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Explains how Britain responded to rising debt after the French and Indian War by tightening enforcement and introducing the Sugar Act. The section focuses on how the tax on molasses fit mercantilist goals and sparked colonial protests and boycotts.
Speaker A
With the British national debt doubled in the wake of the French and Indian War, they took to two tactics to try to solve that issue.There was a lot of twos in that sentence.The first was to enforce the Navigation Acts in salutary neglect.The second was to implement new taxes.And we've discussed the decision to tax.We've discussed some of the colonial resistance and a wide view.But now we're going to look specifically and look at what actually happened.There were many new taxes created during this time.And remember that each came with a heightened level of enforcement and crackdown on smuggling in particular.The first of these new taxes was the Sugar Act.
It was not a tax on sugar as we know it today, but on molasses.The granular sugar was not quite a thing yet.More commonly, it was turned into molasses.
What this did is it reduced the tax on English molasses, but raised the tax on French molasses, which the colonists preferred.So the colonists wanted to buy and consume the French molasses.They preferred it.The idea was to make the French molasses prohibitively expensive and push sales of the cheaper British molasses.So even with a much lower tax on the British version, sales would increase enough to make this profitable.
This is effectively how a tariff works, a tax on trade.
So the British molasses was made cheaper, the French molasses was made much more expensive.The point being, trying to drive sales of British molasses and therefore, going back to mercantilism, the gold would flow from the colonies, from molasses would flow, not out of the empire to France, but it would flow back to the home island of England.That's monopoly within an empire and favorable balance of trade.Going back to the core points of mercantilism, the problem from the colonists point of view was that they had to pay more regardless of their choice.Even if they paid or bought the British version, they were still paying more because there was attacks on it that was being enforced.
This led to a series of protests and boycotts in the colonies.
It also set the precedent for future reactions to these types of taxes.And remember, the people pushing back against these kind of things were not a majority, right?They were very loud and vocal minority.We talked about the South, Sons of Liberty.Now, this tax was eventually repealed in 1766, and we'll talk about that here shortly.
Introduces the Stamp Act as a new tax on paper products and shows why it angered nearly all colonists. It covers the Stamp Act Congress, the argument of no taxation without representation, and the growing protests and mob violence.
Speaker A
But in the interim, we have another tax to talk about, and that is the Stamp Act.With the Sugar act approach proving unpopular, Parliament will try something different with their second tax.This is a Tax on all paper products, and you prove that you had paid the tax by once you pay it, the paper would be stamped not like a postage stamp, but like a rubber ink stamp.Hence the name of the act, the Stamp Act.To give you a modern context, imagine if every single byte of data you used was individually text.
That's how ubiquitous paper was.Everybody had to use it.If you're a farmer and you're living out in the, you know, on the frontier or a woodsman, when you sold something, or if you needed to write a letter or whatever it be, everybody had to use paper.Just like it's pretty impossible these days to not use the Internet.Bytes of data, not megabytes, not gigabytes, not terabytes, bytes of data, every single byte would be individually taxed.
The colonists were furious with this.Pretty universally.There was an increase in those protests and boycotts, sort of joining in with the ones for the Sugar act, which are still around.As I said, fury built quickly.And so a meeting was called in New York, the colony of New York.
And this became known, this meeting became known as the Stamp Act Congress.
Representatives from nine colonies met to discuss the Stamp Act.What they did was they put forth a new important argument.So they're going to make all the same arguments from before that we talked about in the previous video, right?About it not being fair about there's no precedent, about the lack of enforcement.
They put a new argument forward here.No taxation without representation.They argued the taxes were unconstitutional because the colonists were not represented in Parliament to be taxed.Their representatives had to give consent through their elected member of Parliament, but they had none.That's how it works in the American system, right?You elect a representative who votes, is supposed to vote representing the people who, not just the people who voted them in the office, but everyone in their district or state, depending on if they're a senator or a member of the house.
So without a member of parliament from either all of the colonies together or separately, they argued they could not be taxed without the ability to give consent.They created a document with this argument as well as all of the ones we discussed previously.But they received no response from either Parliament or King George iii.
So it didn't lead to anything as far as changing or removing the tax.But that argument became a very big deal.
