What Led to the American Revolution?

1. What Led to the American Revolution? By Mary Shannon

2. Magna Carta No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled . nor will we proceed with force against him . except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

3. Glorious Revolution Historically speaking, the most obvious and most decisive distinction between the American and the French Revolutions was that the historical inheritance of the American Revolution was "limited monarchy" and that of the French Revolution an absolutism which apparently reached far back into the first centuries of our era and the last centuries of the Roman Empire. Nothing, indeed, seems more natural than that a revolution should be predetermined by the type of government it overthrows; nothing, therefore, appears more plausible than to explain the new absolute, the absolute revolution, by the absolute monarchy which preceded it, and to conclude that the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him. Hannah Arendt – political theorist

4. Triangular Trade:Molasses to Rum to Slaves Olaudah Equiano “When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate and quite overpowered with horrow and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. . . . I asked if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces and long hair?"

5. Mercantilism Navigational Acts Requirement that most imports to the colonies be transported via England on English ships Set up Office of Customs Commissioner in the colonies to collect duties on goods that pass between plantations to be paid to England Requirement that colonial trade be done exclusively on English built ships Requirement that all of a colony’s imports be bought from England or resold by English merchants in England