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PATRIOTS, WHIGS, AND TORIES:�THE POLITICAL ECONOMIC ORIGINS OF REVOLUTION

AMY WATSON

UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM

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-On this slide, you can see a political cartoon by William Hogarth that shows the role the British Patriots played in fueling this revolutionary turmoil.

-In this cartoon, the City of London is burning. On the right, there is a globe that is on fire, representing the British Empire. While some Britons try to contain the blaze, the British Patriots (one of whom is on stilts) are fanning the flames ever higher.

-Today, I want to talk to you about who these British Patriots were, what they stood for, and how their movement found purchase in first Britain and then its American colonies over the course of the eighteenth century.

-Ultimately, British Patriots lit the world ablaze. As we will see, Patriot ideas—and in particular, their economic ideas—came to divide Britons and Americans on increasingly sharp political lines, laying the groundwork for the revolutionary decades to come. So let’s talk about these first Patriots.

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WHO WERE THE PATRIOTS?

Group of reformist British politicians

Began to form in 1720s

Why Patriot?

Political marketing

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PATRIOT IDEOLOGICAL AGENDA

Militant: Interventionist Foreign Policy

Expansionist: Trade and Economic Policy

Confederal: Decentralized Imperial Government

Free: Protection of Civil Liberties

-That brings us to our next big question: what did the Patriots believe in? What did they want to achieve?

-Well, the Patriots’ original mission was not revolution or American independence. Instead, it was British imperial reform. More specifically, the Patriots wanted to create a British Empire that was militant, expansionist, confederal and free.

Let me break this down a little:

First, militant. The Patriots had an interventionist foreign policy. They sought to expand British trade in the Atlantic world, particularly to Spanish America. And they were willing to go to war if countries like Spain refused to trade with them voluntarily. They firmly believed that a good war—one fought for particular economic aims—was better than a bad peace.
Second, they were expansionist. The Patriots believed that the British state should take a more active role in promoting British economic growth, through investment in areas like infrastructure, the development of new industries like silk production, and the reduction of commercial taxes. This last one—reducing taxes--we will get back to you in a few minutes, so keep it in mind.
Third, confederal: The Patriots believed that the best model of empire was a decentralized one, in which local institutions like colonial legislatures and courts held greater sway.
Fourth, and finally, free: The Patriots sought to bolster certain constitutional rights that they believed that Britons on both sides of the Atlantic were entitled to. The most important of these were the rights to religious freedom, free speech, habeas corpus, and trial by jury.

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PATRIOT�ORGANIZATION

Press Wing

Especially newspapers

Party Leadership

Key British leaders: William Pulteney, James Oglethorpe, William Pitt

Public Outreach

-To implement their ideological program, Patriot leaders built Britain’s first empire-wide political party. They spent enormous time and effort creating a party organization that would reach as many people as possible in the Atlantic world.

-This party organization had a press wing, including newspapers like the two shown on this slide, as well as pamphlets, plays, and even songs. For example, the British song Rule Britannia was written as a piece of Patriot propaganda.

-The Patriot organization also included a dedicated party leadership, with a cadre of politicians who dedicated their careers to turning Patriot ideas into British imperial policy

-The most important of these early Patriot leaders were all British members of Parliament such as William Pulteney, James Oglethorpe, and someone we are going to be talking more about today, William Pitt.

-Finally, this organization included a serious public outreach campaign, with Patriot leaders working directly with city corporations and trade groups to win mass support for their movement

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THE PATRIOT BASE

Urban Residents: ex. London, Bristol, Glasgow, New York, Savannah, Boston

Tradespeople and Artisans

Shipwrights, Porters, Sailors

Merchants and Lawyers

-In particular, the Patriots focused their recruitment efforts on the growing population of Britons who lived in cities—this included British cities like London and Glasgow, as well as North American cities like New York, Boston, Massachusetts, and Savannah, Georgia

-By the eighteenth century, these cities’ economies were intimately tied to Britain’s Atlantic trade

-So the Patriots’ message of imperial reform and economic expansion was very appealing to many people living in these centers of imperial commerce

-The Patriot Party did especially well with urban artisans and tradespeople of small to moderate means: for instance, apprentices, shipwrights, shopkeepers, and independent merchants.

