I don’t have things like letters between Egyptian military leaders, large treatises, etc., like I do from the American revolution.

It doesn’t matter what you have. What you have is the things they chose to publish.

Put it this way. If the rebels had lost the war and the British had won, do you think that the British history books would give the same reasons for the attempted rebellion?

If those are the actual reasons, there’s not going to be any case of “history is written by the winners”. Boy would the British history books look grim, they crushed an attempted rebellion where the rebels had such lofty ideals!

Or, do you think the alt-history British would look deeper and say something like “While George Washington publicly claimed to be rebelling because he objected to the lack of representation, in reality he had purchased a lot of land illegally and was trying to justify the revolution so that he could make a profit on that investment.”

You seem to be hung up on this idea that people who write about their justification for rebellions and coups are being honest, for some reason. They aren’t. The public reasons they give are the ones that make them look good. You need leaked recordings or investigations to uncover the reasons that they don’t list in public.

In this case, historians have dug into the actual reasons for the rebellion. Sure, to some extent the rebels may have felt these lofty ideals, but they were also trying to get rich. They wanted access to all the wealth of the American continent without having to share it with the people of mainland Britain.

If I’m looking for the motivations of the coup and the rioters, I’m going to look at what they and their propaganda said.

So, you fully believe that the reason that the democratically elected government of Egypt was overthrown because “The president’s speech last night failed to meet and conform with the demands [of the people]”? Couldn’t possibly because the military wanted to seize power, could it?

The rioters believed the election was fraudulent;

Maybe, maybe they just didn’t want to admit they lost. Do you think Trump believed the election was fraudulent? That’s what he said, so it must be true, right? Everyone’s justifications have to be taken at face value, and there can’t be any other possible reasons for what they do. All coups are launched for fully benevolent and altruistic reasons, just as they claim!

You’re not citing evidence for what happened, you’re citing propaganda that was used to justify it.

Again, do you 100% believe everything Trump said about the 2020 election and 2021 coup attempt? If he said it it must be true, right?

Historians can only speculate, because nobody is going to be 100% honest about their reasons for a coup or revolution. In particular, if their reasons are selfish they’re almost always going to keep those reasons private, and try to justify with public statements that make it seem justified. You can look at their public statements, but you have to compare those public statements to their actions.

What I’m saying is, look what people said and wrote–you, know–the hard evidence.

That’s not hard evidence of what they thought, any more than Trump’s claims about the 2020 election and the 2021 coup are hard evidence of what he thought, let alone hard evidence of what actually happened.

Nobody launching a coup or a revolution admits that they’re doing it because they want to seize power. They always use some kind of justification. That’s all these people were doing. Washington’s illegal purchases of land in the Indian territory are pretty clear evidence that he had an economic incentive to overthrow the British so he could claim that land.

When the Egyptian military overthrew the democratically elected president in 2013, they justified it by saying that he failed to meet the demands of the people. Does that make that true? Or could it be that they were grabbing power for a different reason? If you’re only going to trust what people write to justify coups or revolutions, you’ll discover that every single coup or revolution is fully justified and done for the most noble of reasons. But, actual historians who study these things look at the receipts, often literally. They follow the money and use that to understand why people were acting the way they were.

but millions of regular people were motivated by ideology

Hahah, sure.

That’s clear from the propaganda they were consuming

Just because they were consuming the propaganda doesn’t mean that it was the dominant force for them. Propaganda mostly gives people an excuse to do what they already want to do. Who wants to pay taxes, especially when you no longer feel threatened by another powerful military?

Is it “idiological” if I suddenly start to resent my job when I’m denied a raise? Or is it simply self-interest?

The US founding fathers suddenly had ideological issues when their economic interests were at stake.

Fuck yes. A future where America could sneeze without the world catching a cold would be a good one. Probably even for Americans. But, as it stands, often US politics is more relevant to people’s lives than their own local politics, because they’re own local politics are predictable and steady, while in the US it’s unpredictable chaos.

It was hardly a secret:

“The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was very unpopular with the colonists. For those living in the colonies, creating a boundary was not helpful because it did not address some of their biggest problems with the War. Colonial blood had been shed to fight the French and Indians, and many felt they had the right to go settle on the land that was won. In addition, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 did not account for American colonists who had already settled in the West.”

