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French-Indian War
The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the war's expenses led to colonial discontent, and ultimately to the American Revolution. -
Navigation Acts
The Navigation Acts were a series of laws passed by the British Parliament that imposed restrictions on colonial trade. British economic policy was based on mercantilism, which aimed to use the American colonies to bolster British state power and finances. -
Quarter act
Quartering Act, (1765), in American colonial history, the British parliamentary provision (actually an amendment to the annual Mutiny Act) requiring colonial authorities to provide food, drink, quarters, fuel, and transportation to British forces stationed in their towns or villages. -
Stamp act
The act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards. It was a direct tax imposed by the British government without the approval of the colonial legislatures and was payable in hard-to-obtain British sterling, rather than colonial currency. -
Townshend act
To help pay the expenses involved in governing the American colonies, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which initiated taxes on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. -
Boston Massacre
On March 5, 1770, seven British soldiers fired into a crowd of volatile Bostonians, killing five, wounding another six, and angering an entire colony. The event, known as the Boston Massacre, did not happen in an isolated vacuum, but it occurred as a result of growing tensions between Boston colonists and English Parliament. -
Boston Tea Party
It was a protest about the tax on tea, levied without representation in the British Parliament and against the monopoly of the East India Company. The earlier Townshend Acts placed duties on a range of imports to the colonies -
Intolerable acts
The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party. Below, see how these events transpired—and how they helped inspire a revolution. -
Olive Branch Petition
The Olive Branch Petition was adopted by Congress on July 5, 1775, to be sent to the King as a last attempt to prevent formal war from being declared. The Petition emphasized their loyalty to the British crown and emphasized their rights as British citizens. -
Battle of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775, the famous 'shot heard 'round the world', marked the start of the American War of Independence