-The Patriots’ focus on public outreach was a key reason for the party’s astounding success

-By the beginning of the 1740s, the Patriot Party had amassed a network of supporters on both sides of the Atlantic.

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WHIGS AND TORIES

Whigs

Key leader: Robert Walpole
Ideology

Peaceful foreign policy
Supported English financiers, manufacturers, and landholders

Tories

Key leaders: George Grenville (pictured), Earl of Bute, Lord North, George III
Ideology

Discipline: create empire based on hierarchy
Economy: reduce the national debt

-Patriots, however, were by no means the only party with distinctive ideas about how the British state should govern its empire. Two other political groups vied with the Patriots for power during the early and mid-eighteenth century.

-First, there was the Whigs

-The Whigs were the most powerful British party for a long period of time, thanks to the dominance of Robert Walpole, the leader of the Whig party in the 1720s-30s and Britain’s first prime minister.

-The Whigs were in many ways the party of moderate conservatism. They, in contrast to the Patriots, supported a peaceful foreign policy, trying to avoid imperial wars, and they used diplomatic means to preserve British trade and power.

-Their primary base consisted of England’s financiers and landholders

-While the Patriots frequently butted heads with the Whigs, they cooperated at times as well. Patriots and Whigs even joined together to form a coalition ministry during the Seven Years War.

-The second major political party, the Tories, on the other hand, proved to be a more serious enemy for the Patriot cause.

So what did the Tories believe?

-Well, discipline and economy were the Tories’ twin watchwords. In terms of discipline, the party sought to create an empire based on hierarchy: colonies would serve the interest of the mother country; governors should rule with a clear chain of command; ordinary Britons must be hardworking and virtuous and know their proper place in society.

-In terms of economy, the Tories sought to reduce Britain’s ballooning national debt. The Tories saw debt as an existential threat to Britain’s future prosperity.

-Now, the Tories were never very popular in North America. But by the 1760s, they had won a lot of followers in Britain, including important politicians you may have heard of before—people like George Grenville, the Earl of Bute, and even a young king named George III.

-So if you’ve ever wondered why American loyalists were called “Tories,” they were named after this British political party.

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REVIEW OF POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

Patriots:

Wanted to reform empire
How?

More expansionist and free

Tories:

Wanted to reform empire
How?

More disciplined and hierarchical

Whigs

Wanted to maintain status quo

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PATRIOTS VS. WHIGS: �TAXES

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SIR ROBERT WALPOLE

Leader of Whig Party

Walpole served as prime minister from 1721-42

Why such longevity?

Implemented tactics to increase party discipline

Ex. Voting slates, patronage

Put English interests over British and American interests

Ex. Bills favoring English landowners

-Let me introduce to you a man who I mentioned briefly before, Sir Robert Walpole.

-Robert Walpole was a Whig, and he basically invented the position of what we today call prime minister

-In fact, he served as Britain’s prime minister for about two decades, from 1721-1742. That is still a record in British history to this day—other than Walpole, no one in Britain has ever retained power for so long.

-So why did he have such longevity?

-Well, first Walpole was a political innovator, using tactics like voting slates and patronage to maintain discipline over the Whig party and its messaging

-And Walpole was also successful because he did a good job playing to the majority group in British politics—English manufacturers and landholders

-He passed trade policies that helped English landowners and manufacturers at the expense of American, Scottish, as well as ordinary English consumers. After all, American colonists couldn’t vote. Scotland represented a tiny part of the electorate. England’s ordinary consumers generally could not vote either—with a few exceptions, like the city of London. At that time, voting rights were usually tied to property.

-As long as Walpole got the English landholders to vote for him, he didn’t really need to please anyone else.

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MALT TAX CRISIS OF 1725

1724: Robert Walpole’s Whig Ministry passed new tax on Scottish malt

Malt: key ingredient in beer and whiskey

Public response: protest and riot

Mob in Glasgow destroyed home of Whig MP Daniel Campbell (pictured)

Walpole’s solution: send in Army to occupy Glasgow

-Let me give you an example of this economic policy.

