Just watched the movie "The Patriot," and out of curiosity looked up a British view of

[kag]

4. Another little-taught, rarely-learned cause of the American Revolution...

Just as today, the wealthy of the colonies would often send the less wealthy to fight their wars for them. During the Seven Years/French and Indian War, the wealthy Nobility in the colonies planned to pay those soldiers in land once the war was over, and the land they had their eyes on was the trans-montane Appalachian land--the land west of the mountains that they had just wrested from French and Indian control--well, French control anyway. The Indians who fought on the side of the French for the very reason that they didn't want to give up their ancestral home and hunting territory to the land-hungry British colonists, never agreed to give up their rights to that land. And therein lay the problem.

While the wealthy colonists might have wanted to pay their soldiers in trans-montane land, the King had other ideas. He was less willing to "use" that land until he could come to some kind of peace with its current occupants--the Indians. King George III had been alarmed at the constant struggles between colonists and natives, and so after the Seven Years War, forbade the settlement of anymore land west of the crest of the Appalachians. This was a HUGE reason for the discontentment of the colonists. The wealthy colonial land-owners saw this as egregious Royal interference, and used it as a means of churning up rebellion, effectively telling those soldiers who demanded payment, "Look, the king is taking away 'your' land."