This week on C-SPAN's Lectures and History podcast, Lebanon Valley College professor, James

Bouchard, teaches a class on the lead-up to the American Revolution. He discusses actions taken

by the British government, such as the Stamp Act and the stationing of British troops in Boston,

and how the ensuing political conflict ultimately led to war.

And a note to our listeners, lectures and history will be back with all new episodes next week.

More in a moment.

All right, so today we're going to be talking about the imperial problem

that faces Britain after the end of the war in 1763 and of

course the coming of the revolution so if you have any questions pipe up if not

I'll be asking you a few now you remember last time or last week anyway we put a

graph up here showing the

result you'd probably get if you went around and asked everybody in the

colonies at 25-year intervals do you want to be independent of Britain and if you

remember the graph shot up kind of like this over the years.

In other words, as the colonies move along from Jamestown to 1776, more and more people as time passes decide that they are able to handle this on their own.

They don't need to be ruled from Westminster.

And eventually, of course, enough of them decide that to produce a Declaration of Independence.

So that graph would make the revolution pretty easy to understand, right?

It's just like you growing up. You know, when you're two, the last thing you want is your parents to dump you out the door and say, okay, now you've got to run your own life.

By the time you're 12, you can see it might look pretty good. By the time you're 18, here you are.

So if this graph is right, then the colonies are just going through the normal process of maturing.

And a smart parent, of course, will keep an eye on things, and as the child gets more competent and more confident, ease up on the strings.

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