The Political Path to Revolution and War, 1760-1776

Why did the British government pass the Stamp Act, the Townshend Duties, the Tea Act and the Intolerable Acts? Why did they pass a series of measures seemingly calculated to offend and provoke North American colonists? These measures cannot be fully understood without taking into account a profound political economic debate taking place across the empire about the proper way of dealing with the national debt. This debate began not in the wake of the Seven Years War, but in the midst of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713).

While citizens agreed that the British national debt was a potentially catastrophic problem, they disagreed on a solution—whether the problem should be addressed by austerity measures or a program to stimulate imperial economic growth. The particular measures adopted in the American Colonies were deeply informed by the simultaneous emergence of a powerful British imperial presence in India after the seizure of the Diwani in 1765. George Grenville, Charles Townshend, Lord North and Alexander Wedderburn were just as much involved in debates over how to organize the British Empire in India as they were in the more well-known debates about North America. Gordon Wood and Steven Pincus discuss how it is impossible to understand their fiscal and administrative policies in one place without considering their views about the other.

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