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First Navigation Laws to control colonial commerce
English laws in the 17th – 18th centuries that required the use of English or colonial ships to carry English trade. The laws were designed to encourage English shipbuilding and restrict trade competition from England's commercial rivals, especially the Dutch. The acts of the 18th century gradually restricted trade by the American colonies and contributed to growing colonial resentment with the imposition of additional duties on sugar, tobacco, and molasses. -
Board of Trade assumes governance of colonies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_TradeIn 1696, King William III appointed eight paid commissioners to promote trade in the American plantations and elsewhere. The Lords Commissioners of Trade and Foreign Plantations, appointed in 1696 and commonly known as the Board of Trade, did not constitute a committee of the Privy Council, but were, in fact, members of a separate body. The board carried on this work but also had long periods of inactivity, devolving into chaos after 1761 and abolished in 1782 by an act of Parliament by the Rock -
Seven Years' War (French and Indian War) ends
On July 3, the French forces struck back. After a day-long battle — the first of the French and Indian War — Washington signed terms of surrender and returned with his defeated men to Virginia. The French commander treated his opponents leniently in the hope of avoiding a broader conflict. Nevertheless, the opening shots of the French and Indian War had been fired. -
Sugar Act
On April 5, 1764, Parliament passed a modified version of the Sugar and Molasses Act (1733), 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. -
Stamp Act
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 and carrying an embossed revenue stamp. These printed materials were legal documents, magazines, newspapers and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies. -
Quartering Act
A law passed that demanded colonial citizens to offer lodgings and food to British soldiers. -
Stamp Act Congress
The members of this Congress, sincerely devoted, with the warmest sentiments of affection and duty to His Majesty's Person and Government, inviolably attached to the present happy establishment of the Protestant succession, and with minds deeply impressed by a sense of the present and impending misfortunes of the British colonies on this continent; having considered as maturely as time will permit the circumstances of the said colonies, esteem it our indispensable duty to make the following decl -
Declatory Act
(1766) Declaration by the British Parliament that accompanied repeal of the Stamp Act. It stated that Parliament's authority was the same in America as in Britain and asserted Parliament's authority to make laws binding on the American colonies. -
Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts, British legislation intended to raise revenue, tighten customs enforcement, and assert imperial authority in America, were sponsored by Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend, (right - 1725-67) and enacted on June 29, 1767. The key statute levied import duties on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. Its purpose was to provide salaries for some colonial officials so that the provincial assemblies could not coerce them by withholding wages -
new york legislature suspended by parliament
Parliament suspended the New York legislature because New Yorkers refused to provide for British
troops quartered in the colony. -
British troops occupy Boston
British troops land in Boston to enforce the Townshend duties (taxes on paint, paper, tea, etc., passed in June 1767) and clamp down on local radicals. The troops' presence doesn't sit well with locals and leads to street fights. One clash between soldiers and a mob in March 1770 will leave five dead. Radicals will call it the Boston Massacre, while the British will call it the incident on King Street. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists by British regulars on March 5, 1770. It was the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts in October 1768 to enforce the heavy tax burden imposed by the Townshend Acts. -
All townshend acts except tea tax repealed
Also on March 5, Townshend's successor (he had died soon after proposing the hated act), Lord Frederick North, asked Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts except for the duty on tea; he considered all the duties bad for trade and, thus, expensive for the British empire. However, he wished to avoid the appearance of weakness in the face of colonial protest and thus left the tea tax in place. This strategy successfully divided colonial merchants, eager, for their own enrichment, to resume trade -
committees of correspondence formed
Committees of Correspondence are established throughout the colonies to coordinate American response to British colonial policy. This represents an important move toward cooperation, mutual action, and the development of a national identity among Americans. -
british east india company granted tea monopoly Governor Hutchinson's actions provoke Boston tea party
Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, embattled Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain. He apparently did not expect that the protestors would choose to destroy the tea rather than concede the authority of a leg -
the association boycotts british goods
The American Colonists realized that they should not be taken for granted anymore. They wanted to be their own colony now. They hated the fact that everything they did was under the British government. So in order to try to make British lower taxes, they boycotted the goods to give them no business. -
first continental congress
The First Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from twelve of the thirteen North American colonies that met on September 5, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. Called in response to the passage of the Coercive Acts (also known as Intolerable Acts by the Colonial Americans) by the British Parliament, the Congress was attended by 56 members appointed by the legislatures of twelve of the Thirteen Colonies, the exception being the -
"Intolerable acts"
The Intolerable Acts or the Coercive Acts are names used to describe a series of five laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 relating to Britain's colonies in North America. The acts triggered outrage and resistance in the Thirteen Colonies that later became the United States, and were important developments in the growth of the American Revolution. -
Quebec Act
When the Quebec Province was extended southward all the way to the Ohio River to make room for the conquered french. -
battles of lexington and concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War.[9][10] They were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy (present-day Arlington), and Cambridge, near Boston. The battles marked the outbreak of open armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in the mainland of British North America.
