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Mercantilism dominated Western European economic policy
Mercantilism dominated Western European economic policy and discourse from the 16th to late-18th centuries. Mercantilism was a cause of frequent European wars in that time and motivated colonial expansion. Mercantilist theory varied in sophistication from one writer to another and evolved over time. Favors for powerful interests were often defended with mercantilist reasoning. -
French-Indian War
With the culmination of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British were victors in the world struggle for commercial supremacy and their policies of mercantilism changed. -
Salutary Neglect - Britain
From 1763 to 1775 Britain began to try to use a coherent policy driven in part through the outcome of the Seven Years War in which Britain had gained large swathes of new territory in North America at the Peace of Paris in 1763. -
Revenue Act
The Revenue Act 1766 (6 Geo. III ch. 52) was an act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain in response to objections raised to the Sugar Act 1764. -
Virtual Representation
Parliament rejected criticism of the concept, and passed the Declaratory Act in 1766, asserting the right of Parliament to legislate for the colonies "all cases whatsoever." -
Stamp Act Began
The Stamp Act 1765 (short title Duties in American Colonies Act 1765 was a direct tax imposed by the British Parliament specifically on the colonies of British America. The act required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre, called the Boston Riot by the British, was an incident on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers killed five civilian men. British troops had been stationed in Boston, capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, since 1768 in order to protect and support crown-appointed colonial officials attempting to enforce unpopular Parliamentary legislation. -
Tea Act enacted by Parliament
On this day in 1773, British Parliament made another attempt to impose its authority over the American colonies by passing the Tea Act. The Tea Act only added fuel to the fire, as American patriots organized the Boston Tea Party later that year. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, -
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the American War of Independence,[9] or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers. -
Declaration of Rights
The Virginia Declaration of Rights is a document drafted in 1776 to proclaim the inherent rights of men, including the right to rebel against "inadequate" government. It influenced a number of later documents, including the United States Declaration of Independence (1776), the United States Bill of Rights (1789), and the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789). -
Declaration of Independance
The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a resolution earlier in the year which made a formal declaration inevitable.
