300 EURAMERICA any one year (LaCroix, 2011: 39). There can be no doubt that the colonies enjoyed a rapidly growing population and an impressive economic expansion in the decades before independence (McCusker & Menard, 1985). The American colonists admired the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and readily accepted the Hanoverian succession to the British throne in 1714; both were regarded as safeguards of their civil liberties and of the limited monarchy under which they were prospering. Under the first two Hanoverian monarchs they experienced little interference from the British government or parliament and prospered under this salutary neglect (Henretta, 1972). What strained British-colonial relations after 1763, ironically in the wake of the great success against French power in North America, was the gradual recognition on both sides that the relationship, despite appearances, was far from satisfactory (Tucker & Hendrickson, 1982). The Seven Years’ War left Britain with an alarming National Debt, a conviction that the American colonies had not taken a fair share of the fighting or the financial costs of the war (Rogers, 1974: 70-120), and the fear that the colonies might be less amenable to any British control since the French threat to the colonies had been eliminated (Beaumont, 2015). British ministers were becoming conscious that Britain had too little not too much control of its American colonies when it was engaged in an expensive and bloody conflict around the world with its greatest European rival. Travel across the Atlantic was slow and hazardous. No important cabinet minister had any direct experience of life in the American colonies. British army officers, who served in America, often had a poor view of the fighting qualities of the colonial troops. The American colonists often engaged in smuggling to avoid customs duties and the restrictions imposed by the Navigation Acts. British efforts to increase the country’s control over the American colonies met with stiff and often successful resistance (Greene, 1994: 48-77). It gradually became apparent to British ministers that the country had no coordinated or effective system of
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