Discontent Grows

  • Proclamation of 1763

    Decreed on October 7, 1763, the Proclamation Line prohibited Anglo-American colonists from settling on lands acquired from the French following the French and Indian War.
  • Period: to

    Sugar Act

    Sugar Act cut the duty on foreign molasses from 6 to 3 pence per gallon, retained a high duty on foreign refined sugar, and prohibited the importation of all foreign rum
  • Period: to

    Currency Act

    The Currency Act, passed in 1764 along with the Sugar Act, prohibited the printing and issuance of paper money by Colonial legislatures. It also set up fines and penalties for members of Colonial government who disobeyed, despite the long-standing currency shortage.
  • Period: to

    Quartering Act 1765

    The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualling houses and the houses of sellers of wine
  • Period: to

    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.
  • Declaratory Act,

    The Declaratory Act, passed by Parliament on the same day the Stamp Act was repealed, stated that Parliament could make laws binding the American colonies "in all cases whatsoever."
  • Period: to

    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

    Late in the afternoon of March 5, 1770, British sentries guarding the Boston Customs House shot into a crowd of civilians, killing three men and injuring eight, two of them mortally.
  • Boston Tea Party

    The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor.
  • Intolerable Acts

    The Coercive Acts (called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists) included a new Quartering Act that provided arrangements for housing British troops in American dwellings. It revived the anger that colonists had felt regarding the earlier Quartering Act (1765), which had been allowed to expire in 1770
  • Period: to

    Quartering Act 1774

    The last act passed was the Quartering Act of 1774 which applied not just to Massachusetts, but to all the American colonies, and was only slightly different than the 1765 act. This new act allowed royal governors, rather than colonial legislatures, to find homes and buildings to quarter or house British soldiers.
  • Quebec Act

    The Quebec Act was intended to appease French Canadians and to gain their loyalty. First and foremost, the Act allowed them to freely practice Roman Catholicism. This was in stark contrast to how the British government had handled similar situations