Submitted by AutoModerator t3_zbfpun in history
TheGreatOneSea t1_iz7emdr wrote
Reply to comment by Exoticrobot22 in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator
The Americans were rooted in British culture, but had very much become their own nation, if not their own state, in the roughly 150 years of the first permanent settlements:
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The Americans had their own view of who was gentry (or who could vote, basically,) and this was massively more broad than what the British would ever accept.
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The Americans saw fighting in war as a patriotic demonstration, which was not a sentiment shared by British officers.
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The fighting with the natives was far more personal to the Americans than anyone from Britian.
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The British saw the American colonies as insignificant compared money sinks compared to the deeply lucrative colonies elsewhere.
5.1 Because gold and silver were so rare, bank notes backed by land and debts were practically the backbone of the American economy. This became a major issue when the British banks allowed borrowers to overleverage, as they passed laws to reduce the quantity of American notes, and bar their use as payment, while also reducing speice sent to America.
5.2 Needless to say, combining deflation with the mercantilist policies led to disaster dominos, since Spanish currency was even more common than British money before this, so increasing the imbalance further would almost certainly benefit those who were already breaking British laws.
- Americans also had a tradition of getting what they wanted by rioting at this point, so the British decision to give their governors the soldiers they would actually need to prevent this came far too late.
So basically, there were a LOT of cultural differences by the time of the revolution.
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