The core ideas are mostly correct. Lack of payment of taxes, the colonists sparking the French and Indian war etc. Of course it's all simplified and exaggerated in the usual cracked style. The one thing they are entirely wrong about is that the British government weren't aware that the Americans weren't happy. Oh they were aware but they were intent on imposing their power and proving their legitimacy and somewhat underestimated the amount of support the Patriots commanded.

There's some problems here more than just the usual Cracked exaggeration.

00:40

• "No taxation without representation" was the rallying cry before 1776 as Parliament had levied repeated duties without any involvement of the 2.5 million colonists.

00:52

• Parliament did collect on its taxes and sent tax collectors specifically for this, many of whom were tarred and feathered in defiance. Taxes imposed on British-Colonial trade were also definitely collected as it was the only way to enter the lucrative "homeland" market.

1:25

• The Crown did not want colonists expanding too far westward although again, the colonists had had little say. The expansion would exacerbate tensions with Native American tribes who made local treaties with representatives of the Crown though, sometimes with the presence of colonists.

1:35

• The colonists did provoke war with France (THANKS COLONEL WASHINGTON) but the UK had wanted a war anyway over other issues such as monarchic succession in Spain and its salivation over French territories overseas to say nothing of the fact that they had been using the Dutch and Iroquois as proxies to push out the French and Algonquins along the Great Lakes region for years.

2:35

• This is also untrue, as Parliament was well aware of the colonist's dissatisfaction after the Stamp Act (which it repealed), the Townsend Acts (which it mostly repealed), and the Tea Act. The question of the increasingly angry colonists was one that dogged the administrations of three separate prime ministers. The Olive Branch Petition had also been sent by a faction of Americans as a last-ditch effort before full independence, which also went unheeded by the Crown.

2:55

• Benjamin Franklin made a number of statements to dozens of British patrons, nobles, and citizens on his trip to England. That he made falsely represent the state of tension of the Thirteen Colonies isn't some grand deception given how aware everyone was of the rising protest movement at all and besides, he is certainly allowed subterfuge given his unofficial role as ambassador for the independence movement.

3:12

• Independence did not come out of nowhere. The UK's representatives in the Thirteen Colonies had repeatedly informed Parliament of the situation and is partly why Boston was put under military occupation for a year - directly sparking the first two battles of the Revolution.

3:35

• The attitude that they were children was exactly why many colonists rebelled. They were underdogs who fought a vastly superior military but they were also fighting to keep the relative autonomy and freedoms they had enjoyed for over a century; when the homeland tried to reassert control, a revolution happened.

Cross-posted to /r/badhistory

The one major problem with this video (other than its exaggerated to the 10th degree, and maybe goes one step too far in saying that the British were justified) is that it completely ignores the role of the Proclamation line of 1763 in the later American Revolution. Following the Seven Years War, the British gained a vast swath of French territory. France, unlike the British colonists, had negotiated trade agreements with the Indians and essentially become both their trading partners and their benefactors. The French style of administration allowed the Indians to keep their land and trade furs for modern iron goods. The British, and especially the colonials, were more interested in territorial expansion. This culminated in Pontiac's War, where the natives attempted to eject the British from the Appalachian/Ohio region. However, the British won the war and maintained their territorial control over the "indian lands". But in deference to both Pontiac's cause, the standing relationship between the French and Indians, and the near constant warfare which had been provoked by contact between the natives and colonials, the British established the Proclamation line. Essentially, the British declared that colonial settlers had full possession of all land to the east of the Appalachian mountains. Everything to the west was Indian country, and no whites were allowed to settle that land. To keep both sides separate, British regulars were established in a series of forts along the proclamation line. However, the colonials were far more interested in violating the Proclamation Line, and it was quickly realized that the Line was more intended to keep whites out rather than Indians in. Not only that, but the Proclamation really ruined a booming speculation business involving many wealthy colonial landowners. Many landowners had bought up property in the west with the intention of reselling that land to settlers as they move across the line. However, the Proclamation of 1763, this speculation was essentially shut down, with many of these wealthy landowners left "holding the bag" of now unsettleable land. This whole event is a critical first step for the Revolution. Many of the troops sent to Boston in the very first years of the unrest of the 1770s would come from the Proclamation line. Their pay and upkeep was a central issue which pushed the British Parliament towards taxation. And the line represented a major initial break between British policy and Colonial aspirations. It was a critical break between the two parties.

There's a pretty significant lack of discussion about the idea of taxation without representation here, which is the manifestation of the "oppression" that the video claims the colonists didn't actually endure. Prior to the 1765 Stamp Act, colonists were under the impression that they had all the rights of any normal British citizen, which included the exclusive right of the colonial government to tax themselves, or to at least have a representative in Parliament to represent their interests. The stamp tax, essentially a tax on all paper goods in the colony (newspapers, playing cards, currency, etc.), was levied by the British government without any consent of the colonists who saw this as a fundamental breach of their natural rights as British subjects. As a result, a great push and pull ensued with the colonists boycotting British goods and Parliament and the monarchy levying more and more invasive taxes. This scenario ultimately reached a breaking point when the British sent troops to America in order to enforce these taxes and events like the Boston Massacre etc. occurred, which took tensions to a whole new level and eventually to the Revolution.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned quartering troops in private homes. This is the reason for the 3rd amendment. Nothing says oppression like armed men taking over your home.

In all, the video is just another crappy re-write of history. It misses the larger political and social issues going on at the time. Facts without context aren't all that useful.

How widely accepted are the ideas that the colonists really did not start off wanting independence from Britain, and that the Revolution was not inevitable? I seem to recall hearing a lecture series in which the speaker put forth the argument that colonists really just wanted the full rights of British subjects, which they had somehow been deprived of through excessive taxation and oppressive colonial administration. It followed that, even after violence had begun, they were fighting to get their rights under the Crown, and not to separate from the Crown until it became obvious to them that they were not ever going to have the rights they were fighting for.