American Revenue Act Essay

The American Revenue Act (Sugar Act) is relevant to Chapter 6. It is relevant to Chapter 6 because the Sugar Act was one of the many conflicts in the Empire during the 1700’s. The Sugar Act was a reform to the failing Molasses Act of 1733. The Act was one of many policies that the British Parliament tried to impose on the colonist in an effort to bring the colonies closer to the Empire. The Sugar Act stirred colonist’s fears and emotions, and they began to consider their independence from the Parliament.
Analysis:
The American Revenue Act is most commonly known as the Sugar Act. The Sugar Act was passed as a revision to the already existing Molasses Act of 1733. The Molasses Act stated that merchants must pay six pence for every gallon of imported sugar product, coming to the colonies from the West Indies. In an effort to avoid the tax “… smugglers paid off customs officials at the rate of one and a half cents a gallon” (Oakes et al., 2015, p. 167). After the French War, Britain was in debt and was looking for compensation from the colonies. Since the Molasses Act wasn’t bringing in the
The molasses tax caused the rum market to drop dramatically in the colonies. The taxes were becoming a huge problem for the colonists because it was reducing the amount of trade they were doing with other countries, “The situation disrupted the colonial economy by reducing the markets to which the colonies could sell, and the amount of currency available to them for the purchase of British manufactured goods” (The Sugar Act, Titled the American Revenue Act of 1764). Not only where the colonists having a hard time financially, the obligation of the law was putting a lot of pressure on the colonists as well. In