The Making of the American Revolution in Virginia Research Paper

The Making of the American Revolution in Virginia - Research Paper Example According to the research the people of Virginia were reluctant to sever their ties with Great Britain. Having been governed and influenced by a traditional and affluent group of farmers for much of the 18th century, the people of Virginia viewed their cultural and economic wealth at the mercy of favorable affiliations with the mother country. However, with the drastic changes after the Indian and French War, such as unfair British taxes, rapid swelling of multicultural and heterogeneous population, settlement growth in the interior, and the effect of an oppressive labor system, a large number of Virginians became disappointed with the colonial government. According to Woody Holton, the author of Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia, the colonial aristocracy of Virginia, which is the most renowned nobility in America, did not rashly take part in the revolution but was provoked by other groups and individuals. The historical account of Holton celebrates the Ohio Indians, whose efforts in supporting a wide-ranging confederation forced Britain to implement the 1763 Proclamation Line and abiding by it, thus spoiling the desires of land opportunists like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Holton puts the slaves of Virginia into the picture, who were persuading Governor John Dunmore to accept their services prior to his release of the well-known 1775 declaration and whose pursuit of independence drew the attention of a vast population throughout the colony, encouraging loyalists like William Byrd to join the patriots’ cause.... hites, renters, and smallholders whose choice to hold back the selling of tobacco in 1773 set off the campaign for non-exportation and whose claims for freedom reinforced the ultimate separation from the colonial government. It was the resistance and struggle of these people against the newly developed and unequally organized minuteman—members of squads of chosen individuals during the American Revolution—businesses that presented the first notion of a different political system in the colony and that alongside occupant conflicts and rebellions over poverty and other hardships to generate a grassroots revolution. Holton’s Virginia Holton (1999) discusses how the motives of the affluent Virginian nobility collided with the interests of the British traders and the Indians. The nobility had long aimed to enlarge their land holdings and thereby riches to comprise the region of Kentucky, a source of subsistence for numerous Indian populations. In order to resist the i ncursion of the White people, the Cherokee, the Delaware, and the Shawnee triumphed over their past conflict and cleverly collaborated to build a union. Great Britain, frightened of a disastrous pan-Indian conflict, initially released the 1763 Proclamation which disallowed every effort toward further colonialism and afterward, ratified in Quebec Act in 1774, giving all contested territories to the region of Quebec. The conflict of the nobility with British traders emanated from the Navigation Acts. This decree obliged Virginians to sell their tobacco only to the mother country. The settlers were deeply indebted to the traders somewhat due to their own extravagance, but they also attributed their huge debts to the decrease in earnings from selling tobacco (Holton 1999). The House of Burgesses proposed a