Question

Answer the following:1. What were the factors that led to a sense of American identity in the eighteenth century? 2. What role did British authorities have in this development? 3. Do you think that the creation of an American identity inevitably led to the movement to seek independence from Great Britain? 4. What was (were) the most significant development(s) in securing this independence?

Answer 1

1. Many different factors led to a highly evolved sense of unity and identity among the colonists. War and British negligence and victimization resulted mainly in colonial unification, while (ethnic) diversity and the distance between Europe and North America resulted in a distinctively American identity.

2. put taxes on the Americans.

3. For the most part, American colonists were proud to be British citizens and had no desire to form an independent nation. All this began to change in 1763 when the Seven Years War between Great Britain and France came to an end, and Great Britain gained control of most of the French territory in North America.

4. the Revolution was as paradoxical as it was unpredictable. A revolution fought in the name of liberty allowed slavery to persist. ... The “founding fathers” instigated and fought a revolution to secure independence from Britain, but they did not fight that revolution to create a “democracy.”