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French and Indian War
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. -
Proclamation of 1765
After Britain won the Seven Years' War and gained land in North America, it issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited American colonists from settling west of Appalachia. The Treaty of Paris, which marked the end of the French and Indian War, granted Britain a great deal of valuable North American land. -
Sugar Act
British legislation aimed at ending the smuggling trade in sugar and molasses from the French and Dutch West Indies and at providing increased revenues to fund enlarged British Empire responsibilities following the French and Indian -
Stamp Act of 1765
The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. -
Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts were a series of laws passed by the British government on the American colonies. They placed new taxes and took away some freedoms from the colonists including the following: New taxes on imports of paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea. -
The Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a street fight between a patriot mob, throwing stones, sticks and snowballs and a group of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed. -
Tea Act
The Tea Act. passed by the British Parliament, granted the company the right to ship its tea directly to the colonies without first landing it in England, and to commission agents who would have the sole right to sell tea in the colonies -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest. 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 Intolerable Acts were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British to the detriment of colonial goods. -
1st Congressional Congress
The First Continental Congress, which was comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Coercive Acts, a series of measures imposed by the British government on the colonies in response to their resistance to new taxes.