The American colonists reacted to the new taxes smuggling and bribing to avoid them, protesting and in City halls and literature, and boycotting goods.
An ineffective thesis statement on the causes of the French Revolution would be "The frivolous spending of the monarchs lead to the common man losing money." This would be ineffective as it fails to create a bigger picture and does not go into proper depth. More detail is better, as it leads to a more subjective thesis.