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The French and Indian War
The Seven Years’ War lasted from 1756 to 1763, forming a chapter in the imperial struggle between Britain and France called the Second Hundred Years’ War. In the early 1750s, France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought it into conflict with the claims of the British colonies, especially Virginia. -
The Proclamation of 1763
Issued by the British at the end of the French and Indian War to appease Native Americans by checking the intrusion of European settlers on their lands. It created a boundary, known as the proclamation line, separating the British colonies on the Atlantic coast from American Indian lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. -
Sugar Act
On April 5, 1764, Parliament passed a modified version of the Sugar and Molasses Act, 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. But because of corruption, they mostly evaded the taxes and undercut the intention of the tax — that the English product would be cheaper than that from the French West Indies. -
Taxes
Quartering Act is a name given to two or more Acts of British Parliament requiring local governments of the American colonies to provide the British soldiers with housing and food. Each of the Quartering Acts was an amendment to the Mutiny Act and required annual renewal by Parliament. -
The Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a deadly riot that occurred on March 5, 1770, on King Street in Boston. It began as a street brawl between American colonists and a single British soldier, but quickly escalated to a chaotic and bloody slaughter. The conflict energized anti-British feeling and paved the way for the American Revolution. -
The Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a protest that occurred 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. It was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists. It showed Great Britain that Americans wouldn’t take taxation/ tyranny sitting down and rallied American patriots across the colonies to fight. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts were corrective 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 to the detriment of colonial goods. -
Boston Blockade
The Boston Port Act was designed to punish the inhabitants of Boston for the incident that would become known as the Boston Tea Party. The Port Act was one of a series of British Laws referred to as the Intolerable Acts. -
Continental Congress
From 1774 to 1789, the Continental Congress served as the government of the 13 American colonies and later the United States. The First Continental Congress, which was comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Coercive Acts, a series of measures imposed by the British government on the colonies in response to their resistance to new taxes. In 1775, the Second Continental Congress convened after the American Revolutionary War had already begun. -
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was the first formal statement by a nation’s people asserting their right to choose their own government. Delegates of the Continental Congress were faced with a vote on the issue. In mid-June 1776, a five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin was tasked with drafting a formal statement of the colonies’ intentions.
