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The Great Awakening
The Great Awakening was an evangelical and revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American Protestantism. -
The French and Indian War
It was a war (not between the French and Indians) but a series of military engagements between Britain and France in North America between 1754 and 1763. The French and Indian War was the American phase of the Seven Years' War, which was then underway in Europe. -
The Proclamation of 1763
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued October 7, 1763, by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, which forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. -
The Sugar Act
a law passed by the British Parliament in 1764 raising duties on foreign refined sugar imported by the colonies so as to give British sugar growers in the West Indies a monopoly on the colonial market. -
The Stamp Act
an act of the British Parliament in 1756 that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. Colonial opposition led to the act's repeal in 1766 and helped encourage the revolutionary movement against the British Crown. -
Patrick Henry's "If This Be Treason" speech
In the spring of 1765, the recently enacted Stamp Act was the prime topic of political conversation in the American colonies. In Virginia, the current session of the House of Burgesses was drawing to a close and many of the delegates had already headed for home. Patrick Henry, who had held his seat for only a matter of days, celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday on May 29 by offering a series of resolutions related to the current crisis. Much of what he proposed was familiar to his colleagues: -
The Stamp Act Congress
The Stamp Act Congress or First Congress of the American Colonies was a meeting held between October 7 and 25, 1765 in New York City, consisting of representatives from some of the British colonies in North America; it was the first gathering of elected representatives from several of the American colonies to devise a unified protest against new British taxation. -
Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts were a series of acts passed – beginning in 1767 – by the Parliament of Great Britain relating to the British colonies in North America. The acts are named after Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who proposed the program. -
The Boston Massacre
a riot in Boston arising from the resentment of Boston colonists toward British troops quartered in the city, in which the troops fired on the mob and killed several persons. Examples from the Web for Boston Massacre Expan -
Boston Tea Party
a raid on three British ships in Boston Harbor in which Boston colonists, disguised as Indians, threw the contents of several hundred chests of tea into the harbor as a protest against British taxes on tea and against the monopoly granted the East India Company. -
The Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris of 1783, negotiated between the United States and Great Britain, ended the revolutionary war and recognized American independence. The Continental Congress named a five-member commission to negotiate a treaty–John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Laurens.
