Centralized Government and Tyranny

[Robert Justin Lipkin]

       Can anyone suggest scholarship describing the beginning of the King's tyranny over the American colonies?  (Alternatively, when did the colonists begin to resent English rule? Was it a discrete event--such as the Stamp Act--or, what seems much more likely, did it develop slowly?  If so, when did this process begin? I'm interested more in cultural history than political history, but I'll take whatever I can get.) More importantly, when did the colonists acquire (develop, create) the idea of a centralized government? Off-list replies are fine.  Thanks in advance.

Bobby Lipkin
Widener University School of Law
Delaware