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Intending to curb frontier violence, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 declared all territory beyond the Appalachians off-limits to settlement or speculation. Would-be settlers poised to move west, along with land speculators who saw fortunes to be made there, were furious. -
Years of war on four continents had doubled the British national debt and sent the British economy into a postwar depression. To provide some relief, Prime Minister George Grenville proposed three parliamentary statues: the Currency Act, the Sugar Act, and the Stamp Act. Pamphleteers and colonial newspapers, the businesses that would be hit hardest by the tax, rallied against it, declaring the Stamp Act illegitimate. Protestors took to the streets across the colonies in opposition. -
Beginning in the summer of 1767, the British government introduced the Townshend Acts, which imposed new taxes on five items — glass, lead, paper, painter’s colors, and tea. The Sons of Liberty called for a new boycott of British goods. The boycotts gave American women — who were important consumers in colonial society — a newly significant role in public life. Those Daughters of Liberty boycotted tea, fabric, and toys, while producing “homespun” cloth and other material created in the colonies. -
designed to undercut smuggling and reduce the cost of tea. Parliament saw the act as a “win-win-win,” as it allowed them to save the East India Company, shore up ownership of the organization and give Americans cheaper, non-smuggled tea. But colonial merchants who profited handsomely from smuggling portrayed the law as yet another assault on American rights. John Adams stated: “No American had consented to the tea tax; therefore, no American need pay it.” -
the British Parliament decided to bring Boston to heel and strike fear into the colonists again. They enacted the Coercive Acts — known in America as the Intolerable Acts — to punish the Massachusetts colony and contain the rebellion.