Tea, Taxes, and The American Revolution: Crash Course World History #28

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In which John Green teaches you about the American Revolution and the American Revolutionary War, which it turns out were two different things. John goes over the issues and events that precipitated rebellion in Britain's American colonies, and he also explores the ideas that laid the groundwork for the new American democracy. Find out how the tax bill from the Seven Years War fomented an uprising, how the Enlightenment influenced the Founding Fathers, and who were the winners and losers in this conflict.(hint: many of the people living in the Colonies ended up losers) The Revolution purportedly brought freedom and equality to the Thirteen Colonies, but they weren't equally distributed. Also, you'll learn about America's love affair with commemorative ceramics and what happens when rich white guys take the reins from reins white guys, and put together a society of, by, and for rich white guys.

Hi, I’m John Green.

This is Crash Course World History

and today you AREN’T going to get a blow
by blow

chronology of the American Revolution,

and you AREN’T going to get
cool biographical details about

Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.

But you are going to get me
not wearing any pants.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green!

Did you know that

George Washington might have had
slave teeth implanted into his jaw?

Yeah, I did Me from the Past,

and while it’s fun to focus on
metaphorically resonant details,

what we’re concerned with here is
why the American Revolution happened

and the extent to which it
was actually revolutionary.

Plus,
for the first time in Crash Course history,

I have a legitimate chance of
getting through an entire episode

without butchering a single pronunciation.
[Wouldn't bet your Sword of Destiny on that]

Unfortunately,

next week we will be in France and

je parle francais comme une idiot.

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So, intellectual historians might put the
roots

of the American revolution earlier,

but I’m going to start with the end
of the 7 Years War in 1763,

which as you will recall from last week was

1. Expensive,

and 2. A victory for the British,

including British subjects living in America,
who now had more land and therefore more money.

Right, so,

in 1765 the British government was like,

“Hey, since we went into this debt
to get you all this new land,

we trust that you won’t mind if
we pass the Stamp Act,

in which we place a fancy stamp on your
documents, newspapers, playing cards, etc.,

and in return, you give us money.”

Well,

it turns out the colonists weren’t so
keen on this,

not so much because the tax was high

but because they had no direct representation

in the parliament that had levied the tax.
[Some things never change, eh, Washington

D.C?]

And plus,

they were cranky about the Crown keeping
large numbers of British troops in the colonies

even after the end of the 7 Years War.
[Not going to touch that one…]

And then the British government was like,

“You are inadequately grateful,”

and the colonists were like,

“Shut up we hate you,”
[That old chestnut]

and the British government was like,

“As long as you live under our roof,
[This old chestnut]

you live by our rules,”

and so on,

but eventually the British backed down
and repealed the Stamp Act.

The repeal inspired a line of
commemorative teapots,

thereby beginning America’s storied tradition

of worthless collectible ceramics.
[atleast Beanie Babies double as cornhole

bags]

But, in the end,

this only emboldened the colonists when the
British tried to put new taxes on the Americans

in the form of the Townshend acts.

These led to further protests and boycotts
and most importantly,

more organization among the colonists.

The protests escalated:
1770 saw the Boston Massacre,

which with its sum total of
five dead was perhaps

the least massacrey massacre of all time,

and in 1773,

a bunch of colonists dumped about a million
dollars worth of tea into Boston Harbor,

in protest of British government decisions
that

actually would have made British tea cheaper.
[some things seriously never change…]

Oh it’s time for the open letter?

[oh no! he's coming in hot!]
Ah…..oh,

that did not go well.
[admittedly not your best work, John.]

An Open Letter to Tea.

But first, let’s see what’s
in the secret compartment today.

Oh,

it’s a gigantic teabag.
[not touching that either]

Hm.
Let’s see what flavor it is...

Bitter tyranny variety!
[SleepyTime sure ain't gonna keep the fires

of rage a'burning]

Dear Tea,

Like all Americans who love
justice and freedom,

I hate you.
[You're harshing my Mint Magic mellow, Bro]

But I understand you’re quite popular in
the UK

where the East India Company would
periodically go to war for you.

But,

what fascinates me about you, tea,

I mean, aside from the fact that people
choose to drink you when

there are great American refreshments available,

like Mountain Dew,
[Hey, like on Mad Men!]

is that even though you’re
stereotypically English,

you’re not English.

It’s Chinese,

or Burmese,

or Indian.

No one really knows,

but it’s definitely not English.

You didn’t even have tea until,
like, the 1660s.

Posers.

