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Proclamation of 1763
The Proclamation of 1763 was passed to prevent settlers from developing further west into and past the Appalachian mountains. This land was acquired in the French and Indian War, so banning settlers from using it angered them. The British did have some interest in protecting the colonists, though, as they feared conflict between colonists and Natives if the Colonists developed new land. -
Sugar Act
Parliament's goal with the Sugar Act was to cut down on smuggling and colonial trade with foreign powers, so they put higher taxes on foreign molasses and sugar, banned foreign rum, and pushed for much higher policing on imported goods to stop smuggling. -
Currency Act
The Currency Act was put in place to ban makeshift currency notes circulating within the colonies, which were confusing both within the colonies and between traders. The notes were inconsistent and from different banks; even though they were supposed to mean the same things, they had different values and purposes. This act outlawed these notes but did not create an alternative, leaving colonists nearly without a currency. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was passed to create revenue for the British government following a series of expensive wars. The act required all official documents for farmers and businessmen alike to have a stamp, which was expensive, and the colonists were freshly short on currency. This was the first hefty tax passed from Parliament on the colonies, creating uproar over the lack of representation in the colonists' government. The tax also carried the penalty of death, sentenced by a foreign court. -
Quartering Act 1765
The Quartering Act was passed to provide cheap housing for British soldiers in the American colonies. The colonists were forced to house soldiers for free in Inns and vacant properties, such as barns, stables, and vacant homes. The colonists were not allowed to consent to boarding soldiers and were told that soldiers needed accommodation. -
Declaratory Act
The Declaratory Act was passed alongside removing the Stamp Act and declared that the British Parliament had constitutional power to legislate over the colonies. This act was partly created because the colonists did not understand that Parliament was forfeiting its right to legal control over the colonies. The other part of the reason the act was created was to pave the way for future taxes and legal rulings over colonists without the issue of rights or power. -
Townshend Act
The Townshend Act was passed to tax imported china, glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea, all of which were essential items to American colonists. The funding from the tax was supposed to pay for colonial government officials' salaries, but the uproar over such high taxes created a boycott of British goods, further damaging both the economy of the two and the relationship between the two. -
The Boston Massacre
Boston had been occupied for about two years by the British when the Massacre occurred, raising tensions and creating conflicts between soldiers and colonists. On March 5, 1770, many colonists provoked one soldier, surrounding and insulting him, and other soldiers came to his rescue, angering colonists. As tensions rose, gunshots were fired by the soldiers, resulting in four deaths. Their funeral amassed a crowd of around ten thousand, roughly two-thirds of Boston's population at the time. -
Boston Tea Party
The Tea Act was passed in 1773, allowing the East India Trading Company, a British organization, tax-free importation of tea into the colonies. This lack of tax created a monopoly, which the colonists opposed, so when the ships carrying this tea arrived in their harbors, they refused to buy it, letting it sit and rot in the ports along the colonies. When the ship refused to leave in Boston, a group of men dressed as Native Americans threw the tea into the Boston Harbor, damaging British profits. -
Intolerable Acts (Coercive Acts)
The Intolerable Acts were four acts passed in retaliation to the Boston Tea Party to assert dominance over the colonies. The first act closed the Boston Harbor until the loss from the damaged tea was repaid, the second removed all colonial government in Massachusets, the third allowed British soldiers accused of crimes to be tried in Britain, and the final of the four acts reinstated quartering in the colonies after the Quartering Act expired in 1770. -
Quartering Act
The Quarting Act of 1774 did not make British soldiers fill barracks first and instead allowed them to take vacant property as housing without question. This still protected private residences, but the British soldiers told colonists they must house them at the height of the war in the late 1770s. -
Quebec Act
The Quebec Act was made to appease French settlers, allowed the French colonists to have their government mostly separate from the British Crown, and gave them freedom of religion, both of which were privileges the American colonists didn't have. The French colonists being given what the American colonists had been fighting for made the Americans very angry, and it was almost a tipping point before the war as it was the last central act issued by Parliament before the Declaration of Independence