Austerity and Extraction in a Revolutionary Age

The British, French and Spanish imperial governments all reacted to the debt crisis created by the Seven Years War with new austerity measures and extractive taxation in both Europe and the Atlantic World.  In all three cases these policies were adopted after a robust enlightenment debate about the political economy of empires.  Why did the British extractive policies lead to Revolution in the 1770s, while the French ad Spanish policies delayed colonial independence for a decade or more?  The answer I will argue has less to do with the particular local environments than the with the political economic strategies adopted by each empire.  Environments informed these strategies, but it would be wrong to underestimate the radical reformist possibilities available to each empire.  Nevertheless, while the limited reforms in the Bourbon empires did delay revolution, they failed to avoid revolution in the long run.  Could they have avoided revolution altogether by adopting the radical rethinking offered by the British Patriots or the French physiocrats and their Spanish followers?