| Reading Guide for Week 7 | |
|
Tuesday Continental Association (1774) After nearly a decade (since 1765) of largely failed economic boycotts against Britain which took place in some colonial cities along the eastern seaboard, the Continental Association was designed to be more radical and more effective than any previous boycott. It can be considered the beginning of a revolution, since it created the organizational structure that would oblige every colonists to choose sides, rendering it impossible to hide from the choice for anyone so inclined. The Continental Association was thus in unanticipated ways a major contribution of the First Continental Congress, which met as a temporary organization in response to punitive acts directed by British imperial authorities at Boston, deemed a hotbed of rebellion. When the Continental Congress reconvened in 1775, it would soon transform into a permanent institution tasked with coordinating what would be a prolonged war effort across the 13 rebellious colonies, and ultimately, in 1789, flowing into the first federal Congress of the United States. Olive Branch Petition (1775) In 1775 the Continental Congress would disavow any subordination to the British Parliament, while still professing an abiding allegiance to King George III, even after military conflict had broken out between the British imperial army and colonial militias. In this humble petition to King George III, the Continental Congress worked to demonize Parliament without likewise demonizing the King, or repudiating the British empire itself. Remarkably, at least in retrospect, this was after the Battle of Bunker Hill, in which several hundred British military personnel and colonial militia had been killed — i.e., had killed each other. Royal Proclamation (1775) By 1775, King George III had become deeply frustrated with recurring protests in the British North American colonies, which had escalated yet again after British imperial authorities punished Boston for the so-called “Boston Tea Party.” While directed specifically at Boston, those punitive acts had the effect of inspiring widespread solidarity with Boston through many of the North American colonies, in part out of fear that these punitive acts directed at Boston could become a precedent for comparable punitive acts directed at any other colony. Meanwhile in the imagination of imperial authorities, punishing Boston with due severity was meant to be an object lesson expected to snuff out rebellion in the colonies. Declaration of Independence (1776) Read the Declaration of Independence, then read the preamble a second time. Whom did it represent? Americans? Whom did it blame, and reject? Who was its audience? Thursday Indian nation emissaries addressing rebel and British officials (1775-1776) Two of these documents make arguments for Native American neutrality, and one for choosing the British side, with the outbreak of what would become the War of American Independence. Native America was actually a polyglot of many Indian nations, each with its own history of relationships to each other, to the British empire, and to the various British North American colonies. Each Indian nation was confronted with what seemed like an unexpected, sudden “civil war” between the British empire and its colonies. Each was pressured to choose a side in that alien conflict, and each had to calculate as a primary consideration how it might protect itself from any further potential land encroachment of the kind that had been pressuring Indian nations throughout North America east of the Mississippi River. “The Gunpowder Shortage” How does one wage war without gunpowder? This was one among many fundamental dilemmas confronting the colonial rebels as they abruptly transitioned from scattered political resistance to concerted war of independence. Creating essentially from scratch a manufacturing capacity at the onset of war would have been vastly more difficult than the chosen solution to the lack of gunpowder, which was to import it on a massive scale with the assistance of foreign countries eager to harass the British empire and somewhat able to elude the British navy. The War of American Independence was a complex international conflict from its first moments in 1775. |