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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. It took more lives than the American Revolution, involved people on three continents, including the Caribbean. -
Proclamation Line 1763
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued October 7, 1763, by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, which forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was a tax imposed by the British government on the American colonies. British taxpayers already paid a stamp tax and Massachusetts briefly experimented with a similar law, but the Stamp Act imposed on colonial residents went further than the existing ones. The primary goal was to raise money needed for military defenses of the colonies. -
Sugar Act
A law passed by the British Parliament in 1764 raising duties on foreign refined sugar imported by the colonies so as to give British sugar growers in the West Indies a monopoly on the colonial market. Compare Navigation Act. -
Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts of 1767 were a series of laws which set new import taxes on British goods including paint, paper, lead, glass and tea and used revenues to maintain British troops in America and to pay the salaries of some Royal officials who were appointed to work in the American colonies. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a pre-revolutionary incident that occurred on March 5, 1770. British soldiers, who were quartered in the city, fired into a rioting mob killing five American civilians in the Boston Massacre. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a direct protest by colonists in Boston against the Tea Tax that had been imposed by the British government. Boston patriots, dressed as Mohawk Indians, raided three British ships in Boston harbor and dumped 342 containers of tea into the harbor. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts (also called the Coercive Acts) were harsh laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774. They were meant to punish the American colonists for the Boston Tea Party and other protests -
Lexington and Concord
Britain's General Gage had a secret plan. During the wee hours of April 19, 1775, he would send out regiments of British soldiers quartered in Boston. Their destinations were LEXINGTON, where they would capture Colonial leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock, then CONCORD, where they would seize gunpowder. The first military engagements of the American Revolutionary war.
