Michael Hattem

What's fundamentally at stake is the nature of the relationship between the colonies and the empire, as you say, and more so than just individual taxes.

That's what's really at stake, right, is not just their relationship to the empire, but also their sort of civic relationship to Native Britons.

So if Parliament is willing to do things to the colonists, to legislate for the colonists in ways that they would not do for Native Britons back in the UK,

That suggested to colonists that they were somehow second-class citizens within the empire, right?

So I always think of the imperial crisis, it's both a political crisis, but it also sparks a kind of identity crisis against – for the colonists, you know, to say, look, if –

If we're not going to be treated the same as native Britons and afforded the same rights and same protections, you know, then then maybe we need to to rethink, you know, our situation here.

Maybe we need to rethink just how British we actually are.

Because of how proud they were after the Seven Years' War.

They'd never been prouder to be British subjects than in 1763.

And so the real challenge for any historian when it comes to the coming of the Revolution and independence is to try to explain how do you get from 1763 to 1776 in only 13 years.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you know, this is the age of enlightenment.

And a major part of the Enlightenment project, you might say, is rethinking the nature of government, origins of government, purpose of government.

And this idea of natural law and natural rights has a long history that goes back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome and

and developed among Christian thinkers in the medieval period.

But it is really English writers in the 17th century and then European writers in the 18th century who really developed this notion and the idea that government is a part of a social contract.

People are willing to give up certain rights to form a society and form a government.

And in return for giving up certain rights, they are guaranteed basically protection of their property and they're guaranteed protection of their person.

Right.

And when the theory goes, when the.