[geeks] Percentages & mail list

[Nadine Miller]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
> On May 29, 2008, at 5:19 PM, Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
> 
>> On May 29, 2008, at 14:41 , Nadine Miller wrote:
>>
>>> And even those that turned out to be "rebels" in some cases really 
>>> didn't want to be.  The Declaration wasn't intended to be a document 
>>> of rebellion, even though it was interpreted that way.  If you read 
>>> it in the context of the letters of the period, it's a statement of 
>>> their position, and their expectations of what the Crown's 
>>> responsibilities towards the *contracts* that the Colonial companies 
>>> had agreed to.  If the Crown (well, strictly speaking Parliament) had 
>>> upheld the original contracts, we'd not be talking about a 
>>> Revolutionary War.
>>
>> Depends on which rebels of course.
>>
>> I'm not convinced that Washington's letters in particular were ever 
>> expected to be agreed with.  It seems to me they were deliberately 
>> worded so the English would not accept the terms.
>>
>> Then again, they weren't really unreasonable.
>>
>> Took some guts too, with that huge fleet sitting offshore...
> 
> I may be wrong, but it said Declaration of Independence across the top 
> in bold letters, what else could they have meant? It wasn't the 
> declaration of annoyance...

It was titled that way because the contracts for the Colonial companies 
said that the companies had independence of the Crown in certain matters 
of governance--like taxation, rights of property ownership, and other 
areas.  The companies where supposed to be able to run the colonies 
pretty much the way they wanted (as was done by the East India Company, 
for instance), but in America the Crown kept meddling in company affairs.

Parliament was the big problem--in spite of how history is taught in the 
US, King George had little influence over the whole thing since he was 
pretty much raving mad at that point.  England was upset that the flow 
of money was almost one-way--the only things that the colonists 
purchased were tea (hence the tea tax) and other finished items like 
needles and similar.  Unlike other colonies, there was little income to 
be made off of the Americas, because they didn't need much, and more 
skilled Europeans came here and brought their trades and manufacturing 
with them.

Early American history is really pretty interesting once you get past 
all the early stuff about the folks fleeing religious persecution.  Once 
the colonies get growing and you get some folks who are not 
hard-scrabbling all the time for survival, some more engaging personal 
accounts start getting written since the diversity of the population 
increases.

=Nadine=