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French-Indian War
The French and Indian War, the North American phase of the larger Seven Years' War, began after a series of incidents in the upper Ohio River valley, which the French and British governments both claimed as their territory.Though Britain's victory in the French and Indian War expelled France from North America and secured massive territorial gains for the empire, subsequent Crown policies concerning taxation and westward expansion resulted in widespread colonial discontent. -
Navigation act
Acts of Parliament intended to promote the self-sufficiency of the British Empire by restricting colonial trade to England and decreasing dependence on foreign imported goods. -
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. -
Quartering act
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. -
Townshend acts
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. Nonimportation. In response to new taxes, the colonies again decided to discourage the purchase of British imports. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which nine British soldiers shot several of a crowd of three or four hundred who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles. -
Boston tea party
The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest on December 16, 1773, by the Sons of Liberty in Boston in colonial Massachusetts. -
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. -
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence. The Second Continental Congress met inside Independence Hall beginning in May 1775. It was just a month after shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, and the Congress was preparing for war. -
Battle of Lexington & Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord was the first major military campaign of the American Revolutionary War, resulting in an American victory and outpouring of militia support for the anti-British cause. -
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. -
Common sense
Among the most influential authors and reformers of his age, Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was born in England but went on to play an important role in both the American and French Revolutions. In 1774, he emigrated to America where, for a time, he helped to edit the Pennsylvania Magazine. -
DOI
The Declaration of Independence, formally titled The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America in both the engrossed version and the original printing, is the founding document of the United States. -
AOC
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 states of the United States, formerly the Thirteen Colonies, that served as the nation's first frame of government. -
Shays' Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes on both individuals and their trades. -
Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of 1787 to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation.