America Did Not Break Away Over Tea. It Broke Away Over Land.

When asked to name the cause of American separation from Britain, filmmaker Ken Burns did not answer taxes, tea, or representation. He answered land.

"The American Revolution can be seen," Burns argues, as "the fifth global war over the prize of North America," by which he meant land, and by land he meant Native American land.

Burns traces his answer to the end of the war with France that concluded in 1763. Victory gave Britain a vast worldwide empire, with large new holdings in North America once disputed with France and its Native allies. Britain could not guard it all, just as colonists and newly arrived immigrants from Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, and Germany were eager to pour over the Appalachians, the mountain chain running down the eastern side of the colonies.

So in 1763, London drew a line and told settlers not to cross it. That order enraged colonists who wanted the land.

While schoolchildren often learn taxes as the cause, Burns treats taxation as the next step rather than the main driver. The average colonist paid about one shilling a year to a local colonial assembly, compared with about 26 shillings paid by the average person in England. With its treasury depleted by the Seven Years' War, London considered it reasonable to ask Americans to help pay for their own defense and administration.

Given that gap in amounts, the insult for colonists was less how much was charged than who charged it. Taxes levied by their own colonial legislatures seemed appropriate, while taxes imposed by Parliament in London did not. Burns offers the merchant John Hancock as an illustration of another motive, suggesting Hancock might have worried that his smuggling business from the Caribbean would suffer if Britain enforced its sugar duties and brought in cheaper legal sugar.