‘American Revolution was an economic revolt against mercantilism.’ Substantiate.

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The American Revolution was largely an economic revolt against British mercantilism, since trade monopolies, curbs on manufacture and new duties after 1763 drove colonial protest. The Tea Act of 1773, which favoured the East India Company and provoked the Boston Tea Party, was the decisive flashpoint.

**Introduction**

Historians such as Charles Beard and Louis Hacker saw the American Revolution as colonial capitalism rising against British mercantilism, which held that colonies exist to enrich the mother country. The events of 1763-1776 largely support this view.

**Mercantilist Curbs That Fuelled the Revolt**

SKETCH: flow | From Trade Curbs to Independence
- Seven Years' War debt
- Sugar, Stamp, Townshend duties
- Boycotts and Tea Party
- Coercive Acts 1774
- Independence 1776

1. **Trade monopoly**: The Navigation Acts (1651, 1660) tied colonial trade to British ships and sent "enumerated" goods like tobacco only to England.
2. **Curbs on manufacture**: The Hat Act (1732) and Iron Act (1750) kept America a raw-material supplier for British industry.
3. **Squeeze after 1763**: To pay war debts, Britain enforced the Sugar Act and Currency Act (1764) and closed western land by the Proclamation of 1763, hurting merchants, debtors and speculators.
4. **Tea as the flashpoint**: The Tea Act (1773) let the East India Company undercut colonial merchants, provoking the Boston Tea Party.

**Beyond Economics: Rights and Ideology**

1. **Representation**: "No taxation without representation" turned the Stamp Act Congress of 1765 into a constitutional protest over who may tax.
2. **Ideas of liberty**: Bernard Bailyn showed how Locke's natural rights and Paine's Common Sense (1776) recast trade grievances as a fight for a republic.
3. **Political punishment**: The Coercive Acts of 1774 attacked Massachusetts's charter, uniting the colonies around rights rather than prices.

**Conclusion**

The statement largely holds: mercantilist curbs supplied the grievances and the first boycotts. Yet the result, a republic built on a Declaration of rights, shows that an economic quarrel became a political revolution that inspired France and later anti-colonial movements.

‘American Revolution was an economic revolt against mercantilism.’ Substantiate.

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