Describe the British policy of Salutary Neglect and the American colonists' reaction to it?

For most of the previous 150 years, the colonists had been left largely to their own devices in what some historians have described as 'salutary neglect'. Because land was plentiful most adult males (at least those of European origin) could meet property requirements and vote. In consequence a strong tradition of self-government developed in the colonies and colonists jealously guarded their political rights which they saw as theirs because they were British.

Paradoxically, it was Parliament, supposedly the guardian of British liberty, which seemed to endanger the liberties of Britons in America in 1765. In the aftermath of the Seven Years' War, British political leaders and imperial administrators sought to assert greater control over the far-flung parts of the empire and in so doing they came into conflict with the political traditions and assumptions of the colonists who resisted what they saw as unconstitutional parliamentary innovation. The American Revolution began in a dispute over finance in which the British government advocated change and the colonists sought to maintain tradition.

As the imperial crisis developed neither British nor American political leaders demonstrated a willingness or ability to compromise. George Grenville resigned from the Chancellorship in July 1765 at the height of the Stamp Act crisis. His successors over the next decade confronted the same problem of trying to raise revenue in America. In 1767, Parliament adopted a wide range of customs duties which revived American opposition so that protests and rioting ensued and British troops were moved from frontier posts to the major seaports, especially Boston, where the resistance was concentrated.

In another climbdown, in March 1770 Parliament repealed the duties, with the symbolic exception of the tax on tea. Relations continued to deteriorate and the American resistance became more intransigent. In December 1773 in the famous 'Boston Tea Party' protestors destroyed £10,000 worth of tea in protest of the tea duty.

In consequence, Parliament adopted a series of punitive measures and Massachusetts was placed under military rule in 1774. By the spring of 1775, political resistance gave way to violence as war between the British and colonists broke out. The conflict quickly spread.

In 1776 the colonists declared themselves independent and in 1783, following a prolonged and bloody war, Britain was forced to recognise the independence of the United States.