The Stamp Act
—Chrissie
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In the mid-eighteenth century, the American colonies were a thriving part of the British Empire: they provided a great deal of natural resources and raw materials to England while also being a valuable market for finished goods coming from the Old World. Despite the prosperity, the colonies were in a unique position within the Empire—they were not taxed in the way that everyone else under the auspices of the British Empire were taxed. This was, in part, because of the value of what came out of the colonies; for example, the ancient and massive trees found in North America served to literally build part of the British Navy.
This situation changed after the Seven Years’ War, particularly its American theatre, better known as the French and Indian War. The British Crown had put a great deal of money, goods, and people into aiding their allies in Prussia to keep land they’d taken from Austria in the War of Austrian Succession a decade prior. This also put them in opposition to the French, who were allied with the Austrians. There was already conflict in the colonies between the French and British because both countries claimed some of the same territory. The French claims were based on their relationships with the local tribes which allowed for travel and trade, as well as a ceremonial claim over the land made at the Pageant of the Sault in 1671 which gave King Louis XIV control of the entire continent. The British claims were similarly organized, though they were based in the legal jargon of their colonial charters rather than a ceremony. It didn’t matter that neither country knew how far away the end of the continent was, nor what (and who) lay in between. In the years prior to the French and Indian War, British colonists were moving into French territory, claiming they had every right to do so. This prompted small local conflicts, but was not enough to cause a larger war between the two nations. But, when the Seven Years’ War placed the French and English on opposing sides, that warfare was brought into North America as the French and Indian War.
This war was organized and run by British officers, but fought primarily by colonial militia. These men were not professional soldiers, but volunteers who trained periodically with the idea that their actions would be for the protection of their community. They were not trained to fight as part of their monarch’s imperial ambitions, but for hearth and home. They fought for the land on which they stood, with the idea that it was their land. This mentality was a major contributing factor in the conflict between the colonies and the Crown after the war was over. With the British takeover of Montreal in September 1760, the French colonial presence was ended in North America. All that had been the colony of New France now belonged to England. They promptly made arrangements to control colonial settlement in the area, keeping a promise made to the Iroquois and other tribes that the land would not be encroached upon (yet). The Proclamation Line of 1763 allowed for travel in the lands west of the line, but not settlement. The American colonists, who had already been pushing into this territory, felt cheated. They thought of the land as theirs, citing not just the original colonial charters but also the blood they’d spilt taking the land from the French. This was one area of conflict between the Crown and its subjects.
The war had been an expensive one, leaving Britain with a great deal of debt. This coincided with a massive increase in the value of the colonies, both within themselves as well as their value to the Crown. The colonies were sufficiently prosperous that they no longer needed to be exempted from the taxes paid by everyone else in the Empire. It was time for them to contribute, even more so since they saw a direct benefit from the recent war because Britain had removed a colonial competitor. And, so, in the Autumn of 1764, the Stamp Act was passed. This placed a small tax on paper products sold in the colonies. When faced with objections, the colonies were told how much revenue was expected and given leave to collect it in any way they wanted. They refused, and the tax went into effect in November 1765. In response, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed resolutions against the Act, including a claim that the colonies were being taxed without their consent. Despite this claim, they were represented in Parliament, though not by people they had elected. This indicated a fundamental misunderstanding about the meaning of representation as it was understood by the colonists versus how it was understood by the British government.
The colonists responded to the tax collectors by building effigies and burning them. The officials feared more direct violence after some of their fellows were tarred and feathered by anti-tax mobs encouraged by the upper-class merchants and tradesmen who stood to lose the most money from the implementation of the Stamp Act. These disputes led Parliament to repeal the Act in March 1766. They took up the question of their legal ability to pass laws for the colonies without colonial representation and dealt with it by missing the point entirely. They created the Declaratory Act, which stated that Parliament had the right and responsibility to enact laws for the colonies. The issue of the debt had not been resolved, and this would contribute to more conflict, eventually leading to war. In the words of historian Harvey Kaye, there is a great irony in the fact that, by these actions the British, “instigated a series of imperial crises and accomplished what the colonists on their own could not have achieved, uniting them in rebellion.”[1]
[1] Harvey J Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America (New York: Hill and Wang Publishing, 2005) epub edition, 35.