-In 1724, Robert Walpole’s Whig ministry had passed a new tax on Scottish malted barley. If any of you are into brewing, you’ll know that malt is a key ingredient not just in beer, but also in whiskey, a very culturally important Scottish beverage.

-As you might imagine, Scots were just outraged. When news of the tax reached Glasgow, a mob of people immediately went to the home of the local Whig MP named Daniel Campbell. You can see Campbell’s lovely house here on this slide. The mob tore that house to the ground, brick by brick.

-Similar acts of mob violence swept across Hamilton, Stirling, Ayr, Paisley, and Elgin. The brewers in Edinburgh went on strike. The whole country was in an uproar.

-To stop the unrest, Robert Walpole sent in the British Army to occupy the city of Glasgow, and to arrest anyone protesting the tax.

-Now, this militant strategy did work in stopping the protests, but it also led to a lot of violence, and many civilian casualties. For example, an elderly widow was shot by accident while watching the army march in from an upstairs window. She died of her wounds.

-But Walpole did not really seem to care that much about these kinds of civilian casualties. In the Whig’s view, they had won: Scottish resistance had been quashed, and the malt tax remained in effect.

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EXCISE CRISIS OF 1733

Walpole proposed excise (sales tax) on wine and tobacco

Why did Walpole wish to pass?

Reduce land tax and curry favor with landowners

Emerging Patriot group decided to lead campaign against the tax

-The next major tax contest was even more serious. And this time, Walpole could not declare victory. In fact, it almost brought down his government altogether.

-In 1733, Robert Walpole announced that his major policy bill for that parliamentary session would be to pass a new excise on wine and tobacco.

-Basically, this was just a sales tax. Consumers would be taxed at the point of purchase rather than at the point of import. And Walpole’s reason for seeking it was pretty simple.

He wanted to use the revenue from this excise tax to reduce the land tax. Remember, Walpole was always trying to curry favor with landowners. He knew that he needed those landholders to maintain his political power.

-Now, Walpole at this point had been in power for more than a decade. He had passed other taxes, like the malt tax in 1725 and a salt excise in 1732. He probably thought that this one would be no big deal either. But he had miscalculated.

-As Walpole and the Whigs had been gaining more and more power, a new political party--the aforementioned Patriots--were becoming more and more alarmed by his economic policies. And they thought that this moment was their chance to do something to stop him.

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PATRIOT RESISTANCE: �THE PRESS

Patriots’ first strategy to resist tax: journalism

Why journalism?

Patriot connections to newspaper such as The Craftsman (pictured)

Arguments against excise

Excise would endanger civil liberties

Ex. Trial by jury

Excise would hurt ordinary English consumers

-The Patriots employed a few different strategies to protest this new tax.

-First, they used journalism. Patriot politicians had good connections to several popular newspapers—most notably, one called The Craftsman.

-And in newspaper issue after issue and pamphlet after pamphlet, they presented several powerful arguments against this new tax.

They argued that the excise would endanger English civil liberties

-Excise disputes were generally settled by special excise commissioners rather than common law juries. The Patriots argued that this was a violation of the English constitution. As one ballad stated sarcastically, “AN Excise that is general will set us quite free/ From the thraldom [that means bondage] of tryals by Judge and Jury.”

2) They argued that the excise would hurt English consumers of small means.

-As William Pulteney, the British Patriots’ leader at this point, argued in one pamphlet, “Excises are Poll Taxes upon the Consumer, raised without Distinction of Ranks or Abilities.”

-If consumers were taxed into poverty, he warned, they would no longer be able to purchase the commodities that drove British economic growth.

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PATRIOT RESISTANCE: �THE MOB

Patriots used connections with London mercantile organizations to organize crowds

Strategies of protest

Mass marches

Slogan: Liberty, Property, and No Excise!

Mock executions of effigies

Effigies: giant puppets used in political protest

Message: crowd would use violence if will not followed

-Due to this press war, people were all riled up against the tax

-So then, Patriots employed their second strategy, popular resistance, or to use the terminology of the eighteenth century, the mob

-Patriots used their connections with London mercantile corporations to get large crowds of people together to show their displeasure about this new tax

-Throughout early 1733, there were dozens of mass marches, in which ordinary people came together by the hundreds, waving flags with slogans like “Liberty, Property, and No Excise!”

