The process whereby colonists in North America broke free fromthe British Empire to found the United States.Despite the political upheavals of the previous century, Britainitself in the middle of the eighteenth century remained a rigidlyhierarchical society, still rooted in its feudal past. By contrast,on the other side of the Atlantic, Puritanism and the experience offrontier life had generated anti-authority, individualisticattitudes, while the absence of an aristocracy and the ease withwhich land could be acquired made possible a degree of socialmobility unheard of in Europe. The original charters establishingthe colonies had provided for self-government, and, subsequently,successive British administrations allowed the colonists greatfreedom to conduct their own affairs. By the mid-eighteenth centurya large proportion of adult white males in the colonies possessedthe suffrage while also enjoying the privileges of a free press andsome freedom of religious worship. The colonies, in other words,had grown apart from the mother country, their inhabitants hadbegun to think of themselves as Americans, and, not surprisingly,they proved unreceptive to attempts to bring them to heel.British politicians, for their part, with the ending of theSeven Years War (1756-63) turned their attention to the problems ofadministering an empire. In order to meet the large debt incurredby war with France and the continuing costs of protecting thewestern frontier and defending the colonists from the Indians theBritish government sought new sources of revenue. Believing, notunreasonably, that those same colonists should contribute to thefunds necessary for their defence Parliament passed the RevenueAct, otherwise known as the 'Sugar Act', in 1764, and the Stamp Actin 1765. The latter required the affixing of a stamp, which had tobe purchased, to a wide range of legal documents, newspapers,pamphlets, playing cards, and other items.It was the fact that this and other legislation was introducedsolely for the purpose of raising revenue that made it so offensiveto Americans. As they saw it, this was to infringe one of the mosthallowed principles of good government, the right of free peoplenot to be taxed without their consent. Accordingly, therepresentatives of nine colonies at the Stamp Act Congress of 1765agreed a number of resolutions, including one asserting, 'That itis inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and theundoubted rights of Englishmen, that no taxes should be imposed onthem, but with their own consent, given personally, or by theirrepresentatives'. On the same occasion the Congress rejectedcategorically the claim of the British government that no basicrights had been violated because colonists enjoyed 'virtualrepresentation' in the House of Commons.The Stamp Act proved unenforceable and, a year after itspassage, was repealed, but Parliament remained unwilling to forgoits claim to paramountcy and continued to pass legislation based onthat assumption. The Quebec Act 1774 was the most threatening,empowering as it did the French Canadians and any Indian allies tosettle in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, thus potentiallycutting off the expansion of the colonies to the west. Growingresentment in the colonies led to the convening of the FirstContinental Congress in 1774. This gathering claimed for the peopleof the colonies the right to enjoy without infringement 'life,liberty and property'; rejected again the relevance of virtualrepresentation in their case; and repeatedly asserted theirentitlement to all the rights and immunities of freebornEnglishmen. The first shots in the Revolutionary War were fired atLexington in April 1775 and the Declaration of Independenceformally breaking the link between the colonies and Britain wassigned on 4 July 1776.The American Revolution was essentially a political revolution.Even though the revolutionaries in this case were motivated in partby a concern for property rights this was not a conflict primarilyabout Economics, but about the values of democratic government.This was also, in several senses, a conservative revolution. Manyof those prominent in the movement towards independence were mostreluctant to break the link with Britain and only accepted the needto do so as a last resort. They also insisted that in resisting theBritish government they were merely asserting their rights asEnglishmen-that it was the government in London that had firstdisrupted the status quo by enforcing illegitimate measures in thecolonies. Furthermore, unlike subsequent revolutions in France andRussia the American version involved no fundamental reordering ofexisting economic or social structures.