the French and Indian War when British officials complained that Americans cooperated poorly in raising men and supplies and in providing quarters for British troops, to say nothing of trading illegally with the enemy and generating friction with western Indians over land and trade goods.
Whatever the truth of these charges--and they were partly true, if exaggerated--it was not unreasonable after 1763 for Britain to ask more of its prosperous dependencies. Britain\'s heavy national debt and concurrent tax burdens stemmed partly at least from a series of 18th-century wars that were fought to some extent for the defense of the colonies. Nor was it wrong to argue that a measure of reorganization in American administration would lead to greater economy and efficiency in imperial management. But Britain embarked upon this course with a lack of sensitivity, ignoring the concerns of its maturing subjects, who were scarcely the children they had once been.
In short, Britain\'s state of mind (meaning that of its rulers and the parliamentary majority) corresponded to its lofty status as the superpower of Europe in 1763. It was said that the Pax Romana would pale in comparison with the Pax Britannica, which would bring a \"prosperity and glory unknown to any former age.\" Britain no longer felt a need for its former allies in Europe. For what nation could now threaten it? It no longer required the goodwill of its colonies, for France had ceased to be a threat to the thirteen colonies, whose men and other resources--although Britain scarcely admitted it--had in fact aided the British victory in 1763.
Britain\'s was a mentality unable to appreciate the aims and aspirations of its colonial people. Superpowers, all too often, are not much given to introspection, to questioning their values and assumptions. And it had been a long time since the British themselves had felt their liberties threatened, either by a foreign danger or by internal menace from a tyrannical ruler. Thus, when Britain adopted a new imperial program, the colonists were never meaningfully consulted. Furthermore, Britain\'s tactics could hardly avoid arousing the Americans. Having left the colonies virtually alone for decades with a de facto attitude of \"salutary neglect,\" the London government now attempted too much too quickly.
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