-Another tactic protesters used was to make effigies, which are basically giant puppets, with Robert Walpole’s face on them. They held mock executions of these effigies, hanging them on the gallows or, as in this image, burning them in fires

-Folks, this wasn’t subtle. They were saying Walpole deserved to burn. This was a sign that Londoners were willing to take violence against Walpole and his Whig allies if the tax was not withdrawn.

-Now, today, some might say that these threats went a bit too far. But this was how politics operated in the eighteenth-century world. Mobs and property destruction and effigies were very normal.

-Ordinary Patriots did not have a path to change policy within the political system. So to express their political voice, they threatened to overturn that system, with violence if necessary.

-This is an example of popular sovereignty in action.

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CONSEQUENCE OF EXCISE CRISIS

April 1733: Excise Bill defeated

What did Excise Crisis prove?

Patriot message of civil liberty and commercial expansion had popular appeal across Atlantic

Ex. New York Election of 1734

Ordinary people could serve as check on British government

Patriot tactics useful in future political battles

-The Patriots’ tactics—the press campaign, the mobs, the effigy burnings—proved remarkably effective.

-In April 1733, Walpole postponed the reading of the excise bill, a tacit admission of defeat.

-He decided that one sales tax was not worth all the popular uproar

-This did not mean that the Patriots had totally won: in fact, Walpole would remain in power for another eight and a half years.

-But the Excise Crisis was still an important turning point for British politics.

-First, it proved that the Patriots’ message of civil liberty and economic opportunity was appealing to a lot of Britons. And by the way, this appeal existed on both sides of the Atlantic.

-In fact, the next year, in New York, a politician named Lewis Morris won a local New York election using the slogan “Liberty and No Excise!” So Americans were following what was happening in Britain very closely and employing a very similar rhetoric.

-The Excise Crisis also proved that ordinary people could defeat the mightiest British politicians if they organized politically and put their numbers to use.

-Don’t forget those strategies that we’ve talked about—press wars, marches, effigies. They would come in handy for Patriots in the decades to come.

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PATRIOTS VS. TORIES: �THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR AND STAMP ACT

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SEVEN YEARS WAR (1756-1763)

Purpose of war

Determine whether Britain or France would control Atlantic trade
Patriots were active promoters of war

Instigating incident (1754):

George Washington got in gunfight with French Canadians in Ohio River Valley

British Patriots took opportunity to declare war against France

-The Seven Years War was fought between Britain and France, and though it took place across the globe—from Madras to Guadeloupe, the war’s main purpose was to determine which nation would have control over North America.

-The Seven Years War was really the Patriots’ chance to implement their political ideas on an imperial scale.

-Remember, one of the key parts of the Patriots’ ideology was their militancy.

-They thought that in the long term, a successful war would benefit the British economy. If Britain could beat the French, they would have no serious rivals in America and could expand British trade ever onward.

-Fun fact: a very young George Washington (pictured here) was partly responsible for this war kicking off.

-In 1754, the twenty-two year old George was in command of a group of Virginia militiamen who had been sent to patrol a contested part of the Ohio River Valley. The Ohio River Valley was claimed by both Britain and France.

-On this patrol, Washington and his forces ran into a group of French soldiers, and soon, the two sides were exchanging gunfire. Both sides claimed that the other had fired first. But whoever started it, this tiny squabble on the frontier of North America jumpstarted a global war.

-Back in Britain, Patriots saw this as their chance. They were really looking for any excuse to declare war against France.

-And now, Patriots did not have Robert Walpole to worry about. He had died in 1745.

-In fact, the new guy in charge was one of their own.

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WILLIAM PITT

Patriot leader in House of Commons

“Great Commoner:” Skilled at winning public to his side

Pitt as war minister
Treated colonists as equals
Outspent the French

Year of Miracles: 1759

British victories in Germany; Madras, India; New York
Greatest victory: capture of Quebec

-William Pitt had been the leader of the Patriot group in Parliament for several decades. He was a skilled politician as well as a bit of a populist—he was great at reaching out to the public and convincing ordinary people that he was on their side. By the 1750s, Pitt had managed to build a huge following amongst Britain’s commercial community in cities like London and Bristol.

