Professor Alan Taylor

suddenly the newspapers have to address women and say, no, no, no, we were wrong about saying you don't have political opinions, and we value your political opinions, and we need you to produce more cloth.

And women start to then express themselves more openly, and some of them start to write in the newspapers to rally other women to this cause of supporting the boycott

Before the Seven Years' War, there were almost no British troops in North America.

So for British troops to be sent into an American seaport city, Boston, in large numbers to occupy the city and essentially to enforce the laws of parliament in the most militant, radical, resisting city in the colonies, it's a major escalation.

I'm going to go in and I'm going to make a change to this system.

I think it's very surprising to people that a modest amount of exercise and dietary changes can lead to these kinds of benefits.

The colonists were very proud members of the British Empire.

They exulted in the victories of the empire over the French and the Spanish.

They celebrated the king's birthday with a fervor that matched anything in Britain.

So they thought of themselves very much as British people who happened to live in the Americas.

And they were proud of belonging to an empire that was so militarily powerful.

that generated so much prosperity and that offered more civil liberties than did any other empire in the world.

The norm was that every community would have one church, one faith, usually the one favored by the colonial government.

In the southern colonies, that meant the Anglican church.

In the New England colonies, it meant the congregational church.

Now, what the evangelicals, starting with Whitefield, do is they say, no, every individual gets to choose his church, and the government should not interfere with that.

So it encourages people with the notion of they don't have to follow community norms.

They don't have to follow government's norms if it violates their individual conscience.

And you can see how that might be a parallel then when people a generation later are thinking about rejecting the authority of Britain.

It's not the wealthiest people who are showing up in this mob.