“Since the end of the War, colonial governments had started planning an expansion into the new western territory. In fact, this had become a big political issue among colonists”

https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/lessonplan/royalproc.html

"While the Proclamation Line generally failed to restrict the migration of individual settlers, it adversely impacted Virginia’s landed gentry through the mid-1760s. These men had been investing and speculating in land since the 1740s, preliminarily granting millions of acres of western territory to firms, such as the Ohio Company, for future sale. However, the French and Indian War and subsequent Indian treaties interrupted these land companies’ designs, during which time their preliminary grants lapsed. "

“These constraints particularly affected George Washington, who had dedicated much of his life to land speculation in an effort to achieve economic independence and distinction among Virginia’s privileged class.”

"Resentment for the British Empire and her interference in colonial affairs bonded Americans of varying socioeconomic backgrounds on a philosophical level. The ideological break with the mother country promulgated by the Proclamation Line of 1763, particularly for governmental leaders and Virginia’s landed gentry, served to push the colonies into rebellion in the following decade. "

https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/proclamation-line-of-1763/

"George Washington wrote to his agent in 1767 in support of illegally buying as much Native American land as possible. "

https://www.history.com/news/remembering-the-proclamation-of-1763

How would having more money make them discontent

When they were less well off than Britain, they liked being British because they were protected by the British army and received British investment. Once they were richer than the rest of the empire, they wanted to be independent so that they didn’t have to support the rest of the empire.

In addition, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 limited the right of British colonists to use the land to the west of the Appalachian mountains. To the British in Great Britain, this was no big deal, but to the colonists it limited their expansion westward. The Quebec Act in 1774 vastly expanded the size of the Quebec province and allowed the French-speaking, Catholic “Canadiens” to move south-west and settle in areas to the north-west of the 13 colonies.

Yes, in public people talked about high-minded ideals, but the reality is that the defeat of the French meant that the American colonists no longer had as much of a need for the British army. In fact, the British army was standing in their way, stationed between the colonies and the new “Indian reserve”. And, although taxes on the American colonists were much lower than taxes within Britain, the colonists didn’t want to pay the taxes, even though it was paying down a debt that was mainly due to kicking the French out of the new world.

It was an economic decision, not a moral one.

American history is more consequential though. Similarly, even though I don’t care much about Russian history, it was Russian history that led Putin to conclude that he had a right to control Ukraine, which has led to the first land war in Europe in decades.

Brazil shares a border with France.

Just never ask where Selassie lived in 1936-1940 and why.

The colonies, including a colonist named George Washington (a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army) started the 7 year war by ambushing a group of French soldiers building a fort on French territory in the Ohio river valley. I don’t know where you get the idea that the British colonists were allies with the French. But, if that was the case, the French must have found that a pretty confusing thing for their allies to do.

They weren’t content because they were now rich and the motherland was now poor. It wasn’t some high-minded ideal, it was opportunism.

Many excuses were made, that’s the one that stuck. The real reason was that the colonies were rich, and now had effectively unlimited land to the west they could expand into, that the British army had taken care of the French.

The first battles of the 7 years war were in the Ohio river valley. They resulted in a certain Lt. Colonel of the British Army named George Washington surrendering.

The whole reason for fighting is that the American colonies were rich. Initially they had been propped up by the British. But, once the French were essentially wiped out, the colonists no longer had need of the British military, and they were now richer than the British, so they no longer wanted to contribute to the motherland and wanted to be independent.

In most cases a colony depends on the colonial overlords for stuff. When the colony no longer needs the colonial overlords, if they’re better off than the colonial overlords (like the American colonies were), they frequently then demand independence.

If you’ve ever wondered why many US cities have French names (Baton Rouge, Des Moines, Boise, Terre Haute, St. Louis, Louisville, Dubuque, Detroit, Marquette, New (Nouvelle) Orleans), it’s because those were all under French control when they were named.

The colonists couldn’t expand westward without hitting French territory, so yes they wanted war against the French.

The British settlers along the coast were upset that French troops would now be close to the western borders of their colonies. They felt the French would encourage their tribal allies among the North American natives to attack them. Also, the British settlers wanted access to the fertile land of the Ohio River Valley for the new settlers that were flooding into the British colonies seeking farm land

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years'_War

Do you know what actually started the 7 years war? It was when George Washington (a Lt. Colonel in the British army) ambushed a French force who were building a fort (Fort Duquesne) to defend their territory near the Ohio river. The French then attacked Washington’s army and forced it to surrender. The first battlefront in the 7 years war was in North America, and it was a territorial dispute over the Ohio river valley.

The territories were the things the US founding fathers cared about. They were almost all rich – or at least formerly rich like Samuel Adams.