-When war broke out in 1756, Pitt was ready. This was his moment to finally put his Patriot ideas into practice.

-He used his popular following to force the Whigs to put him in charge of the British Ministry. So after decades of nipping at the Whigs’ heels, a Patriot politician was finally running the state.

-Pitt was one of the greatest war ministers of British history: he was a strategic thinker who recognized two things.

-First, Pitt knew that if Britain was going to win, they needed not just Britons to fight for them, but also the North American colonists.

-So he gave colonists important commissions in the British Army. He treated them not as subordinates, but as equals. He also paid them very well for their service. And colonists responded by fighting intensely for the British cause. To thank Pitt for his trust in them, they named many of the French forts they captured after their great commander, including what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

-Second, Pitt recognized that Britain’s great advantage against the French was really the strength of its financial sector. So he sought to outspend his enemy: he put out troops in places as far-flung as America, the Caribbean, and India. France just couldn’t compete.

-In a single year, 1759, the British won victories in Germany at Minden, in India at Madras, and in North America. Most importantly, they captured the French Canadian capital of Quebec. The British just couldn’t lose. The year 1759 went down in British history books as the year of miracles.

-As one British politician noted with glee, “Our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories.”

-William Pitt had done what the Patriots had long promised: he had shown the world that the British were not just traders, but also military conquerors.

-By the end of the war in 1763, France was forced to give up almost all of its territory in North America. Britain was finally the undisputed leader of the Atlantic world.

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GEORGE III

Strange childhood

His father, Prince Frederick, died when George was twelve
Political parties fought over the young prince

Preference for Tories

Tory Earl of Bute became father figure
Taught that he should exercise active power as king

Became king at age of 22

First act as king: put Tories in charge

William Pitt kicked out
Earl of Bute became prime minister

-Now, this should have been the Patriots’ moment of glory.

-However, what they had not really planned for was a new king you’ve probably heard of before, George III.

-George III had a very strange childhood. He was completely isolated from anyone his own age, and he was instead surrounded by politicians. And then to make matters worse, his father Prince Frederick died when George was only twelve.

-Without a father to guide him, Britain’s different political parties were basically fighting over who got to mentor the young prince, though when many politicians actually met him, they were none too impressed. One of his childhood governors, a Whig politician named Lord Waldegrave noted that “His parts, are not excellent, but rather tolerable.” That is the most British insult I think you could come up with.

-When he was a teenager, George began surrounding himself with Tories. In particular, he became very close to his Tory tutor, John Stuart, Earl of Bute, who really became a father figure to him.

-The Earl of Bute gave the future king a pretty inflated sense of his own power. While George’s grandfather and great-grandfather had largely stayed out of domestic politics, Bute convinced George that he could be a powerful, active king who would unite Britons together, and end its partisan divisions once and for all.

-Now, one man’s active king is another man’s tyrant, and Bute’s enemies complained that he was turning the young prince into a future autocrat. They might have been right.

-When Prince George’s grandfather George II died in 1760, the young new king was eager to start ruling on his terms.

-Kings technically had veto power over their ministers at this time, though this power had rarely been used. But George III wanted to clean house. One of the first things he did as king was to force all the important Whigs and Patriots out of the Ministry, including William Pitt, the man who was largely responsible for Britain winning the Seven Years War.

-The Earl of Bute, his tutor, who had never held high office in any capacity, was now the prime minister

-After forty years out of power, the Tories were back in charge.

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TORY AUSTERITY PROGRAM

First priority: lower the national debt

What kind of taxes to pass?

Land taxes not an option
Tories’ choice: “luxury” consumer goods

Tory obsession with “luxury”

Believed commoners with luxury goods threatened social hierarchy

Believed Americans should contribute more in taxes

Why?

Debt accrued in protecting colonies
Worried about taxing English electoral base

"UK National Debt as a percentage of GDP, from 1692 to present. Numbers from www.ukpublicspending.co.uk." by JJLiu112 is licensed under CC BY 3.0

-The Tories under the Earl of Bute were eager to change things up. And they began to implement an ambitious program of imperial reform.