Best wishes,
John Green

So,

The Boston Tea Party led
to further British crackdowns

and then mobilization of colonial militias

and then Paul Revere

and then actual war, but you can hear all
about

that stuff on, like,

TV miniseries.

I want to focus on one of the ways that
colonists protested unfair taxation.

Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
[Because Canadians are so unruly & disagreeable?]

As previously noted,

the English Crown benefited tremendously from
the import of consumer goods to the American

colonies,

and one of the most effective ways American
colonists could protest taxation without representation

was by boycotting British products.

In order to enforce these boycotts,

the protesters created Committees of Correspondence,
which spread information about who was and

was not observing the boycotts.

And these committees also could coerce non-compliers
into compliance—which is to say that they

were creating and enforcing policy,

kind of like a government does.

The Maryland Committee of Correspondence,
in fact,

was instrumental in setting up the first Continental
Congress, which convened to coordinate a response

to the fighting that started in 1775.

This was back when congresses did things,
by the way.

It was awesome.
[Like the weaponizing of the filibuster]

Anyway,

the Continental Congress is most famous for
drafting and approving

the Declaration of Independence.

No,
Thought Bubble.

That’s the Will Smith vehicle
Independence Day.

I mean the Declaration of Independence.

Right,

that one.

It’s not your fault,

you guys are Canadian.
[+ magnificently talented, ruly, agreeable]

You’ve never declared independence.

[faceplant]

Worth noting, by the way,

that the congress edited out more than a
quarter of Jefferson’s original declaration,

and

he forever after insisted they’d “mangled”
it.

Anyway,

I would argue the heavy lifting of
the American Revolution

was already done by the Declaration.

In truth,

by the time the shooting started,

most of the colonists were already self-governing
and had developed a sense of themselves as

something separate and different from Great
Britain—

as evidenced by these
"Committees of Correspondence,"

which functioned as shadow governments—

eventually reaching out to foreign governments,

establishing an espionage network,

tarring and feathering loyalists
and royal officials which,

by the way is incredibly painful
and dangerous to the victim,

and even recruiting physicians to
tell American men that drinking British tea

would make them weak and effeminate.
[If only they had Dr. Pepper 10]

Thanks, Thought Bubble.

Now,
despite all this,

about 20% of colonists remained loyal
to Great Britain throughout the war,

especially in the major cities
that Britain occupied.

Also lots slaves continued to
support the British,

especially after Britain promised that any
slaves who fought with them would be freed.

And it’s worth noting

that while we generally celebrate the Revolution

and see it as a step
toward justice and equality,

the people who most needed the protection
of a government might have been better off

and more free,

if Britain had won.

[whoops]

Especially since Britain ended slavery
well before America did,

and, you know,

without a civil war.

Also, even though most Americans had come
to see themselves as separate from Britain

before 1776,

the British certainly didn’t see it that
way.

They continued to fight
either until 1781 or 1783,

depending on whether you calculate
by when they actually gave up

or when the peace treaty was signed.

So you can’t really say the American Revolution
was won before the fighting even started.

But the truth is, the American Revolution
and the war for independence

weren’t like this.

They were like this.

So,

here’s what was pretty revolutionary
about the American Revolution:

The colonists threw off the rule of an imperial
monarchy and replaced it with a government

that didn’t have a king,

a radical idea in a world that didn’t feature
many non-monarchical forms of government.

And,

if you look at the explanations
for the revolution,

especially those contained in,

like, the Declaration of Independence
and in pamphlets,

like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense,

there’s definitely a revolutionary zeal
that’s informed by the Enlightenment.

And that’s especially true if you focus
on the idea of liberty,

as many of the pamphleteers did.

That said,

if you look at the actual
outcome of the revolution,

aside from the whole no king thing,

it wasn’t that revolutionary.

Let’s look, for instance,
at two ideas central to the revolution:

property rights and equality.

So the Articles of Confederation
gave the government no power to tax,

which had the effect of making sure that people
who had property were able to keep it

because they never had to pay the
government anything in exchange for

the right to own and use it.

And that’s very different from
taxation systems dating all the way back to,

like,
Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt.

And it’s probably not a coincidence that
most of the writers and signers of the Declaration

of Independence were men of property,

and they wanted to keep it that way.

So, basically,

the white guys who controlled the land and
its production before the American Revolution

were the same white guys who controlled it
after the American Revolution.

And this leads us to the second, and more
important way that as a revolution,

the American one falls a bit short.

So, if you’ve ever studied American history,

you’re probably familiar with the greatest
line in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal.”

Sorry, ladies.
[some things never brickabracking change!]

