American Revolution Finance

How did Americans finance independence before they had a strong national revenue system?

Protect self-government, organize resistance, and fund the war for independence.

Local resistance became a sustained war effort, supported by supplies, credit, foreign aid, and wartime coordination.

After 1763, resistance to imperial taxation became a fight over who controlled public revenue. Once war began, the colonies and Continental Congress had to finance soldiers, supplies, diplomacy, and military coordination without a modern federal tax system. Wartime finance relied on state taxes, requisitions, borrowing, foreign loans, paper money, and allied support. The war revealed both the power and weakness of improvised public finance.