While “give me my livelihood or give me death” could never have been the slogan of the American Revolution, it was its predominant subtext. Elites deeply resented the Navigation Acts and other acts, including the Currency Act of 1764, imposed after the French and Indian War depleted Britain’s treasury. Just as important, if less often acknowledged, a favorable balance of trade and robust profits for numerous merchants, which had existed generally if intermittently since the middle of the eighteenth century, reversed itself immediately after the war, leaving merchants with an oversupply of goods and the prospect, if not the fact, of bankruptcy. In the South, the tobacco industry had increasingly slipped into the control of factors, who offered credit to the Southern planters for the expansion of their land and slaveholdings. A sudden collapse of credit for planters, as well as reversals for merchants, in 1762 and again in 1772 resulted in an economic panic and a depression in 1772 and 1773. As the wealthy struggled with loss, sailors, laborers, farmers, and shopkeepers either swelled the ranks of the unemployed or went unpaid. With time on their hands and grievances on their lips, they began to participate actively in political life. The rallying cries of elites for such radical economic transformations as nonimportation of British goods and colonial control of currency be- came their rallying cries, too.
1. The passage mentions all of the following events as causes of conditions that led to the American Revolution EXCEPT: (A) panic and economic crises in 1762 and 1763.
(B) sudden nonimportation of British goods.
(C) Britain’s need to replenish its treasury after the French and Indian War.
(D) new merchant class that developed between tobacco planter and purchaser.
(E) excess goods on the shelves of merchants.
2. The author implies a cause and effect relationship between which of the following? (A) An increase in the profits of a merchant class and a decrease in the profits of the planter class.
(B) The enforcement of the Navigation Acts and an oversupply of goods on merchants’ shelves.
(C) The decrease in wealth and profits for the merchant and planter classes and economic hardship for the working classes.
(D) The loss of the French and Indian War and the British imposition of levees on colonial trade.
(E) The rise in domestic taxation rates in England and a commensurate rise in the colonies.
3. Assuming that the causes asserted by the author for the American Revolution are historically representative of wars of independence, which of the following developments would most likely contribute to a national rebellion? (A) Families who are members of the lower classes in a multitiered economy are suddenly cut off from all government benefits.
(B) A tax increase for large and small businesses alike is used to finance social programs for all.
(C) Democratic ideals combine with economic problems to create a climate of patriotic fervor.
(D) Foreign political interests are suddenly central to the considerations of national policy makers.
(E) Political events create an economic panic and depression and relatively sudden and widespread economic reversals.
Updated on: 25 Jan 2021, 08:47
37% (02:24) correct
