[KarlInOhio]

I have heard of another theory that the Revolutionary War was actually a conservative. Before the French and Indian War (Seven Years War to the rest of the world) the colonies were largely left on their own. The had some taxes, but less that the typical British subject back in England. After that war the king and parliament started imposing more laws and taxes which got the colonists wanting to go back to the old ways. It gradually became clear that there was no way to return to that freedom and remain under the king, so the king had to go.

I wish I remembered the author who proposed that idea.

[Pharmboy]

That is well-recognized as fact. At the end of the F&I War, the Brits had spent a lot of treasure defending their colonists, and felt strongly that the colonists should help repay the crown. Further, when the Brits pulled out of their wartime headquarters in NYC, it produced an economic depression there.

The Stamp Act Congress was held in NYC, as it was there from 1765-1770 that was the hotbed of revolutionary fervor; it then shifted to Boston.

The combination of increased taxes and economic hard times yielded a strong reaction to George III and the tinderbox was finally touched off by the Boston Massacre.

[Verginius Rufus]

Parliament seems to have been trying to centralize control of the British Empire--parallel to what other western European governments were doing in the same period (trying to bring outlying provinces or overseas colonies under greater control of the central government).

In February 1761, James Otis, Jr., gave a long oration against writs of assistance (general search warrants used in enforcing the Navigation Acts). John Adams, who was present, later wrote that "the child independence was then and there born, for every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance."

[Jacquerie]

>>I wish I remembered the author who proposed that idea.

You need go no further than the noob Burgess who lit the fuse of revolution, Patrick Henry.

[Pelham]

“I have heard of another theory that the Revolutionary War was actually a conservative...I wish I remembered the author who proposed that idea.”

It’s Russell Kirk. I can’t recall in which of his books or essays right now but that is one of his themes.