• Big Baby Thor@sopuli.xyz
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    1 day ago

    “No taxation without representation”. If the colonies got representatives in Parliament, that flag would look mighty different.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      17 hours ago

      Except that the British were offering that concession, and the negotiators for the colonists didn’t want to take it because really the taxes and lack of representation were just an excuse.

      • PapaStevesy@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        The British were also being ruled by someone with a genetic blood disease that makes you irrational and some form of major personality disorder, not exactly the most trustworthy negotiators.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          5 hours ago

          How directly was he involved in the negotiations? Often the king is the ultimate authority in a country, but they don’t actually make many decisions themselves.

          It’s well known that the colonists were looking for a reason to break away, and that the taxation issue was a convenient excuse. After all, taxation without representation was the norm. It wasn’t like all of England had the vote and had representatives in parliament. Entire cities had zero representation but were still taxed. Ireland had been part of the British empire for ages and it didn’t have representation.

          • PapaStevesy@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            Well, having a verifiably insane monarch sure couldn’t have helped.

            It’s obviously foolish for anyone to try and argue exactly what happened when for which reasons, we weren’t in those rooms having those conversations so we’ll never really know. We do know that the colonists hated what they considered overreaching British control (it was kind of the reason they left in the first place), and we know that the British were broke af and desparate to wring every penny they could out of the colonies to pay for wars on the other side of the ocean (sounds familiar). But you bring up a good point in Ireland, they were famously treated so well by the British and therefore were predictably loyal and peaceful subjects of the Crown 🤣🤣🤣