Guy Chet__The American Revolution & the Americanization debate

What effect did life in America have on English colonists? Did it transform them from conventional Englishmen into something else – Americans? Americans & non-Americans have pondered this question ever since 1776, & it was always tied to the question of why Americans seceded from the British Empire. The debate, therefore, is whether American independence was a product of slow, gradual Americanization, or a product of Anglicization (that is, a product of the colonists’ English identity & culture).