We tend to take the American Revolution for granted.  It was inevitable.  It was a good thing.  But here is an interesting research project: Was the American Revolution really necessary? 

Most people know that the American Revolutionary War happened because the people of the American Colonies, who considered themselves citizens of the British Empire, grew dissatisfied with the taxes being imposed on them by Britain’s Parliament.  Although they didn’t like paying the taxes, they were less concerned about the money than the fact that they had no way of debating them via political process—America had no elected members of Parliament to represent their interests.  “Taxation without representation!” was the rallying cry of independence-minded American political leaders in the years preceding the Revolutionary War.

Americans believed that, as British subjects, they deserved a voice in the decisions of their government.   The “rights of Englishmen” had been assured by various British constitutional documents, including the Magna Carta of 1215 and Britain’s Bill of Rights of 1689.  This fact, when combined with the influence of European philosophers such as John Locke and Voltaire (who had espoused republican and liberalistic ideals of democratic government), caused Americans to become increasingly outraged by the British government, who they considered “tyrannical.”

The political unrest caused by Parliament’s new taxes has been described as either the cause or the excuse for the Rebellion, depending on the viewpoint of the historian.

So the obvious question becomes: “If the American Colonists’ outrage over their lack of representation in Parliament was causing a rebellion, why didn’t the British government diffuse the situation by granting the American Colonies some degree of representation?”

Good question! After all, Britain’s interest in America was immense.  The American Colonies, with almost 3 million people at the time of the Revolutionary War, represented nearly a third of the British Empire’s total population. Fifty percent of British shipping was involved in trade with the Americas.  At least one fourth of Great Britain’s manufactured goods were exported to America.  The American Colonies’ land mass was over four times larger than that of the British Isles—and the North American continent many times that.

Parliament never gave serious consideration to granting her American Colonies representation.   If it had, they could have significantly weakened the colonist’s “taxation without representation” argument—and may have delayed or prevented the Revolution.  But instead of trying to prevent war by treating the colonists as people with the rights of Englishmen, both Parliament and the King considered them second class citizens, and once the fighting began—mere rebels.

Topics that could be researched in the answer to the question are: British Navigation Acts, British-American trade before the Revolutionary War, Acts of Parliament regarding American Colonies, William Pitt the Elder, King George III and the American colonies, Taxation without representation, rights of Englishmen.  A starting point is the Outline of the American Revolution.