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Provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the war's expenses led to colonial discontent.
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Imposed to provide increased revenues to meet the costs of defending the enlarged British Empire. It was the first British parliamentary attempt to raise revenue through direct taxation on a wide variety of colonial transactions, including legal writs, newspaper advertisements, and ships’ bills of lading.
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Passed by the British Parliament in an attempt to assert what it considered to be its historic right to exert authority over the colonies through suspension of a recalcitrant representative assembly and through strict provisions for the collection of revenue duties.
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A small British army detachment that was threatened by mob harassment opened fire and killed five people
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A party of Bostonians disguised as Mohawk people boarded ships at anchor and dumped some £10,000 worth of tea into the harbor.
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In retaliation for colonial resistance to British rule, the British Parliament enacted four measures that included the Boston Port Act, Massachusetts Government Act, Administration of Justice Act, and Quartering Act.
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In response to the Intolerable Acts, the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. Fifty-six delegates represented all the colonies except Georgia.
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Paul Revere rode from Charlestown to Lexington to warn that the British were marching from Boston to seize the colonial armory at Concord. At Concord, the British were met by hundreds of men. Outnumbered and running low on ammunition, the British column was forced to retire to Boston. On the return march, American snipers took a deadly toll on the British. Total losses numbered 273 British and more than 90 Americans.
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The publication of Thomas Paine’s irreverent pamphlet Common Sense abruptly put independence on the agenda. Paine’s 50-page pamphlet sold more than 100,000 copies within a few months. Common Sense paved the way for the Declaration of Independence.
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After the Congress recommended that colonies form their own governments, the Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson and revised in committee to declare independence from Britian.
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The French had secretly furnished financial and material aid to the Americans since 1776, but with the signing in Paris of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance, the Franco-American alliance was formalized.
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A plan of government organization that served as a bridge between the initial government by the Continental Congress and the federal government.
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After the British defeat at Yorktown, the land battles in America largely died out but the fighting continued at sea, chiefly between the British and America’s European allies, which came to include Spain and the Netherlands. Britain recognized the independence of the United States with generous boundaries, including the Mississippi River on the west. Britain retained Canada but ceded East and West Florida to Spain.
