A brief explanation of my question, I was educatedthat the reason the American revolution happened was because of increase in taxation as well as an inability to self-govern, but I'm curious what other factors led to revolution - ie - is there documentation that the political leaders felt a revolution was plausible because of the difference in ocean + support from other foreign countries and Britains weakened stance being in continuous wartime at the time?
So a more specific question is, did the political leaders that started the American revolution feel that it was winnable, hence a reason for revolution, as opposed to taxes and self-governance being the reason? Because the protest for self-governance doesn't always lead to revolution so was curious why it happened for America specifically.
The political leaders of the individual thirteen colonies did not originally want a revolution. Before the shots at Lexington and Concord, patriot leaders continued to declare their support for the King, yet they generally denounced Parliament’s assumption of power over them, including their right to tax American colonists, and they complained about royally-appointed colonial administrators in the colonies (tax collectors, colonial governors who dissolved their assemblies). They also believed that Parliament and the King’s court and ministry were intentionally deceiving the King to prevent him from assisting his subjects in America. To their minds, the ministry was conspiring to enrich themselves by impoverishing Americans through taxes. Those taxes, they believed, were inappropriately levied because there was no way Parliament, without any representative from the colonies, could understand the economic situations of each distinct colony enough to impose those taxes.
The colonists did not enumerate shortcomings of the British empire and thus decide from there to pursue a rebellious course. Until spring 1775, and even afterwards, elite political leaders still tried to reach reconciliation with Great Britain. Since 1764, depending on who was protesting what measure, they protested the numerous Parliamentary efforts within the accepted registers of political disagreement in that day. Up until spring 1776, most Americans, whether they were radical patriots or complete loyalists, considered themselves fully British. They were proud of those British roots, and they lamented the thought of severing ties to the mother country. There was no discussion over whether to launch a rebellion because they thought they might win it; they didn’t want to fight. They consistently sought reconciliation and when they raised men to fight, they sincerely believed it was in order to defend themselves against the King’s tyrannical ministry and Parliament. Raising arms and proclaiming loyalty to Britain were not, to their minds, mutually exclusive activities. Any talk of self-government usually came after they declared independence in summer 1776. If it came before, it was usually to discuss self government WITHIN the Empire, with the King maintaining sovereignty, Parliament controlling international trade, and the colonies raising taxes, passing laws, and administering their governments’ day to day operations themselves.
I hope this answers your questions. Your questions seemed a bit misguided, but I consider them perfectly reasonable questions nonetheless. Most of all, it was important to expel from your mind the idea that the American revolutionaries sought rebellion from the start.
Bibliography:
Pauline Maier, AMERICAN SCRIPTURE: MAKING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).
Robert Middlekauff, THE GLORIOUS CAUSE: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1763-1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
Alan Taylor, AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS: A CONTINENTAL HISTORY, 1750-1804 (W.W. Norton & Company, 2016).
Gordon S. Wood, “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century in THE WILLIAM & MARY QUARTERLY 3RD SERIES, Vol. 39, No. 3 (July, 1982): 401-441.