Midterm part 2

Imagine a governance beholden to corporate interests, in which private corporations write laws favoring themselves to the detriment of the multitude and small business, where the wealthiest corporations are unregulated and are evaluateed at extremely misfortunate rates while average citizens are required to foot the be of an expensive and questionable war and government imposes policies in which they have fine if any say. Imagine large chain stores moving into towns in which they toil all the smaller merchants out of business, then suck up topical anaesthetic anesthetic revenues which are sent to owners and stockholders far away, contributing virtually nonhing to the local economy.While this may sound like the last five eld of U.S. history, it was in any case true of the years leading up to the Revolution. These were the economic issues that at long last led to rebellion and ultimately, independence from Britain.Tensions betwixt the colonists began almost twenty years before rebellion finally broke out in 1775. During the cut and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years War), the British mi illuminateary was known to impress locals into combat service against their will, and confiscate what they requisite from private citizens without payment (Zinn, 67). Britain triumphed and gained territories in present-day Canada, but the cost was high. fan tans decision to the decision to tax the colonies directly was the culmination of a long authority struggle between the merchants and the shoreowners in the legislatures. The former believed that the go past should go further in insuring that the colonies served the best interests of the mother country, i.e., themselves, since much of their hold was dependent upon trade with and imports from the colonies. Eventually, these mercantilist policies were instituted, which gave the Crown an excuse to exercise greater power in the colonies than it had before.Britain meanwhile issued the Proclamation Line i n 1763, prohibiting settlement westernmost of the Allegheny and Appalachian Mountains. The official reason was to keep peace between colonists and endemical deals. In reality, it was intended to favor large corporate interests in England, allowing them to command trade with Natives as well as en scratche in land speculation.This was only the outgrowth of a series of laws favoring corporate interests over those of individuals. The following(a) year, the British government passed the Sugar be, which imposed a tax on molasses from the British West Indies as well as on several(prenominal) additional products. The purpose was to raise Crown revenues, but to the colonists, it was taxation to which they had not consented (Fone, 150).This was followed by the Stamp Act. This had a dual purpose to raise revenue, and to gag the North American press, which was circulating information regarding these increasingly repressive tax policies. This Act galvanized the resistance as a delegation s ent a petition to King George III insisting that the colonies could be taxed only by their own consent.Parliament was forced to back down, repealing both the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act. These were replaced however with high duties on glass, lead, paper, cloth and tea. The colonists responded with a ostracize which sharply reduced the number of British goods coming to the colonies and greatly pain sensation mercantile and corporate profits.Corporate interests appealed to Parliament to rescind these duties. Parliament concord to end all but one the tea leaf Tax. While tensions between Britain and its North Americas colonies were growing throughout the region for various reasons, the issue of the Tea Tax turned out to be the spark that finally lit the fuse leading to the explosion of open rebellion.What is odd is that the colonists hardly united, and descended from pluralitys that had classes and orders inborn into their culture would have ever gotten it in their minds to reb el in the first place.In fact, the colonists did not necessarily wish to break with Britain they simply treasured the rights they were entitled to as British subjects, which they believed they were world denied. However, there was a doctrine that had been around for well over a century. The basis of modern nation actually originated in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, who wrote of the social contract, and more importantly John Locke. Around 1680, he had written that government of a people has legitimacy only as long as it has consent of the people it governs, and only as long as it protected those innate, or infixed rights that every person has by virtue of being born.Locke listed these as the rights to life, freedom and quality. By the time his words found their way into the Declaration of Independence, property had become the pursuit of happiness. Lockes interpretation of the social contract scheme stated that when government failed to guard those rights and no longer had th e consent of the governed, it was the rude(a) right of the people to overthrow it. Lockes philosophies were very influential on French writers Voltaire and Rousseau whose nation was instrumental in securing the colonists mastery as well as the writings of Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin.In Common Sense a pamphlet that was circulated widely in the colonies echoed Locke when he called up upon the colonists to oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth (Foner, 4) Paine was also one of the first to point out the heterogeneous makeup of the colonies, being composed of peoples from several different nations, arguing that the birthday of a freshly world is at hand, and a race of men.Works CitedFoner, Eric. Give Me self-sufficiency An American History. New York W.W. Norton, 2006.Zinn, Howard. A Peoples History of The linked States (3rd ed.) New York HarperCollins, 2003.