Molasses Act of 1733

Examples of Molasses Act of 1733 in the following topics:

• The Sugar and Stamp Acts

  • The earlier Molasses Act of 1733, which had imposed a tax of six pence per gallon of molasses, had never been effectively collected due to colonial resistance and evasion.
  • The earlier Molasses Act of 1733 was passed by Parliament largely at the insistence of large plantation owners in the British West Indies.
  • The Molasses Act was set to expire in 1763.
  • When passed by Parliament, the new Sugar Act of 1764 halved the previous tax on molasses.
  • Define the Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765

• Navigation Acts

  • A series of Acts, known as the English Navigation Acts, restricted foreign shipment for trade between Great Britain and its colonies.
  • For the most part the Acts of Trade and Navigation were obeyed, with the exception of the Molasses Act of 1733 This law proved to be a great temptation encouraging extensive smuggling because the law provided no effective means of enforcement until the 1750s.
  • The deeply unpopular Molasses Act was the first of the Sugar Acts.
  • New England ports especially suffered economic losses from the Sugar Act, as the stricter enforcement made smuggling molasses more dangerous and risky.
  • The Sugar Act was repealed in 1766 and replaced with the Revenue Act of 1766, which reduced the tax to one penny per gallon on molasses imports, British or foreign.

• Enforcing the Navigation Acts

  • The English Navigation Acts were a series of laws restricting imports and exports in the British colonies for the ultimate profit of England.
  • Later revisions of the Act added new regulations.
  • Later laws such as the Molasses Act of 1733 (the first of the Sugar Acts) levied heavy duties on the trade of sugar from the French West Indies to the American colonies, forcing the colonists to buy the more expensive sugar from the British West Indies instead and only added fuel to the growing fire.
  • On the whole, the Navigation Acts were more or less obeyed by colonists, despite their dissatisfaction, until the Molasses and Sugar Acts.
  • The Molasses Act led to extensive smuggling, as no effective means of enforcement was provided until the 1750s.

• Georgia

  • The Province of Georgia was chartered as a proprietary colony in 1733 and was the last of the 13 original British colonies.
  • The area within the charter had previously been part of the original grant of the Province of Carolina, which was closely linked to Georgia.
  • In 1733, General James Oglethorpe, who was a British member of Parliament, established the Georgia Colony as a solution for two problems.
  • The Georgia Colony would act as a "buffer state" (border) or "garrison province" that would defend the southern part of the British colonies from Spanish Florida.
  • A new and accurate map of the Provinces of North and South Carolina

• British Taxes and Colonial Grievances

  • The Sugar Act of 1764 reduced the taxes imposed by the Molasses Act, but at the same time strengthened the collection of the tax.
  • Following the Quartering Act, Parliament passed one of the most infamous pieces of legislation: the Stamp Act.
  • The legislature of Massachusetts requested to hold a conference concerning the Stamp Act.
  • The Stamp Act Congress met in October 1765, petitioning the King and Parliament to repeal the act before it went into effect at the end of the month.
  • The Townshend Acts, passed in 1767, taxed imports of tea, glass, paint, lead, and even paper.

• The Habit of Self-Government

  • This type of government was seen in Plymouth Colony between 1630 and 1684.
  • The Mayflower was originally bound for the Colony of Virginia, financed by the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London.
  • Many of the colonists chose to establish a government.
  • The Sugar Act established a tax of six pence per gallon of sugar or molasses imported into the colonies, and by 1750, the Parliament had begun to ban, restrict, or tax several more products.
  • Copy of the text of the Mayflower Compact created by William Bradford ca. 1645

• Swelling Protest

  • The passage of the Stamp Act in the colonies was followed by a marked rise of organized protest movements and groups, including the Sons of Liberty.
  • Following the Molasses, Sugar, and Quartering Acts, Parliament passed one of the most infamous pieces of legislation: the Stamp Act.
  • In addition to the specific protests of the Stamp Act taxes, it asserted that:
  • Office holders identified by the Sons of Liberty as being part of the Stamp Act injustice quickly fell out of favor and lost their positions once local elections were held again.
  • Samuel Adams was a leader in the colonial opposition of Stamp Act.

• The Plantation Economy and the Planter Class

  • Plantation economies rely on the export of cash crops as a source of income.
  • Over the years, tobacco became important to Virginia's economy, even acting as currency at times.
  • A number of America's first presidents owned slaves, each owning numerous plantations with large numbers of slaves.
  • Some plantations also went a step further and distilled the molasses, the liquid left after the sugar is boiled or clarified, to make rum.
  • Mahatma Gandhi's investigation of indigo workers' claims of exploitation led to the passage of the Champaran Agrarian Bill in 1917 by the British colonial government.

• Land and Liberty

  • While fewer than 1% of British men could vote, a majority of white American men were eligible.
  • This promoted the rapid expansion of the legal profession, so that the intense involvement of lawyers in politics became an American characteristic by the 1770s.
  • Elected representatives learned to listen to these interests because 90% of the men in the lower houses lived in their districts, unlike in England where it was common to have a member of Parliament and absentee member of Parliament.
  • The Sugar Act established a tax of six pence per gallon of sugar or molasses imported into the colonies.
  • Chief among the ideas of the American Enlightenment were the concepts of liberalism, democracy, republicanism, and religious tolerance.

• Taxes and the Three Estates

  • The king was considered part of no estate.
  • One critical difference between the estates of the realm was the burden of taxation.
  • Already in 1648, when Louis XIV was still a minor and his mother Queen Anne acted as a regent and Cardinal Mazarin as her chief minister, the two attempted to tax members of the Parlement de Paris.
  • Several additional tax systems were created, including the "capitation" (begun in 1695), which touched every person including nobles and the clergy (although exemption could be bought for a large one-time sum) and the "dixième" (1710–17, restarted in 1733), enacted to support the military, which was a true tax on income and on property value.
  • Historians consider the unjust taxation system, continued under Louis XVI, to be one of the causes of the French Revolution.