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The French and Indian war started in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The war gave great Britain great territorial power in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the wars expenses led to colonial discontent, and finally to the American revolutions. -
The proclamation of 1763 was issued by King George III after Great Britain gained French territory in America after the end of the French and Indian war. The proclamation stated that Americans could not settle or buy land west of a line along the Appalachian Mountains. -
In 1764 Parliament passed a modified version of the sugar or molasses act (1733) which was about to expire. Under the molasses act colonial merchants had been required to pay a tax of six pence per gallon on the importation of foreign molasses. -
the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years' War. The act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards. -
The Townshend Acts were a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. But American colonists, who had no representation in Parliament, saw the Acts as a misuse of power -
The Boston Massacre was a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of the citizenry. -
In an effort to save the troubled enterprise, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773. The act granted the company the right to ship its tea directly to the colonies without first landing it in England, and to commission agents who would have the sole right to sell tea in the colonies. -
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. -
The Intolerable Acts (passed/Royal assent March 31–June 22, 1774) were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British Government. -
The First Continental Congress convened in Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between September 5 and October 26, 1774. Delegates discussed boycotting British goods to establish the rights of Americans and planned for a Second Continental Congress.