And,

you also may know that at the time
those words were written,

a large segment of the American population,
perhaps as much as 30%,

were slaves of African descent who were held
as property and were definitely,

100% not treated as equal to whites.

In fact,
the guy who wrote those words held slaves,

and was fighting against a government who
promised to free any slaves who supported

it.

Furthermore,

women couldn’t vote,

and neither could white men who didn’t
own enough property—

meaning that the government
of, for, and by the people

was, in fact

of, for, and by about 10-15% of the people.

But here’s the real question:

Was the American Revolution what the
historian Jonathan Israel called

“a revolution of mind?”
[Like in the Matrix?]

Did it change the way we think
about what people are

and how we should organize ourselves?

Addressing those questions will involve a
brief foray into the history of ideas.

Let’s study the Enlightenment!

The Enlightenment was primarily a celebration
of humans’ ability to understand and improve

the natural world through reason.

The Enlightenment had a number of antecedents,

including the European Renaissance and
the Scientific Revolution,

but what made it special was that some
of its more radical proponents—

like, Immanuel Kant, for instance—

went so far as to argue that human reason
rendered a belief in God unnecessary and,

by extension,

proclaimed that any belief in divine
intervention or a divine plan for humanity

was just superstition.

Given that this was coming out of an
overwhelmingly Christian Europe,

this was a pretty controversial suggestion,
[our atheist pals- always left out in the

cold.]

and not all Enlightenment thinkers
would go that far.

And more moderate Enlightenment thinkers

were also more willing to countenance
hierarchical social and political structures.

Like John Locke,
a major Enlightenment thinker,

formulated his version of inalienable rights
as life, liberty, and property.

And that’s much more traditional than arguing,

for instance,
that property should be held communally.

[is there an easier target than hippies?]

And it’s no coincidence that
the more moderate Enlightenment thinkers,

like Locke and Adam Smith,

happened to be British,

and the real radicals were French.

And the founders of the United States,
were far more closely linked

to those British Enlightenment thinkers
than to the French,

who influenced the French Revolution,
which as we will see next week,

goes swimmingly.

But even if the government that America’s
revolutionaries came up with

didn’t overturn privilege
or tear apart the social order

as the French Revolution tried to do,

it did make significant changes.

America made sure that there would
never be a formal nobility,

except for the Count of Chocula.
[and Gene "Duke of Earl" Chandler in the 60's]

And,

it recognized the equal rights of
daughters and widows,

when it came to inheriting and possessing
property. [Downton Abbey wishes]

Also,

it created a world in which
future countesses could rehabilitate

their reputations in New York.
[shame: extinct since end of the 20th century]

But,

the real seismic change was
that after the Revolution,

Americans came to view themselves
as equal to each other.

And,
in the context of the 18th century,

that was pretty radical.

“Ordinary Americans came to believe that
no one in a basic down-to-earth and day-in-and-day-out

manner was really better than anyone else.
That was equality as no other nation had ever

quite had it.”

And in the end,
the ideas of the American revolution—

ideas about property and equality
and representation—

are still hugely important in shaping
political discourse around the world,

and particularly in America.
[particularly in an election year]

And by America, I mean the United States.

I’m sorry Canadians and Mexicans and
Central Americans and South Americans.

We’re provincial, okay?

I mean, here in the United States,

our Presidential candidates must know both
how to wear a suit and how to bowl.

[and most egregiously, to pander!]

But the American Revolution also reminds us—

as the French one will next week—

that revolutionary ideas and values
are not always easy to live up to.

Nothing challenges one’s belief in equality
quite like becoming rich and powerful.

Indeed,

rare is the revolutionary who doesn’t become,

on some level, like Orwell’s pigs,

insisting that while all
animals were created equal,

some were created more equal than others.

[at the very least tastier than others?]

In short,

if you’re going to base
your new society on philosophy,

you should try to found it on ideals that
are as inclusive and humanistic as possible—

because the people executing those ideas
will never be ideal.

Thanks for watching.

I’ll see you next week.

Crash Course is

produced and directed
by Stan Muller,

our script supervisor is
Danica Johnson, [hello]

the show is written by my high school
history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself,

our graphics team is Thought Bubble,

and we are ably interned by Meredith Danko.
[dba: The Interness or M,TVCS]

Last week’s phrase of the week was
"Historian Feuds."

If you want to suggest
future phrases of the week,

or guess at this one
you can do so in comments,

where you can also ask questions
about today’s video

that will be answered by our team of historians.

Thanks for watching Crash Course,

and as we say in my hometown,

don’t forget That's how you get ants!
[Do you want ants, John?]

[slides away into the white-walled abyss]

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