In brief, the British drew the wrong lesson from their victory in the Seven Years War against the French in 1763. This victory gave them global supremacy in the long 17th and 18th century European wars which were partly about battling for global colonial supremacy (the Seven Years War is sometimes called “the first World war”) . But they drew the wrong lesson, and became triumphalist, convinced that they must, and could, tax their American colonlies more fully to extract from them a bigger share of the costs of imperial defence against continuing French and Spanish ambitions in the Americas. This determination fired their policies in the 1760’s and 70’s and led them into blunders and insensitivities which resulted in the American Colonists declaring the Revolutionary War in 1776. This “imperial” explanation is not of course the whole story - single-factor explanations rarely are - but it provides the essential context for all the other factors.
That's it.
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