Causes of the American Revolution

Following the conclusion of the Seven Years War, the British Empire was faced with insurmountable challenges to eliminate massive debt that was accumulated over the course of the war. The combination of debt accrued from the Seven Years War and the cost of maintaining forces in North America “to quell Indian uprisings and stifle discontent among the French and Spanish populations,” forced the British Empire to generate new revenue from their colonies, particularly the American colonies . Using a series of oppressive tax acts and other measures to generate revenue, the British effectively incited the notion of republicanism in the colonies and ushered in a new wave of widespread British opposition in colonial America by inhibiting on the economic, political, and social liberties of the colonists. All of which led to the American Revolution. However, within the colonial population, not all colonists were opposed to British rule. In addition to the Patriots, who were supportive of independent American rule in the colonies, there existed a second sect of the colonial population. The Loyalists, or Tories as they were known, were a group of colonists that were generally supportive of the British system and monarchy. While geographic region certainly played a definable role in which groups were supportive of the Patriots or Tories, affiliation and support of either the Patriot movement or the Crown could generally be tied back to wealth and class, dependency on the British economy, ties to the Empire, and even various political positions of Parliament and the British Empire.
In 1764, in order to generate revenue necessary to minimize the debt from the Seven Years War and the maintenance of British forces’ in North America, the Sugar Act was instituted. The Sugar Act, which “placed a duty on sugar imported into the colonies and revitalized the customs service introducing stricter registration procedures for ships,” was compounded by increased jurisdiction for the already...