<p>I just find it very funny that the British, with a very selective memory of its colonialist history, chooses to question the accuracy of history from one of its former colonies.</p>
<p>We have a written record in my family history of my great-great-great-great-grandmother riding a cart horse when visiting her in-laws somewhere near Acton. The in-laws were furious because the taxes had been paid on the horse to be a cart horse, but not to be a riding horse! </p>
<p>When I last visited Scotland, and went on a tour, I was told (correctly or incorrectly) that some of the windows in the houses in Edinburgh had been bricked over, because the residential taxes were at one point based in part on the number of windows in the home.</p>
<p>To most Americans, both stories register as shocking. I can see how conditions on the frontier might cause people to become impatient with this kind of . . . um . . . taxation policy, to the point of revolution.</p>
<p>But it seems like an odd essay topic to me!</p>
<p>I actually have a child in10th grade honors US history right now. They are studying the American Revolution and I just helped him review for a test. </p>
<p>So I can say with some authority OP that your ideas as to what our textbooks say are, frankly, wrong, not to mention simplistic unless you are talking about the concepts introduced in 3rd grade.</p>
<p>One friend educated in a British influenced international school in Ghana said the history texts he had on the American Revolution could be summed up as the following:</p>
<p>“A bunch of spoiled violent ingrates who didn’t know how good they had it under the British Empire and have been lying about it ever since.”</p>
<p>There is a difference between imperfect representation and lack of representation. As far as I’m aware, every citizen in England, whether he could vote or not (and most couldn’t), would have had an MP who represented his district, at least in theory. The problem was that the allocation of seats was based on obsolete population figures, so sparsely populated areas with influential residents to oppose any redistricting often had many more representatives than rising industrial cities. It should also be noted that while this was a massive problem in the early 19th century, and was one of the factors that led to the 1832 Reform Bill, I’m not sure how severe it would have been in the 1770s, as the disparity was greatly exacerbated by the industrial revolution. </p>
<p>In any case, that is very different from a situation in which there is no attempt at local representation, especially when “local” is an ocean away from the central governing body.</p>
<p>I was taught pretty much everything in the OP in AP US History last year. We were absolutely taught that the taxes were not at unreasonable rates - simply that colonists protested taxation without representation * in Parliament. * </p>
<p>Kind of confused as to why this thread is here. Are we being lectured? I feel like a little kid in a corner who did something wrong. Whoops, born in the rebellious country whose residents way back in the day dared to want more rights than the power who colonized them!</p>
<p>I agree with all of it except the Washington not being a good general. Maybe he didn’t win battles but he didn’t need to. He only needed a few Battles to increase morale (like Trenton) and other than that escape from the British in guerilla warfare. Washington did what he had to and was a good general (Arnold was the best if he had not been bought out though).</p>
<p>Re post 22 and the window tax - true story and where the expression “daylight robbery comes from”</p>
<p>The pleasantly condescending tone and content of the original post reminds me of the letter-writing campaign from England in '04 to Ohions telling them to vote for Kerry.</p>
<p>When I had a tour guide in London, he kept referring to George III as “your last king.”</p>
<p>Guess what, OP, you’re not getting these colonies back.</p>
<p>USA! USA! USA!</p>
<p>The London OP lists “myths” dispelled but I think he wants them to be truths. Another thing for the OP to consider- two hundred plus years later the US is so much more than what the colonies were. Most of the US population is not of British descent, nor was most of geographical area ever British. The us is so much more than the English colonies is so many ways. It is also evolving to be less Eurocentric. </p>
<p>btw- you could get a huge discussion going about the atrocities that can be attributed to the way Britain handled its colonies- such as the partitioning of India after many years of bigotry ruling there…</p>
<p>Whew, I almost married a British guy. Close call!</p>
<p>My mom is half British and grew in Spain, England, and America. Told her about this and she definitely got a kick out of it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah, you don’t want to get some of my older relatives who remembered British high-handedness in 19th and early 20th century China, some African college classmates about the brutal colonialism/mess on the African continent, Irish neighbors/classmates over the British occupation/brutality/neglect of Ireland, nor my South Asian HS/college classmates and colleagues started about the British colonialist legacy. </p>
<p>One South Asian HS classmate demonstrated how much of a sore point this issue is when upon being asked whether she went to see the crown jewels in the tower during a company trip to London, she angrily replied that she’ll never pay money to see symbols of colonial oppression her parents and previous generations experienced under the Raj…especially when some of those very jewels were effectively stolen from India during that period.</p>
