WI: No Stamp Act

Britain was trying to recover financially from the Seven Year War, so if not the Stamp Act then something else.

The real problem was that the Americans thought that only their colony governments could raise taxes, hence the "no taxation without representation" line.

Given that the Stamp Act directly affected the educated elite I have always thought it was a stupid think to tax, but that said it is an easier tax to collect then other possible taxes.

From memory the taxes paid by the colonists was about half that paid by Brits so something had to be done.

If I had been Granville I would have asked the colonies to raise the funds for defence rather than trying to raise it from London.
 
If I had been Granville I would have asked the colonies to raise the funds for defence rather than trying to raise it from London.
At some point (I think it was just after the Stamp Act was passed), Granville met with delegates from the various colonies, and Benjamin Franklin asked him to do just that instead. Granville said that yes, it would be a nice idea - how should the fundraising be apportioned among the various colonies? The various delegates had to look at one another and admit they had no idea. Granville smiled and said that was exactly why.
 
At some point (I think it was just after the Stamp Act was passed), Granville met with delegates from the various colonies, and Benjamin Franklin asked him to do just that instead. Granville said that yes, it would be a nice idea - how should the fundraising be apportioned among the various colonies? The various delegates had to look at one another and admit they had no idea. Granville smiled and said that was exactly why.

Do you have a source for this?
 
No Stamp Act and no alternative taxes is financially doable. Whatever people say about the need to pay down the debt from the 7YW and pay for the defence of America, the British in our timeline managed to pay down the debt from the 7YW, pay for the defence of the Caribbean and fund a war fighting the colonists, France, Spain and Holland. The difficulty is that the British parliament would have wanted some more money at some point for reasons of principle.

What is possible is that a more moderate government tries to raise money, gets concerned about the protests and just backs off for a decade or two, in order to leave the problem to another government. It could then go two ways: one way would be that some attempt to deal with the broader American complaints about representation and the navigation acts is done. This could be quite likely if the French Revolution kicks off first, and the British ruling class get worried about rebellion in their lands. The other way is that a similar process of rebellion kicks off when new taxes are tried, just a decade or two later. This would likely mean the French could not afford to intervene and it would also mean the colonists would have less veterans from the 7YW to fight.
 
Do you have a source for this?
Desperate Sons, by Les Standiford. I don't like Standiford's repeated agnosticism to the question of how much the revolutionaries were motivated by ideological v. economic interests, but he gives a rather good record of the events.
 
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