Spoonist wrote:@Simon Jester
Please note that I am by no means an expert here, heck I'd be hardpressed placing the american revultion in its correct decade without the internet. Just that I've seen/read similar views being discredited by better educated folks than me.
So I did some googling and while I couldn't find an article discrediting the old and presenting evidence for the new view I did find books like this one:
isbn 0-631-22141-7
p216 google books
(Had to rewrite since I couldn't copy so any misspelling is mine).
"The condition used to be attributed to a chronic inbalance of payments with Britain, but modern scholars have largely discounted this interpretation. Although exports to the mother country often equaled only half the value of imports, the imbalance was generally corrected by colonial surpluses on trade with the West Indies and southern Europe." It has a footnote so interested folks can check it out.
The lack of specie argument also have extremely little support in the writings of both the founding fathers et al but also the contemporary historians at the time. It seems that it only becomes a meme a generation or so later. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Perhaps my history professor was a loon. I will not attempt to defend his argument on this issue. I can see, and will expand, on why it makes sense to me
in theory. But I cannot prove that it was a problem and would not presume to dispute scholarly papers which assert that deflation was not a problem in the colonial economy.
You see what I do know is that the whole british empire was chronically inflicted by a lack of specie as was the french but to a lesser degree, so it was not an american thing but a universal thing. Only Spain had enough for the extreme growth of trade. For them not to take that into account would mean that we would have seen similar stuff all over the commonwealth. Something which we don't.
A chronic, universal lack of specie would tend to strike with disproportionate force in places where imperial policy was draining specie
away from the economy the fastest. If everyone is short on silver, and the government policy is to remove silver from the colonies and concentrate it in the homeland, the colonies will suffer greater, more rapid deflation than the homeland.
So I don't buy it. It can only be seen as an extra burden by afterthought, not while it was happening. I continue below but if you spot any errors or oversimplifications please let me know, I'm always interested in correcting any false views I have.
It occurs to me that a province does not need to know
why imperial policy is causing a famine to revolt because of the famine. If the colonial economy is in chaos (for any reason) and the imperial government continues to draw taxes from the colony, a revolt becomes quite likely.
Simon_Jester wrote:From what I've heard (and I'd have to e-mail one of my college history professors and wait a while to get a well-developed explanation of this), the problem with (3) wasn't the tax rate. It was the limited ability of the colonies to pay taxes.
Nope. The taxes was paid almost always on time etc. There was never any conflict between crown and colonies whether they were paid or not. The conflict was about which taxes could and should be levied on the colonies unilaterally.
However the wars in the americas took a lot of inventiveness to finance. Where the colonies invented new scheemes with parliament legeslating it away time and again. With more resentment from the colonies.
I think you misunderstand my point. It's not about "should taxes be paid?" it's about "can we keep paying these taxes without gutting the economy?" Or "will my business be able to pay these taxes and still run enough of a profit that I can keep paying my debts to the Bank of England?"
This could be tricky in the colonies, where people had more need to get 'inventive' with financial issues because they
were colonies: they had a lot of land, but not a lot of highly valuable economic goods- especially a lack of cash crops that sold as well as sugar from the Caribbean or furs from Canada. Getting silver to pay debts with was harder than getting land-backed securities as paper money to pay debts with, so naturally the colonies tried to establish "land banks" that would print money backed by real estate securities; that's what they
had.
Parliament then proceeded to legislate the land banks away, as you say. This left the colonial economy in bad shape- again, hamhanded enforcement of policies that originated from people who had relatively little detailed knowledge of the realities on the ground in the colonies. Which is just a practical concern: when the colony is three months' travel from home, you're not going to have intimate detailed knowledge of what's going on there.
Simon_Jester wrote:This was a pre-industrial society; taxes from the colonies were collected in specie: gold and silver currency, because the British treasury couldn't very well collect grain or chickens from scattered colonists three thousand miles away.
I believe this to be flawed. It could not collect what didn't exist. If what your friend says is true the colonies would not just be short on specie they wouldn't have any at all plus being seriously in debt and attacked by crown tax collectors. Since that didnt happen it must have been solved in another way. Probably by IOUs between trading companies etc.