-First and foremost, they were concerned about the national debt. Wars are expensive. And remember that Pitt’s plan for winning the war had been to outspend the French. So Britain’s national debt was now at the highest point it had been in Britain’s entire history. You can see this on this chart, which looks at UK national debt as a percentage of GDP—there’s a huge spike around the 1750s-60s.

-So the Tories were determined to pass new taxes to eliminate this debt

-The question for the Tories though was what kind of taxes should they pass?

-Well, land taxes were not an option, because the Tories (like Whigs) were never going to tax the landed aristocrats that represented their core electoral base.

-So they decided to tax commerce. And in particular, they began to tax consumer luxury goods like tea, glass, clothing dye, and paper.

-Luxury was a big concern for Tories at this time. The Tories believed that too much “luxury” was bad for ordinary commoners. If commoners went around drinking tea and eating chocolate and wearing fancy clothes, that would threaten the social hierarchy. It would lead to chaos.

-Finally, Tories thought that the American colonists in particular should be the ones paying down Britain’s debt. First, they thought this was fair because the debt had been accrued in protecting these colonies from the French in the first place. And second, the Tories knew that they would become very unpopular with their base if they started passing taxes in England. And the colonies were so far away, they figured that they wouldn’t cause as many problems. They were wrong about that.

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METHODS OF TAX RESISTANCE

Slogans

Liberty, Property, and No Excise🡪 Liberty, Property, and No Stamps

Effigy parades and hangings

Hanged effigy of Andrew Oliver on Liberty Tree in Boston

Demolished houses

Example: Thomas Hutchinson

Why did Americans copy the British?

-Now, I think you already know how the American colonists reacted to this Tory austerity program. They rioted; they organized boycotts; they dumped tea in a harbor.

-But what you might not know is that these methods of protest were largely borrowed from the British Patriots

-For example, one of the slogans that the Boston protestors used during the Stamp Act Crisis was “Liberty, Property, and No Excise,” or more frequently, they adapted it to “Liberty, Property and No Stamps.”

-Obviously, here, they were hearkening back to the Excise Crisis of 1733

-The Boston rituals of protest also drew heavily from the street theatre of London

-In particular, Boston anti-tax activists used effigy parades and hangings to express their anger

-For instance, here we have a later nineteenth-century depiction of the Boston Liberty Tree. As you can see there are effigies hanging on that tree, likely representing the stamp distributor, Andrew Oliver.

-One of the most famous crowd actions of the era was the Boston mob’s systematic demolition of the house of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson. Even this stunt had its precedent in British politics, when the crowds at Glasgow pulled down the house of Daniel Campbell in protest of the Malt Tax of 1725.

-This all begs the question: Why did the Americans copy the British Patriot protests from across the ocean? Why not develop their own methods of popular resistance?

-Well, Boston’s Patriots were showing that they had an imperial audience in mind when staging their resistance. Their resistance took a form that the British could easily understand.

-But it also shows us, perhaps, that independence was not yet a foregone conclusion at this point.

-In copying the British, American Patriots were showing that they were acting as good British Patriots should. They were resisting what they saw as a tyrannical tax. It had worked for the British Patriots during the Excise Crisis in 1733. Why wouldn’t it work here as well?

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WILLIAM PITT AND THE STAMP TAX

Pitt came out of early retirement to protest the Stamp Act

Many Britons opposed Stamp Act for economic reasons

Why? Could no longer sell these goods in America

Pitt’s speech to Parliament, 1765

Argued Stamp Act was unconstitutional
“Will you sheathe your swords in the bosom of your brothers, the Americans?”

Pitt and his British Patriot allies responsible for securing the Stamp Act’s repeal

-Another thing you might not know about this tax crisis is that there were many Britons who were on the Americans’ side. The Whigs and especially the Patriots were none too pleased about the Earl of Bute’s policies.

-One important Briton who stood with the Americans is someone we just talked about, William Pitt, the Patriot prime minister during the Seven Years War

-When Americans began protesting the Stamp Tax in 1765, Pitt actually came out of early retirement in order to protest it as well.

