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Questions for Discussion: The Roots of the Revolution
by Steven Mintz
- Was colonial America a democratic society?
- Were the colonists justified in resisting British policies after the French and Indian War (1754–1763)?
- Were the origins of the American Revolution primarily economic or ideological?
- Were the colonists’ responses to the Stamp Act (1765) justified?
- How did the Stamp Act Congress pave the road for American independence?
- Is violence a sound strategy to bring about significant political and social change? (Case studies to help examine this question could include: the Stamp Act riots [1765], the Boston Massacre [1770], the Boston Tea Party [1773], and the battles of Lexington and Concord [1775].)
- Should the British Parliament’s response to colonial violence be viewed as “coercive” or “intolerable”?
- Was the American colonists’ movement for independence “common sense”?
- Would you have been a revolutionary in 1776?