Along with this Stamp Act Congress, there was still more protests, refusals to pay the tax, boycotts.And with the Stamp act, we start to see the rise of some mob violence, particularly from the sons of liberty, as again, we previously Discussed.This will also be repealed in 1766.
Compares the Sugar Act and Stamp Act as two different approaches to colonial taxation. The speaker emphasizes that Parliament was experimenting with methods, but the colonists rejected both.
Speaker A
So you have one tax on sugar, you have one tax on paper.Different approaches.The tax on sugar was to make French tax or French molasses more expensive so that people will buy the British molasses.Right.Basically a protective tariff, a tax on trade Stamp act was to take one product and tax it all the same.
But it was a popular necessary product that everybody had.So those are two different approaches.Not exactly, you know, the best, or rather I take that back.You see the Parliament trying to find something that will work with the colonists, right?They focus on one product by pushing it towards the British one.
There's not a huge difference between French and British molasses from what I've read.Then of course I say that and you know, everybody has brand preference with products, right?
Then they're trying to, you know, they're trying different approaches here.But the pro, the colonists weren't having it.That's what I said in a previous video where you understand the, that the decision to tax the colonists from the British perspective was reasonable.But the way that they go about it is going to be a problem.Right?The colonists were not having any of this and the calls probably weren't going to have it no matter what.But you see them trying to figure out what will work.
Covers the repeal of the Sugar and Stamp Acts and the passage of the Declaratory Act, including Parliament's claim of virtual representation. It also explains why Britain resisted colonial representation and frames these events as another step toward revolution.
Speaker A
But I said both of them, the Sugar and Stamp Acts will be repealed in 1766.Which leads us to the third act here, the Declaratory Act.
This act of Parliament did two major things.
First, it repealed both the Sugar and Stamp Acts.First thing it did was repeal both of those acts, but it did hint that there would be future taxes.Basically they said, we got that wrong, but we're going to try again.
So they repealed both the Sugar and Stamp Acts, but hinted at future taxes.The second thing that the Declaratory act did, was it included or that the Act Parliament answered the no taxation without representation argument with their own virtual representation.
What this said was that Parliament had total authority to implement laws and taxes in the colonies.Essentially, Parliament as a whole represented the colonies.
They didn't have a single elected representative.Parliament itself was already its representative.The colonists largely ignored this because they were too busy celebrating the victory of the repeal of the two Acts.When they finally paid attention, they naturally rejected the idea entirely.
There wasn't universal acceptance for this in England either, but this is what they argued.There were people even in Parliament who argued against virtual representation for a variety of reasons.But that was what Parliament as a whole, the majority of Parliament at least when creating this act decided.
So you may be wondering, why not just give the colonies a member of parliament as a whole or poor colony?Well, the nobility and wealthy in Britain saw the colonists as backwoods and lesser right.They weren't true British anymore and allowing them to enter the halls of Parliament would sully or ruin Parliament's prestige.They saw this as a slippery slope, which is a logical fallacy.People tend to use slippery slope as an argument, but it's an argument that doesn't necessarily hold up to logical scrutiny.
It can.Of all the different logical fallacies, and there's a whole list of them, slippery slope is one that is probably the least problematic.
But it can be very, very problematic.
But they saw this as a slippery slope.If they allowed the 13 colonies to have a member of Parliament, will other colonies want one as well?
You might say, well, yeah, but the problem with that is from the Parliament's perspective was that other colonies were a majority of native populations, whether it was native nations or as time.By this point, the majority population in some of the British colonies in the Caribbean were African slaves or at this point slaves.
So that couldn't be allowed.And thus neither could the representative in the thirteen colonies.His attitude was not uncommon.Even today in the United States, Washington D.C. and U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico, the American Samoa and Guam have one non voting member of the House of Representatives and no senators.They're not states, so there's, there's a reason for that, but they're also part of the United States.
Both sides see the Declaratory act as a bit of a victory.But as we know, this is just another stop on the road to the American Revolution.
So this is the first round Stamp act, or rather the Sugar act, the Stamp act, and then the Declaratory act attacks on molasses, a tax on paper, and then the Declaratory act repealing those taxes and answering no taxation without representation.What happens next is going to change things a bit.A new tax, a new type of tax, and a new focus on what is being taxed.And that will be t.