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French-Indian War (1756-1763)
The French and Indian War, spanning from 1756 to 1763, was a North American theatre of the larger Seven Years' War, where British colonists and their Iroquois allies fought against French colonists and their Native American allies for control of territory in the Ohio Valley and other frontier regions, ultimately resulting in a British victory and the ceding of most French territory in North America to the British Empire through the Treaty of Paris in 1763 -
Navigation Acts (1763)
The Navigation Acts were a series of laws passed by the British Parliament that imposed restrictions on colonial trade -
Stamp Act 1765
On March 22, 1765, the British Parliament passed the “Stamp Act” to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years' War. The act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards. -
Quartering Act 1765
The Province of New York assembly passed an act to provide for the quartering of British regulars, which expired on January 1, 1764. The colonists disputed the legality of this Act because it seemed to violate the Bill of Rights of 1689. -
Townshend Acts 1767
On 29 June 1767 Parliament pass the Townshend Acts. They bear the name of Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is—as the chief treasurer of the British Empire—in charge of economic and financial matters. -
Boston Massacre 1770
On March 5, 1770, seven British soldiers fired into a crowd of volatile Bostonians, killing five, wounding another six, and angering an entire colony. -
Boston Tea Party 1773
On the night of December 16, 1773, dozens of disguised men, some as Indigenous Americans, boarded the three East India Company ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. -
Intolerable Acts (aka Coercive Acts) 1774
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. -
Battle of Lexington & Concord (aka “The Shot Heard Around the World”) 1775
[9] The battles 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. They marked the outbreak of armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in America. -
Olive Branch Petition 1775
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. -
Common Sense 1776
Published on January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine's 47-page pamphlet “Common Sense” helped sway the Thirteen Colonies toward independence with his persuasive and passionate case for separation from Britain. -
Declaration of Independence 1776
By issuing the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the 13 American colonies severed their political connections to Great Britain. The Declaration summarized the colonists' motivations for seeking independence. -
Articles of Confederation 1777
The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Continental Congress on November 15, 1777. This document served as the United States' first constitution. It was in force from March 1, 1781, until 1789 when the present-day Constitution went into effect. -
Daniel Shays’ Rebellion 1786
A violent insurrection in the Massachusetts countryside during 1786 and 1787, Shays' Rebellion was brought about by a monetary debt crisis at the end of the American Revolutionary War. Although Massachusetts was the focal point of the crisis, other states experienced similar economic hardships. -
Constitutional Convention (aka Philadelphia Convention) 1787
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.