My 'friend' is
Dr. Terry Bouton, of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where I took a 400-level course on the history of the American Revolution. Not a place where you'd
expect to see "lies to children," especially since in the same course Bouton was rather brutal about dismantling the myth of the Founding Fathers as ideal disinterested heroes, pointing out that the colonial upper class had very real, concrete interests at stake, which they did everything in their power to promote in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary era.
Now, for all I know Dr. Bouton is full of shit... but I'm not going to be the one to prove it.
If I had to, I could e-mail him and request a reference to papers on the issue or something. But I am reluctant to bother him over a random Internet discussion, though I realize this leaves me in an awkward position so far as the debate goes.
As to the practical question, often the colonial governments would simply print paper money as legal tender within their own respective colonies. Moreover, it is a gross misunderstanding of my position to read it as "there was NO specie in the colonies." There was some; goods exported to England were paid for in silver, and I'm sure there was a certain amount of illicit trade with other nations like France and (especially) Spain.
But the British policy, under mercantilism, was to keep the colonies as a market for manufactured goods while trying to drain them of gold and silver. It should not come as a surprise that this left the colonies short of specie
relative to Britain proper, leading to deflation in the colonial economy so long as only specie-based currency was legal. The colonial governments repeatedly tried to get round this by printing paper money... which the British generally did not encourage.
Mercantilism worked so good elsewhere that they built a global empire around the concept (and the spanish/french/dutch/etc). I fail to see the relevance of repeating how it works.
All of the famous eastindia companies worked on the same principle.
Yes, and the East India Companies were
bad for the economies of the remote colonial areas they controlled. The Dutch and British East India Companies were engines for transferring wealth from the "Indies" to the Netherlands and to Britain, respectively.
Mercantilism can be
great for the homeland. It is not so great for the colonies, as it deliberately seeks to impoverish the colonies and subordinate their economies to that of the homeland in the name of enriching the homeland.
Therefore, mercantilist British policies may be highly relevant in a discussion of how economic issues affected the decision of the American colonies to revolt against Britain.
Simon_Jester wrote:1-Gold and silver flowed steadily out of North America to pay taxes to Britain.
2-Gold and silver could not flow into North America from non-British merchants because of the Navigation Acts.
3-Gold and silver flowed into north America from British merchants only slowly, which was a feature, not a bug, of the mercantilist policies of the time.
4-There were no sources of gold and silver in the colonies.
IIRC
1-A "lies-to children" in that it didn't deplete local specie. It just prevented its growth.
2-A half-truth where it should have but didn't because smuggling was so prevalent. Lots of the specie in the colonies (just like the rest of the world) was pieces of eight.
3-Agreed, but it was not deemed as a bad thing at the time. The setting of the prices from London was on the other hand seen as a bad thing at the time. So again a "lies-to-children" concept.
4-Agreed but again with a nitpick. There was 'not enough' sources of gold and silver in the colonies, and even if there were the colonies couldn't create legal specie that way since minting was only allowed in London (at the tower IIRC). for the brit emp to allow a colony to mint its own money would have been seen as insane at the time.
1) How is this not a problem that tends to subject the colonies to deflation and economic stagnation
at best or decay at worst? Artificially skimming the top off the local money supply and shipping the money to another continent is bound to have consequences for the local economy.
2) Yes, but remember that at the same time the British were levying new taxes on the colonies, they were
also cracking down on enforcement of the Navigation Acts. Thus, a route for non-British specie to find its way into the colonial economy was, if not closed, at least narrowed... at the same time that the British sought to extract larger quantities of specie from the colonies.
3) "This was not deemed as a bad thing at the time." What, because the American colonial leaders were supposed to be economic geniuses who would invent concepts like 'deflation' out of thin air? This was
before Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations, for crying out loud. Economics was in its infancy.
