Stamp Act
The Stamp Act ( German : "Stamp Act", "Stamp Duty Act", " Stamp Act " or "Revenue Stamp Act ") was a law to enact a stamp duty that was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765 and became effective in November 1765. He determined that every official document and document, but also newspapers, card and dice games in the North American colonies (later US ) with revenue stamps be provided had.
occasion
England had financial problems with France as a result of the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) and wanted to reduce them through stamp duty. In addition, the stationing of troops on the border with the Indian territory , which was necessary to prevent further conflicts between settlers and Indians, also swallowed money. The colonies should now share in these costs.
Opposition and repeal
From the colonists' point of view, this law represented a culmination of the British legislature's measures aimed at some exploitation of the colonies, as the Stamp Act was the first to levy a direct tax . The tax revenue was partly intended by the Grenville government to finance the military presence shortly after the end of the Seven Years' War (in North America: French and Indian War ), partly to compensate for the poor financial situation of the mother country caused by the war.
The reason for the fierce criticism was that direct taxation of the citizens of the colonies could only take place with their consent, i.e. by resolution of the colonial legislature. This criticism followed on from the dispute over the taxes passed a year earlier, the Sugar Act and the Currency Act , and revealed an ideological dispute over political representation between Great Britain and the colonies. Primarily Prime Minister Grenville advocated the theory of virtual representation , which saw the entirety of the English subjects represented in parliament “virtually” and whose approval could therefore simply be assumed. While, from this point of view, a member of parliament was not responsible to his voters, but only to himself ( free mandate ), the inhabitants of the colonies were advocates of an imperative mandate , that is, the direct responsibility of the member of parliament to his voters.
This argument was later also decisive for the American Declaration of Independence ( no taxation without representation - no taxation without representation). In the 1760s, the average tax burden on a Briton was about 25 shillings, about fifty times the average tax burden on a settler in America. The comparatively low tax burden of the colonies was the very loose colonial policy of Britain since the Glorious Revolution 1688/1689 up to the Seven Years' War founded after Edmund Burke as "salutary neglect" ( salutary neglect is called). From 1763 this had changed in favor of an imperial policy of the Grenville government striving for greater efficiency. In the dispute over the Stamp Act, however, the demand for no taxation without representation was still a demand for a return to the colonial policy of salutary neglect , which only began in the dispute over the Tea Act and after the tax dispute escalated as a result of the Boston Tea Party with the retaliatory laws ( Coercive Acts ) of the North Government in 1774 became a separatist demand.
The first militant resistance, spurred on by the so-called Sons of Liberty , rose and prevented the law from being successfully implemented and imposed trade sanctions on British goods. The biggest protests were in Boston . During the protests there, the villa was looted by the governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay colony area , Thomas Hutchinson . In view of the large gap between rich and poor, this also gave rise to fears among some of the rich that the clashes could spread and not only target the pro-British representatives. Blacks were excluded from the protests and calls for moderation and non-violence were called for. The Stamp Act was the occasion for a protest resolution after the Stamp Act Congress had taken place in New York from October 7 to 25, 1765 , and was attended by representatives from nine of the thirteen colonies.
The Congress passed the Declaration of Rights and Grievances (English for: Declaration on Rights and Complaints ), in which it says among other things:
“It is essential to the freedom of a people and the unquestioned right of the English that no taxes be imposed on them without their consent, which they have given personally or through their MPs.
The people of these colonies are not and cannot be represented in the House of Commons of Great Britain because of geographical conditions.
The only representatives of the people of these colonies are people who have been elected by themselves. No taxes have ever been constitutionally imposed on it and may be imposed on it in the future, except by its respective legislatures.
Since all grants to the crown are voluntary gifts of the people, it is unreasonable and inconsistent with the principles and spirit of the British Constitution for the people of Great Britain to assign to His Majesty the property of the inhabitants of the colonies. "
The law was repealed after the protests on March 18, 1766 by the British Parliament, as, among other things, economic damage from the deteriorated relations with the colony was feared bitterly and various taxes were perceived as unjust
See also
literature
- Edmund S. Morgan: Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764-1766. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2004, ISBN 978-0-8078-5621-5 .
- Edmund S. Morgan, Helen M. Morgan: The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1953, ISBN 978-0-8078-5621-5 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Jürgen Heideking, Christof Mauch: History of the USA . A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen / Basel 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-1938-3 , p. 28.
- ↑ cf. z. B. Bill Bryson : Made in America: an Informal History of the English Language in the United States . Black Swan, 1998, ISBN 0-552-99805-2 , p. 38.
- ↑ Jürgen Heideking, Christof Mauch: History of the USA . A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen / Basel 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-1938-3 , p. 20.
- ↑ Jürgen Heideking, Christof Mauch: History of the USA . A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen / Basel 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-1938-3 , p. 27.
- ↑ Dominik Nagl: No Part of the Mother Country, but Distinct Dominions - Legal Transfer, State Building and Governance in England, Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1630–1769 . Berlin 2013, p. 446ff. de.scribd.com
- ^ Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States . Harper Perennial, 2005, pp. 61, 65