You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello and thank you for joining the American Revolution.

Today, episode 21, the colonies react to taxes. The last week I discussed Britain. The colonies.

Last week I discussed Britain's desire to reduce debt and the costs of maintaining their colonies.

Parliament decided it was time to get the American colonies involved in paying these costs.

As a result, Parliament passed the Sugar Act and the Currency Act in 1764.

No one likes paying more taxes, of course,

but conditions in the colonies made these new laws particularly difficult on the colonists.

The end of the war had led to economic depression in the colonies.

All that money that had been flowing into the colonies during the war was drying up.

Military contractors and militiamen with payroll money to spend had been a boon to colonial businesses.

Now virtually all of that was gone.

With the war in Europe now over, many merchants began to invest in new ships and inventory to take advantage of

expected trade. Yet debt in Britain and Europe meant that demand for colonial goods

also fell. In 1763, 64, many merchant firms went bankrupt, thus contributing to the economic

problems. Veterans return home looking for work and finding none. Unemployment reached dangerous levels.

Plantation owners in Virginia found themselves in particular trouble as tobacco prices plummeted.

Credit in London dried up and demands for payment of old debt increased.

The end of the seven years war in Europe led to a collapse in grain prices,

which in turn caused commodity traders in Amsterdam to take huge losses

and a banking crisis.

Amsterdam bankers, who held much of Britain's debt, began calling in loans creating a cash shortage in London.

This led London creditors to make concerted efforts to collect from their debtors in the colonies.

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