Despite recent work quantifying the legislative output of the British and Irish parliaments between 1692 and 1800, the same has not been extended to the imperial territories of the British Atlantic in the same period, despite the importance of colonial politics in the sweeping constitutional changes that culminated in 1775 and revolution. This article is the first to track the basic patterns of legislative output from all the colonial legislatures in north America and the West Indies and to link these data with population. It shows that the overall output jumped considerably in the period, as in Britain and Ireland, but that this was largely concentrated in the 1750s and 1760s under the pressure of warfare, though colonial elites afterwards began to exploit their new legislative experience for their own needs. However, no clear correlation was found between legislation and revolution. The experience of individual territories varied wildly, suggesting that the causes of revolution were neither inherent nor inevitable, and that legislation was a tool used by both sides rather than a cause of conflict in its own right.

中文翻译：

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英属大西洋的立法机关、立法和立法，1692-1800 年†

尽管最近对 1692 年至 1800 年间英国和爱尔兰议会的立法成果进行了量化，但在同一时期，这一成果并未扩展到英属大西洋的帝国领土，尽管殖民政治在最终导致的全面宪法变革中发挥了重要作用。 1775年和革命。本文首次追踪了北美和西印度群岛所有殖民地立法机构的立法输出基本模式，并将这些数据与人口联系起来。这表明这一时期的总体产出大幅跃升，就像英国和爱尔兰一样，但这主要集中在 1750 年代和 1760 年代在战争压力下，尽管后来殖民精英开始利用他们新的立法经验来满足自己的需要. 然而，在立法和革命之间没有发现明确的相关性。个别领土的经历千差万别，表明革命的原因既不是固有的，也不是不可避免的，立法是双方使用的工具，而不是其本身的冲突原因。