Quote Originally Posted by Don Corleone
I was tickled by a thread Shadeswolf started about British education, history in particular, and this got me wondering about what the average Briton learns in school about that time period.
We don't. No, I tell a lie. In Scotland, we learn about the mass emigration of Highlanders after the Jacobite Rebellion and the Highland Clearances. And we touch on how all the evil white British people kidnapped the poor defenceless Africans and made them work in the plantations. C'est tout.

Although, I have done my own reading into the Empire, and North did try and stop the rebellion before it took off by making the 13 colonies have the lowest taxes in the Empire, quite low, from what I read. The Government on the time would have refrained from representation as you put it -- MPs in Parliament -- because that would be difficult. It would take far too long for MPs to get to Britain from the Colonies. I believe Washington and his comrades wanted more powers to the Colonial Assemblies, yes? North wouldn't have done this because it took power from the Government in London, they would lose that bit of control over the Colonies.

Britain certainly did learn from this mistake, as is seen in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and countless other dominions, as well as the remaining 13 territories.

The Boston Tea Party happened when taxes on tea were dreadfully low, I think I read that the people who did it were tea smugglers, who were losing business because the legitimate tea was cheap cheap cheap...

The peers as you describe them, Don Corleone, didn't meddle so much in their namesake duchy's affairs at that time. Reformation of the medieval barons governing places was on the way, and came fully later with the Reform Act in the 19th Century. Peerages at that time wouldn't have given representation to the people.