The British chose to tax the productive members of society instead of those who benefitted, in a nutshell. I’m not sure how much the landed gentry could afford, though; they seem to be constantly on the edge of bankruptcy due to a variety of factors not excluding their profligate spending.
Comment on Revolution.
gastroglizzy@piefed.social 5 hours ago
That’s a gross oversimplification of a very complex era of history.
The people weren’t represented when taxes were levied. Taxes were calculated based on what England needed to pay back its debts, not based on what the colonists could afford. The colonists were taxed more heavily than people in England, even though they didn’t ask to go over there. England asked them to colonize, as favor, knowing the Spanish and the French were already there and claiming territory. The war wasn’t a surprise, they basically sent them over knowing a war was very likely. Their reward for all of that was higher taxes with no representation in parliament. The colonists tried many rounds of negotiations and only resorted to revolution after England refused to budge at all on negotiations, stopped returning letters, and levied even higher taxes in repose to negotiation attempts.
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 4 hours ago
tetris11@feddit.uk 4 hours ago
(just wanted to say thanks for the informative post)