Colonial America: Neglecting Parents, Problem Children

This essay was a history assignment, in which I was supposed to analyze the development of the American colonies and their relation to Britain in terms of Britain being parents and the colonies being children. (Same assingment as Chambey's, but I take it in a different direction than he did. These two writeups are good when compared and contrasted)

The parent-child relationship analogy is vital to the understanding of the conflict between England and its North American colonies. If one tries to look only at British North American policy at the time of the revolution and American reactions, it might very well seem that the Colonists were just a lot of rowdy barbarians. However, when one looks at the history of Britain's policy and views it in terms of the way a parent treats a child, the colonial revolutionaries' actions make much more sense. While the revolutionary colonists did act strongly and excessively to Britain, it would be strange if they acted differently when you consider Britain's early neglect of the colonies. They let the child grow wildly at first and later they tried to manage it. This is not the way any good parents manage their child.

The problems stem from the very beginning of Britain's American colonies. Founded in areas where immediate wealth was not easy to find, unlike in the Spanish or Portuguese colonies, people started moving there not so much to get rich, but to escape the political turmoil in England. This made the North American colonies different from other American colonies other British colonies. Most colonists in other places made up a small part of the community they lived in, and were only there to make money exploiting the natives. For the most part, especially in the North, the American colonies did not incorporate the Natives into their society, and maintained a subsistence economy where it was not necessary to. The South, which practiced cash crop agriculture, tried at first to use Indians as slaves, but they kept dying from new diseases. This led them to become a new England (hence the name), instead of just a group of businessmen and a means of making money.

Unfortunately, the British government did not realize this at first, and treated American colonies just as they would any other colony. The general policy towards their colonies was benign neglect. All the British government did was to put trading regulations on the area, fund any wars, and send greedy young businessmen there. They gave certain companies licenses to make money there, and the company would pay the King. The companies' business was to exploit the natives for labor, sell British goods, and take natural resources. They did not regulate their people, and there was not all that much need to; most things that fortune seekers would be going there for would eventually bring money home. They saw no need to implement regulations on the fledgling North American societies, and therefore the Americans constructed their own society, and got accustomed to doing so. This is how Britain neglected her infant.

Only after the American Colonies got far out of hand did Parliament try to fix things, but by then it was too late. King Phillip's war made them realize how out of control the colonies had become, and after the French and Indian war (Seven Years War), they realized how much they had vested in them. From this point on they tried to exert control over the colonies, and to make money from them. The conflicts with the Indians were too expensive, so they tried to restrict expansion, which angered the southern and western colonists who had never been restricted this way before, and had money invested in that land. To make money off the colonies, they decided to treat the Americans like other non-business wings of the empire and tax them. This irritated everyone off because they had never been taxed before, but especially the North where there was enough of a middle class for it to hit hard. They also tried to restrict the smuggling, which was a drain on their profits. This again angered the north, whose people were not used to these kinds of limitations.

None of these new policies were irrational or excessive, and none really directly hurt people all that much. However, because these types of laws were so new, the colonists would not stand for them. The changing philosophical theories with the enlightenment just fueled the colonies' urges to rebel, and the British flimsiness on policy just encouraged it.

Even though the Americans did turn out to be bad children, it was because of bad parenting that they became bad children. The Americans were not an extremely oppressed people, but their society was regulated poorly, and it showed. If they had been extremely oppressed they probably would not have been able to break free like they did. The Americans were over-rebellious, but that was ultimately Britain's fault.