Imagine you are a man on the ground in 1773, in an economy where mercantilist policies are causing deflation at the same time taxes are being increased and collected in specie. You will NOT think "Ah-ha, mercantilist policies cause deflation!" because the terms "mercantilist" and "deflation" do not yet exist. You
will, however, notice that it takes a man more work to accumulate the same number of shillings- you see the practical consequence of deflation, if not the underlying cause. At the same time, you will notice that the colonial overlords are taking away more shillings than they used to, even while each shilling requires a growing amount of effort to obtain.
This is likely to strike you as excessive taxation. If your complaints to the central government are then repeatedly ignored, and the central government sends ham-handed officials backed by hostile soldiers to enforce the taxes you are complaining about... well, at that point, you are quite likely to rebel.
And the central government's policies still have a lot to do with the reason you rebelled, even if you didn't get around to writing a groundbreaking economic treatise on exactly
why the central government's policies caused the economic crisis that led you to rebel.
Men do not need a sophisticated vocabulary with which to speak about food or money, in order to notice that they are hungry or poor. Nor do they need such a vocabulary to become angry when someone else takes away a growing share of their food or money, at a time when they feel hungry or poor.
4)
Exactly my point. By banning the colonies from creating local currency (specie or paper), and by promoting policies that led to a flow of specie away from the colonies and into Britain itself, the British government could easily cause deflation.
Simon_Jester wrote:At this point, it's quite predictable that you'd see deflation in the colonies. The money supply shrank, which hit debtors hard. And that included both large numbers of small farmers on the frontier, and much of the colonial upper class.
Again I think this is flawed and backwards reasoning. The deflation in 1760s was because of the just finished war against french+natives, which had led to lots of paper money which then deflated vs printed worth. It was a reason for dissent yes, but not as you imply something which is 'predicted' by those points you give above.
I think you misunderstand. My point is that the combination of mercantilist policies
and a lack of gold and silver mines
and a lack of high-value export 'cash crop' commodities like sugar or furs leads to a predictable consequence: deflation of specie-backed currency.
This, in turn, predictably leads to economic crises, when we view the whole issue in terms of modern economics. At the time, the British could not reasonably have foreseen what would happen, or taken the appropriate steps to stop it from happening... but the fact that they continued to pursue essentially the same policies regardless of colonial complaints about the tax burden does not speak well of the degree to which the Parliament looking out for colonial interests.
Simon_Jester wrote:Broad policies were set by Parliament, which was hopelessly remote from the actual scene of events and had virtually no accurate information on conditions in the colonies.
Agreed that this was how it was felt in the 13 colonies. That was however not really accurate. It would be more accurate to say that the
enlightened americans no longer understood the empire. (and rightly so) They were too far away from parliament to understand why those laws/measures were put in place. (Which representation would have solved ironicly enough).
Even when the americans agreed in principle with a specific tax they didn't agree with its formulation or stipulations. Or as in some of the shutting down of the paper money schemes in the colonies it was because similar schemes in other parts of the world had bombed and led to disasters. Something which the americans didn't care about because they of course only saw to their situation.
The reverse was equally true- Parliament didn't know the details of what was going on in the American colonies, and so enacted laws that the colonials themselves would see as absurd... because they were based on mistaken assumptions about the colonies.
Any government which tries to write laws governing the economy of a place it has never visited is going to do this sort of thing from time to time. Knowledgeable people in the provinces will look at the law and go "what the hell are they thinking, this will ruin us!" And sometimes they will be
right; it will ruin them, and the fact of the matter is that the central government simply didn't know it was happening.
For example, the colonies had huge amounts of unclaimed land that could be used as securities to back currency. It made considerable sense for colonial governments to print paper money backed by land as a way of increasing the (slim) money supply allowed to them under mercantilist policy, so that internal colonial trade could proceed unimpeded.
In England, similar policies would have been silly: the local government of, say, Norfolk would be out of their minds to print paper money backed by land, because they didn't have all that much land of their own in the first place after you subtracted out the private property.
Economic policy
must be tailored to local conditions, by nature. When knowledge of local conditions and the power to regulate the economy are separated (as with the American colonies, so long as they were not allowed to elect MPs), you get economic crises caused by breakdowns of management.
