【美国精神】第61期

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Explanation:

  When people first began living in the British colonies¹ (or areas of land that belonged to Great Britain but that were far away), they still thought of themselves as British citizens. But over time, something changed. They began to rebel² against (or stop obeying) the British government because they thought that they were being treated unfairly. The people had created a new identity³ (or the way that they saw and understood themselves) and were becoming Americans. They began to fight against the British for three main (or most important) reasons: high taxes, quartering, and the lack of self-government. Let’s look at each of these three reasons.

  The new Americans were unhappy with the high taxes (or money paid to the government) that were imposed⁴ (or forced on them) by the British government. It was taxation⁵ without representation⁶, meaning that Americans were supposed to pay money to the British government even though they had no representation or ability to give their opinion in that government. This made the new Americans very angry.

  Americans were also angry about the way that the British army treated them. British soldiers (or people who work in the army) were often quartered (or allowed to live, eat, and sleep in a place for a short period of time) in American homes without the permission (or approval) of the person who owned the home. Often these soldiers behaved very badly while they were in the home. This is the second reason why the new Americans decided⁷ to begin fighting against the British.

  The third reason that Americans fought against the British was because they lacked (or didn’t have) self-government, which was the ability to create and run their own government. The land that would become the United States was far away from Great Britain, yet all the government decisions were being made in Great Britain. The new Americans longed (or strongly wanted) to make their own decisions, but the British wouldn’t let them.

  So Americans fought against the British, and this fighting became known as the American Revolution, or the war that ended when the United States became its own country, separate from Great Britain.

 

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