An Extra-American Podcast: Recent Episodes
Simon Farruqui
Why study history? A question that everyone has wondered about when they were in their history class. Well, believe it or not history is important because the rate of change and innovation is so rapid in the twenty-first century, it is easy to assume that everything new is really new. People feel lucky that our government is a democracy and citizens play a role in choosing their leaders; and slavery doesn’t affect people in modern day. We must not overlook the fact that these conveniences would not be possible except for the men and women who were pioneers in these fields.
From the Louisiana Purchase to Laissez-Faire, there are many significant events that took place in America during the 1800’s and today we are gonna go over a few.
The first most significant cause was taxation without representation.
Now this was not an event exactly like the Intolerable Acts, it was just another requirement that the British imposed on the American colonies during the 1760’s. A phrase, generally attributed to James Otis (a patriot) about 1761, that reflected the resentment of American colonists at being taxed by a British Parliament to which they elected no representatives and became an anti-British slogan before the American Revolution; in full, “Taxation without representation” and this is tyranny from the king.
The second most significant cause was the Boston Tea Party.
And this is an actual event that took place December, 16, 1773. In simplest terms, the Boston Tea Party happened as a result of “taxation without representation”, yet the cause is more complex than that. The American colonists believed Britain was unfairly taxing them to pay for expenses incurred during the French and Indian War. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. The event was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists. People who were a part of the Boston Tea Party included John Adams, John Hancock, James Otis, Josiah Quincy, Paul Revere, and Dr. Joseph Warren.
The third most significant cause, in no particular order, is the Intolerable Acts.
The Intolerable Acts were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British Government. This affected the colonies power and was an attempt by the British to make them feel weaker. The Intolerable Acts involved the Boston colonists being punished by King George the III for dumping three shiploads of tea into the Boston Harbor otherwise known as the Boston Tea Party. King George III ordered three shiploads of tea and demanded that there be a new tea tax.
Why study history? A question that everyone has wondered about when they were in their history class. Well, believe it or not history is important because the rate of change and innovation is so rapid in the twenty-first century, it is easy to assume that everything new is really new. People feel lucky that our government is a democracy and citizens play a role in choosing their leaders; and slavery doesn’t affect people in modern day. We must not overlook the fact that these conveniences would not be possible except for the men and women who were pioneers in these fields. Human needs and desires have spurred the creation of everything that makes our lives more comfortable, but those items are merely improvements on the originals. History was the beginning of human improvement and in order to completely understand it we must answer these four questions: Why do people move? How does where we live impact how we live? How did slavery develop in US? How did representative government develop in the Colonial Period?