Spoonist wrote:@simon Jester
Regarding the Minutemen, you should argue your case against Samuel Adams, Charles Lee and George Washington all who argue against what you say. Pick their arguments apart first and then come back to us.
Were they arguing "disband the militia, they're useless?" Or were they arguing "we can't take the militia into a standup fight against British regulars?"
Do you see the difference between those two positions? A
lot of armies, throughout history, have been tough and well enough equipped to easily defeat irregular forces in pitched battles. This does not mean the irregulars were unable to affect the war. There is more to a war than who has the largest force of 'heavies' to fight pitched battles in the open field.
But more importantly the whole concept is bogus in context. The war was won by the support of the French. Without them no victory is possible.
Are you aware that multiple factors can contribute to the same war? That, for example, the British might have lost the colonial revolts in the Americas because of French support for the rebels
and the long supply line that made reinforcing the colonies difficult
and the fact that the local population was at best unsympathetic and at worst actively mustering hundreds or thousands of armed men to shoot at them?
Do these other factors just disappear because the war would not have ended in a colonial victory had it not been for the existence of a European-trained Continental Army to take out the large, concentrated British forces in pitched battles?
Its ignorant on a huge scale to claim that the minutemen or any such lightly armed militia could have played any significant role vs the british empire.
Does this observation generalize to other lightly armed irregular or partisan units? Does a 20th century resistance movement become irrelevant until it can field its own armored divisions, with it being "ignorant on a huge scale" to claim that "such lightly armed militia" could have played "any significant role vs the [german/soviet/american] empire?"
Do irregulars become irrelevant because they don't defeat large, organized armies with good training and plenty of heavy weapons all by themselves?
Which is the important lesson regarding this stupid meme.
What stupid meme? Who are you arguing against here? What, exactly, do you think my position on this subject is?
Thanas wrote:The minuteman were laughable. History shows time and time again what happens when a widely popular rebellion tries to go up against professional forces without having any professional forces themselves. They get crushed. See France etc. Even the best "minuteman" in history, the Spanish guerilla, only managed to bleed, but not defeat Napoleon.
Given that a lot of other professional armies were crushed by Napoleon, "failed to defeat Napoleon" is not a strong enough criticism of a fighting force to justify saying it was "useless" or "laughable."
Or was the Prussian Army Napoleon beat at Jena 'laughable?'
Sneers aside, the militia's persistent failure to beat British regulars in a stand-up battle does not make them irrelevant to the war. The battles of Lexington and Concord illustrate this: British column marches out of Boston, brushes aside the rapid-reaction 'Minutemen' unit with little effort at Lexington, then runs into serious opposition at Concord. One of their units notably
loses an open-field battle against the militia due to poor deployment and greatly inferior numbers. The regulars, worried about being cut off from Boston by increasing numbers of militiamen and mobbed, fall back. Their line of march was harassed by ambushing militia units operating in platoon or company strength, or as loose skirmisher units, against the column.
The regulars here accomplished at least
part of what they set out to do: destroy militia armories. But they accomplished it at a disproportionately high cost, and in a way which undermined their ability to control the population. The whole thing would have been far, far easier had they not had to worry about the militia- indeed, the mission they were dispatched to perform would never have been necessary in the first place.
Of course, a European-style regular army of equal numbers to the militia the Americans fielded would have demolished the column entirely, and in a single pitched battle between all the militia and the entire regular column, the regulars might well have won. The fact that the column wound up getting a bloody nose for their trouble remains.
It is also worth noting that subsequently, the city of Boston was surrounded by an army of over ten thousand militia who had rallied around the city in response to the British offensive. This siege continued throughout 1775 and into 1776, as the militia were reinforced by the first Continental Army units and by artillery captured from Fort Ticonderoga
by militia. Ultimately, the British withdrew, never successfully breaking the siege. Not even at Breed's Hill where, as you describe, they carried the rebel positions at the bayonet after the militia ran out of ammunition, despite numerous tactical blunders on the regulars' part.
I would not rate the militia as 'irrelevant' to the progress of the Boston campaign.
