Colonial American Government and Politics, Research Paper Example

In “Colonial American Government and Politics,” published in The Reader’s Companion to American History and available at the History.com website, author Jack

Greene discusses how the English Crown made its presence known in the American colonies by mandating a system of government and administration based on English laws, rules, and procedures. This English governing process “led to the creation on the North American continent of twelve colonies stretching from South Carolina north to New Hampshire” (Greene, 1991) which by the mid 1700’s had become widely accepted by the majority of American colonists, almost all of whom had emigrated from Great Britain for either religious or political reasons.

Written for a broad and well-read audience, “Colonial American Government and Politics” does not contain any bias, due to Greene’s approach to the subject matter from an objective viewpoint and his adherence to historical facts rather than rumor and conjecture. The overall purpose of this article is to illuminate the general history of English law in the American colonies prior to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War and to demonstrate its power and influence over what Greene refers to as a “relatively primitive” political climate prior to the revolution in which governmental institutions were “weak and undefined” and the social and/or cultural environment was not yet fully developed (1991).

Although Greene does not discuss how the American governmental system evolved and changed after the Revolutionary War, there are some indications that all was not well between Great Britain and at first only a handful of American colonists who felt dominated by the strictures of English law and the monarchy of King George III and wished to separate themselves from Great Britain to form their own government. As Greene points out, after 1720, most colonists were somewhat satisfied with being under the rule of the English Crown and the British Parliament; as a result, “civil disorder was rare and tended to be confined to particular situations,” such as when the political system within a colony like New York or Rhode Island “failed to perform its expected functions” or when political leaders “did not act on issues deemed important by a significant section of the population” (1991).

However, by 1767, circumstances within the American colonies came to a boiling point with the Townsend Act that mandated “new regulations on a variety of imported necessities and luxuries” from mostly Great Britain, such as glass, paper, and paint. To make matter worse, Charles Townsend, the British chancellor of the exchequer, created the Quartering Act which mandated that colonist must provide free room and board for British soldiers that Townsend had ordered into major colonial cities to keep the peace and maintain order (Berkin, Miller, & Cherny, 2012, p. 117).

This is where the so-called “culture clash” first occurred between the American colonists and the English Crown and which later on led to more conflict and tension between the colonists and the British government via the mandating of additional taxes and surcharges on a whole range of products that most colonists relied upon for their daily existence. In response to the rising tensions between these two cultures, there came about “elite politicians” (Greene, 1991) who were responsible for leadership decisions within the colonies; however, these politicians were under the domination of the English Crown and as tensions increased, the original handful of discontented American colonists slowly expanded, thus setting the stage for the beginnings of the American Revolution.

References

Berkin, C., Miller, C., & Cherny, R. (2012). Making America: a history of the United States, Vol. 1 to 1877. 6th ed. Boston, MA: Wadsworth.

Greene, Jack P. (1991). Colonial American government and politics. The Reader’s Companion to American History. New York: Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/colonial-government-and-politics