<p>I also hear that even today, it isn’t a good idea to say you loved Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton or that his name has been besmirched in some parts of the South.</p>
<p>If you want to dispel myths about the way the American Revolution is taught in Schools, why arent you including the thousand of african americans that served both as loyalist and patriots?That was never taught in our schools when I was growing up. There is a lot of facts left out in all aspects of history.</p>
<p>Some of your points aren’t actually accurate. For example, there was no free press in America prior to the revolution. The first newspaper ever in this country got one issue out and then was shut down for criticizing the British king. James Franklin, Benjamin’s older brother, was imprisoned for an editorial that he wrote. So…yeah…make sure you do your research. The press was very much controlled by British government. And that’s just one example that I happened to know was wrong.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Agree with this as well. OP is very wrong about what US history classes actually teach. George Washington and the cherry tree – I think everyone knows that’s a myth – and the same with Betsy Ross. She was a historical figure and we learned about what her actual role was.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Of course, today’s national and state tax codes are full of examples like this. Consider the difference in registration and taxation of commercial vehicles versus non-commercial vehicles when it is time to renew license plates. Of course, the classification of such can be interesting – for example, any pickup truck in California uses commercial plates, regardless of its ownership or use.</p>
<p>Then there was also the accelerated depreciation provision for income tax calculations for heavy trucks. Originally intended to separate work trucks (used by contractors, farmers, and transport companies who presumably wear out their trucks more quickly than the normal depreciation schedule) from plain old company cars, the provision was exploited by physicians’ offices, law firms, etc. buying large luxury SUVs as company cars.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I was taught this in AP US History. It is an important part of the curriculum and was on the AP exam.</p>
<p>Dionysis,</p>
<p>Ahem, allow me to offer a few clarifications to some of your points: </p>
<p>• Americans were not treated badly by the British. </p>
<p>The main way in which Americans were mistreated was economically. Britain placed all sorts of trade restrictions on the colonies that it did not place on itself. Britain imposed a mercantilist economy on the American colonies, denying them free trade, restricting them to supplying raw materials for British manufacturers, and then requiring that the colonies buy only these British-made goods. They also required the colonies to ship their goods on British ships. All of this to the benefit of Britain and to the disadvantage of the colonists.</p>
<p>The harsh mercantilism severely curtailed colonial economic freedom and opportunity and stunted the development of American manufacturing. That’s one reason why Americans were so short of arms and ammo a the outbreak of the Revolution. Britain had reserved gun manufacture for itself. It wasn’t until the Americans formed an alliance with the French that they had access to decent numbers of weapons to fight with. </p>
<p>• Taxes levied at Americans were not in anyway unfair or unreasonable.</p>
<p>The taxation was not particularly heavy, but it was new. Before that their taxes had all been local. This new tax was imposed on them, without their consent, from thousands of miles away by a legislature in which they had no representatives. This resented new tax, imposed in a high-handed way, and coupled with the restrictive, strangling mercantilism, caused the colonists to cease viewing the British as their brothers but instead as their arrogant overlords. </p>
<p>• Americans were reluctant to part from Britain.</p>
<p>It’s true that Americans were were not by nature revolutionaries bent on war and destruction. And many times they sought solutions to their grievances that stopped short of war and independence. But they were repeatedly rebuffed by the British. And when the Americans’ protests got louder and rowdier (i.e. the Boston Tea Party), the British doubled-down with their get-tough attitude and passed the Coercive Acts of 1774. After which the colonists really had no choice. After that it was going to be a fight to the finish.</p>
<p>• George Washington was not a gifted military commander.</p>
<p>It’s true that George Washington lost twice as many battles as he won, but the important point was he won the last battle.</p>
<p>Washington’s “gift” as a military commander was not in defeating the British in set-piece, European-style battles - which he tried to do early in the war with mostly very bad results. His gift was in figuring out what he needed to do to succeed and then doing it. He saw that trying to win head-on was going to cost him the war. He correctly figured out that he didn’t need to win the war; he merely had to make sure he didn’t lose it. Keep his army in the field and keep it fighting and eventually the casualties and expenses would wear the British down and they would get tired and go home. And so they did.</p>
<p>^ and he did it with a non professional army.</p>