The real cause of the American Revolution

 

Have always had a special place in my heart for Englishmen lusting for the Spanish  gold and silver of Mexico and Potosi, the pelts of the French down the St. Lawrence  and Mississippi.   Louis XIV asked Sanson if he would be his Secretary of State  instead of his map maker and was turned down.  Sanson wanted his children to  continue his cartographic tradition and was the FIRST to get the manuscript  material generated by the explorations of Champlain, Joliet and Marquette, La Salle and the Jesuits.  This Blome 1683 map of North America is the outright theft of the information of  Sanson's map of North America.  Blome was an Englishman keen to make a profit to sate the interest of Entrepreneurial Englishmen that wanted to be part of the trade. When Cromwell is ousted in 1660, Charles II comes back into power and gives his  supporters vast tracts of land in America - Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, New York,  New Jersey.  So the interest in this map showing English strongholds is intense.   And the merchants grasped the opportunity And YES it is a foundation document on WHY the Revolution occurs 82 years later.   Read Ron Chernow's book on George Washington and you can see that the leaders of the colonies were furious that English merchants were marking up their  goods 400% and paying 25% of what they sold their tobacco for in Europe.  This map inspired the birth of this process.   Even though the Howe brothers were  determined to reach a settlement for 5 years during the Revolution and keep  America as part of the Empire, they failed to grasp the rage of Virginians at being  so brutally taken advantage of in business.   Yes, the "rights of man" IS important but beating farmers out of a reasonable profit  is the real reason that the revolution occured.   They were willing to die to get even.    It was anger about this that prevented any chance of making a "deal."  It was the  fatal flaw of Admiral Richard Howe and General William Howe not to understand  this.  They NEVER had to make money.  It was all about glory from the day they  were born.   Some people think that the Howe mother was an illegitimate daughter   of George II.   The brothers certainly were very close to George III. Whereas George Washington always felt he was on the outside looking in.  Always  struggling to make money.   Missed the chance to marry the love of his life because  he was not a landowner.   Take a fair profit from a man like this and there can never  be compromise.   That is why he was willing to die.  ReplyForward