The main way in which the Seven Years War did this was because although the war technically ended in a British Victory, the British suffered heavy losses--meaning that the colonists saw that the British were at least somewhat militarily vulnerable.
“Society was liberalized, and Gorbachev sought détente with the USA so as to be able to transfer funding from defense to civil society. He declared that he would not support Communist regimes in other countries if their peoples were opposed to them. He thus started a chain reaction which led to the fall of communism in Europe.”
Trade and tea and castles
The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 may be most directly linked to the 20th-c. process of fragmentation.
