The American Revolution and Long Island

From the time revolutionary sentiment began to overtake the British colonies, New York and the area of Long Island were at the center of the debate about going through with rebellion. Even before the time that Charles II authorized Richard Nicolls of the Royal Navy to recruit English militia and settlers from Connecticut and Long Island to appropriate New Amsterdam and New Netherland from the rather rigid administration of the Dutch East India Company under Peter Stuyvesant, the main preoccupations of area settlers were unimpeded commerce and trade (Elson 140ff; Becker 132). New Amsterdam, which became York Island, which became Manhattan, together with Long Island, was not yet the largest but was nevertheless an important commercial center of the New World. Long Island itself was distinctive even under Dutch rule for having a population more English than Dutch. At the western edge of Long Island, with its proximity to New Amsterdam, Dutch farmers had settled, and Dutch rule prevailed. However, in the central and eastern parts of the island, the population was mainly English, and local government was organized much as it had been

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the "internal" taxation on domestic (colonial) economic activity. The New York Assembly petitioned the king and Parliament to "leave it to the legislative power of the Colony to impose all other Burthens upon its own people which the publick Exigencies require" (Tuchman 152). When that was ignored, nine colonies convened a Stamp Act Congress in New York, which eliminated the distinction between internal and external taxation and protested against any royal taxes on colonial entities. The familiar phrase "taxation without representation" presents itself, but Tuchman notes that the Stamp Act Congress sidestepped petitioning Parliament to add colonial representatives because it would have "invalidated American resistance"; instead, such representation was deemed "impractical" (Tuchman 155). The whole matter was aggravated by Grenville's Quartering (Munitions/Mutiny) Act of 1765, which as the name implies authorized British forces to exact from colonial resources "food, drink, quarters, fuel, and transportation" at their sole discretion ("History"). The Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, mainly in response to protests from New York colony, but was immediately replaced by the Declaratory Act, which provided that "Parliament had the powe
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Some common words found in the essay are:
York City, York Assembly, Quartering Act, Tax England, America British, Act Assembly, American Revolution, Prime Minister, Act Congress, Sugar Act, quartering act, stamp act, york city, york assembly, york island, british troops, townshend acts, becker 132, revolutionary sentiment, sugar act, inhabitants city colony, stamp act congress, historical journal 7, island historical journal, december 16 1769,
Approximate Word count = 1810
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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