How Englishmen Became Americans - Essay Assignment

Assignment: 

Read Chapter 2 and 3 of the Textbook.

Supplement your reading with the following summary of an article by Current, Williams, and Friedel (1972) entitled, "Englishmen Become Americans and Gain Their Independence." Much like the readings for Chapter 2 and 3 of the textbook, these notes provide a context for the underlying causes of the independence movement. 

Essay Question:

What was the most significant cause of the War of Independence?

Due Date: Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Englishmen Become Americans and Gain Their Independence

• The colonies were largely made up of "transplanted" Englishmen who identified with England largely except for a few specific matters
• As such, these individuals saw themselves as creating a "better" England with "greater opportunities for personal happiness"

As time went on, America developed more of its own character distinct from England. The three reasons for this "divergence between the culture of the colonies and that of the homeland," was:

• Colonists were generally more "discontented" and/or more "adventurous" people than their English counterparts back home. They saw negative aspects of their native home and were prepared to do something about it to change their own lives.
• They were frontiersmen. The new environment they chose to live in brought new "challenges and opportunities" that were not necessarily best met by the old ways of England.
• Although the English dominated, there was enough diversity in the colonies to cause the development of a new culture.

There was also diversity on another level -- Americans became and largely remain provincial people. The colonies developed their own distinctive characters and regions. There were the New England colonies, the middle colonies of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, and the Southern colonies (which themselves could be divided between the tobacco colonies and the others).
These unique circumstances created "Americans" -- a people who thought of their "country" as being their colony first, their region second, and their place as British subjects third. This mindset put the colonists directly at odds with Britain after New France fell, as the Empire attempted to govern more directly over all of British North America. Their opposition to England gave them a strong common bond that led to political allegiance and finally morphed into a full blown revolution designed to secure their liberty from the greatest political and military force the world had ever known.
While the battles, weaponry, and casualties were small when compared to warfare today, the consequences of the Revolutionary War were significant and far reaching. It was the first backlash to colonialism. It gave birth to a new nation bound together not by a sense of tribalism but instead rooted in faith, freedom, and the "pursuit of happiness". Most importantly, this great experiment in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people served as a beacon to the world.