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Albany plan of Union
The Albany Plan of Union was a plan to place the British North American colonies under a more centralized government. The Albany Plan was the first important proposal to conceive of the colonies as a collective whole united under one government. -
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War, a colonial extension of the Seven Years War that ravaged Europe from 1756 to 1763, was the bloodiest American war in the 18th century. The war was the product of an imperial struggle, a clash between the French and English over colonial territory and wealth. -
Quebec Act
On the heels of the Coercive Acts, Parliament passed the Quebec Act, a well-intentioned measure designed to afford greater rights to the French inhabitants of Canada, which had come under British rule through the Treaty of Paris in 1763. In the succeeding years, British efforts to incorporate Quebec into the empire had been a notable failure. -
Proclamation of 1763
The end of the French and Indian War in 1763 was a cause for great celebration in the colonies, for it removed several ominous barriers and opened up a host of new opportunities for the colonists.The French had effectively hemmed in the British settlers and had, from the perspective of the settlers, played the "Indians" against them. -
Sugar Act
Titled The American Revenue Act of 1764. On April 5, 1764, Parliament passed a modified version of the Sugar and 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. -
Stamp Act
The money collected by the Stamp Act was to be used to help pay the costs of defending and protecting the American frontier near the Appalachian Mountains. The actual cost of the Stamp Act was relatively small. -
Quartering act of 1765
Quartering Act is a name given to a minimum of two Acts of British Parliament in the local governments of the American colonies to provide the British soldiers with any needed accommodations or housing. -
Stamp Act of Congress
The Congress seemed at first to be an abject failure. In the first place, only nine of the colonies sent delegates. -
Repeal of the Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was passed on March 22, 1765, leading to an uproar in the colonies over an issue that was to be a major cause of the Revolution: taxation without representation. Enacted in November 1765, the controversial act forced colonists to buy a British stamp for every official document they obtained. -
Townshend Act
On 29 June 1767 Parliament passes the Townshend Acts. They bear the name of Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is—as the chief treasurer of the British Empire—in charge of economic and financial matters. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists by British regulars on March 5, 1770. It was the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts in October 1768 to enforce the heavy tax burden imposed by the Townshend Acts. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party (initially referred to by John Adams as "the Destruction of the Tea in Boston") was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston. -
Intolerable Acts
Someone was going to pay.
Parliament was utterly fed up with colonial antics. The British could tolerate strongly worded letters or trade boycotts. They could put up with defiant legislatures and harassed customs officials to an extent. -
First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies that met on September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. -
Battles of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775, kicked off the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts. On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the -
Declaratory Act
AN ACT for the better securing the dependency of his Majesty's dominions in America upon the crown and parliament of Great Britain.The Declaratory Act was passed by the British parliament to affirm its power to legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever”. -
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War between Great Britain and the United States, recognized American independence and established borders for the new nation.After the British defeat at Yorktown, peace talks in Paris began in April 1782 between Richard Oswarld representing Great Britain and the American Peace Commissioners Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and John Adams.
