"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" wrote in message .. .
I attempted to post thia at ~10:40 EDT
But the Bellsouth news server has been having
problems (issues, so called) here today.
Therefore I am submitting the article again.
My apologies if, in fact, this is a duplicate
--
Rostyk


Stephen Harding wrote:
Brian Sharrock wrote:

Slight semantic problem; the loyalists(sic) _were_ British.
They didn't 'side with' the British, they were British, remained
British and refused to follow the rebellious smugglers, slave-owners,
land-owner and lawyer clique into an armed French-funded
insurrection. History _does_ record that they were treated badly
by the revolting colonists.

So is this the current Euro spin on the American Revolution?

Just a bunch of criminal, low life types, cajoled by the perfidious
French, into breaking away from "The Empire", where most wanted to
stay?

My, my how the politics of anti-Americanism spins its web.

Perhaps slightly overstated, but there's a good amount of truth
in that. The residents of the British colonies: English colonists,
Britishers, et al, did have a number of grievances about their
treatment. But they weren't being particularly oppressed

Bostonians thought different. How many British cities were under
military occupation?

or
treated more harshly than the people living in the British Isles.

Generally speaking, this is so. In fact, one might argue that people
in America had more freedom. It was when HMG began to restrict those
freedoms that the colonists began to resist.

But the local gentry far from central control quite naturally
took the opportunity to avoid paying their taxes.

Uh, no. "The local gentry" was paying quite a bit in tazes.
Especially of the local variety.

Similarly
for the more common folk.

Who were also paying quite a bit in tazes.

And the revolutionary ideas from
the continent surely did have a sympathetic audience, whether
the French did any organized meddling or not.

Most of the "revolutionary ideas from the continent" [sic] originated
in Britain. John Locke etc. However, their influence was quite
minimal. It was excessive bungling and heavy handedness by HMG which
forced the plunge toward rebellion. The American colonies had been
relatively free of "homeland" governence, and so enjoyed a fairly
large degree of freedom. After the French and Indian War, the British
government took a more concerted interest in her colonies, and thus
began to clamp down on those freedoms. Inadvertantly for the most
part, including increased tazation. Now it was not that the colonists
did not desire to pay tazes (any more than anyone ever wants to pay),
but that such matters had largely always been authorized by the
provincial governments, and not in London. When London attempted to
place new tazes on the colonies, it was exercising powers that
hitherto the colonies had enjoyed with a fair degree of autonomy.
What the bungling British boffins in London did not understand was
that once freedoms are given, they are not easily revoked without
resistance. The event that specifically led to the war, the "Boston
Tea Party," though was not actually over the tax, which was quite
small, almost imperceptively so, but over the fact the the East India
Company, in order to bail it out of a poor fiscal situation, had been
given a monopoly of the tea trade, which meant that Colonial shippers
were no screwed. All in the name of perpetuating British (but not
extending to British colonials) mercantalism. The "Tea Party" itself
did little financial damage, but Parliament in a state of total
stupidity and desire to make a show of its power passed the
non-intercourse acts and occupied Boston. An incredibly moronic move
which scared the bejesus out of all the colonies and turned a local
dispute into a continental one. Very dumb. At that point, the
colonies began to take measures to arm themselves, and it became only
a matter of time before some spark set off violence. It is almost
incredible that it took a full year to do so.

--
Regards,

Michael P. Reed