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The American Revolution As A Product Of The Enlightenment
| Term Paper Title |
The American Revolution As A Product Of The Enlightenment |
| # of Words |
787 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) |
3.15 |
The American Revolution as a Product of the Enlightenment
1
West and World History
23 October 2003
Enlightenment is as synonymous to the word liberalism as Mercantilism is to the word Mercenary when one considers the American Revolution. Many of the wars and debates fought in the late eighteenth century actually proved to be more towards taxation from British colonies, rather than the revolution. Citizens of the newly independent America were concerned more solely with the advancement of political stability rather than economics.
Independence supporters including John Hancock and George Washington, may have been wealthy, but joined together with farmers and common people to form the largest group of universal support. The American Constitution and the Bill of Rights are in fact still recognized today as the classical routes of liberalism. Clearly, “comfortable liberals” joined with everyday people in what was truly revolutionary thought. The fact that this was not just the war of Independence is revealed by the evidence that the members of the American Revolution (British Colonies) wanted unquestioned right to elect their officials even though 95% of adult males could already vote in some places. This was unlike that of England and Europe. A parallel example would be that there is no all powerful church in North America where personal freedom of religion was allowed. Mercantilism by its very definition is all about the economic control of colonies for the benefit of the parent nation, Britain. The British because of they were all about money and control, were not concerned with popular support or volunteers of the populous. The fact that the British Government used German mercenaries undoubtedly set out to many longstanding loyalists the realization that the colonies were merely an income source for Britain. Many former British supporters changed their minds because of German Mercenaries.
For many historians, there has been a huge debate that the fighting from 1775-89 was not a real revolution but a war for independence from taxation and British control. Obviously any culture as existed in the American colonies understood typical British Rule allowance for voting, taxation, and trade. The high cost of the many British wars and huge British national debt related to global exploits lead them to the Parliamentary “Stamp Act”. Although to the British it was all about money, North Americans paid less tax than Europeans and only a fraction of the British in 1765 (2 shillings per person, ...Read entire document
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