Riches, Real Estate, and Resistance: How Land Speculation, Debt, and Trade Monopolies Led to the American Revolution

Thomas D. Curtis

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 2014, vol. 73, issue 3, 474-626

Abstract: Why did the colonies of North America rebel against England in 1775? More than ideas of political freedom were at stake. It is unlikely that the colonists would have demanded independence if powerful land speculators, merchants, and urban artisans had not joined forces to protect their economic interests. England had levied taxes on the colonies, and the colonists had successfully overturned those measures. Taxation was a superficial problem. But in 1773, when England imposed a commercial monopoly on tea sales, and in 1774, when it cut off settlement in western lands, the colonists saw no choice but to rebel and create their own nation. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, and other wealthy Virginians who led the American Revolution stood to lose their huge investment in potential land sales if England maintained control of the colonies.

Date: 2014
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