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French and Indian War
The victory of British/American forces resulted in a big geographical change of power. France lost French Louisiana to Spain. This was to compensate Spain for its loss of Florida to Britain earlier, when Britain had ceded Cuba to Spain. France also lost control over several Caribbean islands as a result of losing the French Indian War. -
Proclamation of 1763
The Proclamation 0f 1763, as it is known, acknowledged that Indians owned the lands on which they were then residing and white settlers in the area were to be removed. However, provision was made to allow specially licensed individuals and entities to operate fur trading ventures in the proscribed area. There were two motivations for this policy. -
Sugar Act
The Sugar Act, also known as the American Revenue Act or the American Duties Act, was a revenue-raising act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on April 5, 1764. The preamble to the act stated it is expedient that new provisions and regulations should be established for improving the revenue of this Kingdom and it is just and necessary that a revenue should be raised for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same. -
Stamp Act
an act of the British Parliament in 1756 that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. Colonial opposition led to the act's repeal in 1766 and helped encourage the revolutionary movement against the British Crown. -
Townshend Act
The Townshend Acts were a series of acts passed, beginning in 1767, by the Parliament of Great Britain relating to the British colonies in North America.Following the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), the British Empire was deep in debt. To help pay some of the costs of the newly expanded empire, the British Parliament decided to levy new taxes on the colonies of British America. -
Boston Massacre
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.
The presence of British troops in the city of Boston was increasingly unwelcome. The riot began when about 50 citizens attacked a British sentinel. -
Tea Act
The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, granted the British East India Company Tea a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonies. This was what ultimately compelled a group of Sons of Liberty members on the night of December 16, 1773 to disguise themselves as Mohawk Indians, board three ships moored in Boston Harbor, and destroy over 92,000 pounds of tea. The Tea Act was the final straw in a series of unpopular policies and taxes imposed by Britain on her American colonies. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773. The demonstrators, some disguised as Native Americans, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773. They boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea into Boston Harbor, ruining the tea. -
Intolerable Act
The Intolerable Acts were the American Patriots' term for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor. In Great Britain, these laws were referred to as the Coercive Acts.
The acts took away Massachusetts' self-government and historic rights, triggering outrage and resistance in the Thirteen Colonies. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. Instead they formed a new nation—the United States of America. John Adams was a leader in pushing for independence, which was unanimously approved on July 2.
