I see the intervening years between 1763-1775, as a series of mismatched imperial expectations between American and Britain. Americans come out of the French and Indian War feeling like they have finally proven their worthiness to not only claim the title of full fledged British subjects, but equal imperial partners. Britain on the other hand is caught up in an incredible effort to rebalance and assimilate the newly enlarged imperial world empire. America is viewed as settled question and the normal duties of British subjects are expected to be carried out there.
British coffers needed to be filled, while French and Native peoples had to be secured in their lands under crown rule. American participation in a marginal effort at taxation was taken for granted, but Americans saw British efforts to better stabilize membership in the empire as removal of hard earned rewards.
American colonists had participated in the war effort against the French and Natives because they thought the crown would reward them with access to resources and trade, so they took even minor interruptions or the basic exertion of Crown authority directly to heart. Outside of the Stamp Act Correspondences, resistance is very regional and limited to New England and New York. The French and Indian war is a crucible indeed, but it’s one in which Britain’s imperial goals are transformed and elevated above its relationship with Americans.
The American colonists are devastated and angered over the intervening years due to a myriad of missteps, but they don’t start out as disgruntled in 1763. What makes everything work initially is the British imperial system. The various sects and peoples that populated the new world, reached to over 2 million before the Revolution. Each colony being extremely jealous, competitive, and willing to throw each other under the bus for land. The British imperial system especially after the French and Indian War (7 Years War) had sufficiently melded these disparate and competing political entities into a 2nd pillar of a new transatlantic empire.
British America would have joined the UK and eventually eclipsed it within the Union, if a series of complicated geopolitical events didn’t irrevocably break those fraternal bonds. Much of it has to do with British Imperial Land policy such as the proclamation line of 1763 and the Quebec Act of 1774. Quebec and other periphery British territories outside the eastern seaboard found great stability in the new status quo post 1763, not the Americans in the 13 colonies though.
Especially galling is benefits accrued to the French Catholics and Natives after the Protestant English blood/treasure that was just provided. Now the “American” or English Protestants are just another group within this larger British Imperial Polity and have coalesced as a people only in the final decade before the Revolution. So it is the birth of the larger British Imperial polity that truly unites the British Americans against other large groups of competing homogenous subjects.
Historical Caribbean Voyages 