-Now, a lot of Britons hated the Stamp Act for economic reasons. British printers and booksellers and paper manufacturers stood opposed to it because Americans were no longer purchasing these consumer goods.

-But Pitt in a really famous speech went even further: he argued that not only was the Stamp Act a foolish economic decision, it was also an unconstitutional one.

-Standing with the Americans, he claimed that “the House of Commons did not represent North America'; it therefore had 'no right to lay an internal tax upon America”

-He ended his speech with a question: “will you sheathe your swords in the bosoms of your brothers, the Americans?”

-Now, you might have heard that it was the North American colonists and their protests that convinced Parliament to repeal this tax. But that’s not quite true.

-It was really William Pitt and his Whig and Patriot allies in Parliament who secured the tax’s demise. Pitt rallied British Patriots and their supporters against the Stamp Act. Soon after his speech, Parliament voted for repeal.

-And Americans absolutely loved Pitt for standing with them. They made medals praising Pitt such as the one on this slide. Just last summer, when I was in Annapolis, Maryland, I went into the Old State House building. And I was greeted with a huge portrait of William Pitt, which was painted to thank him for the repeal of the Stamp Act.

-British Patriots like Pitt saw the Americans’ cause as Britain’s cause as well.

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TAKE-HOME MESSAGES

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I. REVOLUTION INFLUENCED BY PARTISANSHIP

-First, the American Revolution was influenced by partisanship, and more specifically, by empire-wide political economic divisions

-Historians often act as if the British state was a monolith that was unified in its strategies of imperial rule.

-But that ignores the importance of British partisan divisions.

-It would be wrong to assume that the Bush Administration had exactly the same economic priorities as the Obama Administration.

So why do historians so often assume that the Pitt’s Patriot ministry shared the same economic priorities as Bute’s Tory ministry?

-They did not. These parties disagreed passionately about political economy

-The Patriots wanted to create an empire that was commercially expansive and free from the burden of commodity taxes. If the state needed to go into debt to do that, so be it. The Tories, on the other hand, were obsessed with the debt. And they thought Americans should help bear that burden.

-These political economic ideas did not just divide Britons from Americans. They divided Britons from Britons, and Americans from Americans as well.

-It is no coincidence that American revolutionaries used a partisan language in their labels, calling themselves “Patriots” and their opponents, “Tories.”

-Partisanship dramatically shaped the course of British and American politics in the eighteenth century, just as it does today. Understanding these British political shifts is essential for understanding the causes of the American Revolution.

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II. REVOLUTION’S DEEP ROOTS

-Finally, these battles can tell us that the American Revolution had deep, deep roots.

-Most histories of the revolution do not start until at least 1763, the end of the Seven Years War. In fact, the first half of the eighteenth century is often treated as a boring period of stability—defined by “salutary neglect.”

-As I hope I’ve convinced you today, the early eighteenth century was not boring or stable: it was an era of extreme political upheaval.

-As early as the 1720s-30s, Patriots and Whigs and Tories were battling it out for control of the British Empire and its economy. And some of the questions that they debated had revolutionary implications: What taxes were fair, and who got to decide that? What role could ordinary Britons play in the political process?

Should the empire be hierarchical and disciplined, or expansive and free?

-These political debates were not limited to elite politicians either.

-Ordinary English Patriots marched and burned effigies in protest of the Excise Tax. Ordinary American Patriots did the same to protest the Stamp Act, coopting a political rhetoric and political tactics that had been employed for half a century.

-This was an era that was not yet democratic, but it was democratizing, rooted in the idea that the public could serve as a powerful source of political authority.

-So the revolution did not come out of nowhere in the 1760s and 70s; instead, it came from decades of political contestation over everything from the economy to foreign policy and constitutional rights.

-Now, to be clear, the early British Patriots were not revolutionaries themselves. They viewed Britain and North America as bound inextricably together by political tradition, economic interdependence, and fealty to the British crown.

-But in dividing an empire on party lines, the Patriots did lay the groundwork for the revolutionary conflict to come.

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QUESTIONS?