The Royal Proclamation (1763)

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued by the British crown at the end of the Seven Years War in North America, and was mainly intended to conciliate the Natives by checking the encroachment of white settlers on their lands. After Native grievances had resulted in the start of Pontiacs War (176364), British authorities determined to subdue inter-colonial rivalries and abuses by dealing with Native problems as a whole. To this end, the Proclamation organised new British territories in America -- the provinces of Qubec, East and West Florida, and Grenada (in the Windward Islands) -- and a vast Britishadministered Native reservation west of the Appalachians, from south of Hudson Bay to north of Florida. It forbade all white settlement on Native territory, ordered those settlers already there to withdraw, and strictly limited future settlement. For the first time in the history of European colonisation in the New World, the Proclamation formalised the concept of Native land titles, prohibiting issuance of patents to any lands claimed by a tribe unless the Native title had first been extinguished by purchase or treaty. Although not intended to alter western boundaries, the Proclamation was nevertheless offensive to the colonies as undue interference in their affairs. Treaties following Pontiacs War drew a more acceptable line of settlement and the balance of territory north of the Ohio River was added to Qubec in 1774. The Proclamation, however, failed to stem the westward movement of pioneers, whose disregard of its provisions evoked decades of continued Native warfare throughout the area. Establishing and manning posts along the length of the boundary that extended from the Atlantic coast at Qubec to the newly established border of West Florida was a very costly undertaking. The British ministry would argue that these outposts were for colonial defence, and as such should be paid for by the colonies. From the American perspective this amounted to a tax on the colonies to pay for a matter of Imperial regulation that was opposed to the interests of the colonies.

The Sugar Act (1764)

The Sugar Act was a piece of British legislation designed to raise revenue from North American colonies. On 5 April 1764, Parliament passed a modified version of the Sugar and Molasses Act (1733), which was about to expire. Under the Molasses Act, colonial merchants had been required to pay a tax of six pence per gallon on the importation of foreign molasses. But because of corruption, they mostly evaded the taxes and undercut the intention of the tax -- that the English product would be cheaper than that from the French West Indies. This hurt the British West Indies market in molasses and sugar and the market for rum, which the colonies had been producing in quantity with the cheaper French molasses. The First Lord of the Treasury, and Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Grenville was trying to bring the colonies in line with regard to payment of taxes. He had beefed up the Navy presence and instructed them to become more active in customs enforcement. Parliament decided it would be wise to make a few adjustments to the trade regulations. The Sugar Act reduced the rate of tax on molasses from six pence to three pence per gallon, while Grenville took measures that the duty be strictly enforced. The Act also listed more foreign goods to be taxed including sugar, certain wines, coffee, pimiento, cambric and printed calico, and further, regulated the export of lumber and iron. The enforced tax on molasses caused the almost immediate decline in the rum industry in the colonies. The combined effect of the new duties was to sharply reduce the trade with Madeira, the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the French West Indies (Guadalupe, Martinique and Santo Domingo, now called Haiti), all important destination ports for lumber, flour, cheese, and assorted farm products. The situation disrupted the colonial economy by reducing the markets to which the colonies could sell, and the amount of currency available to them for the purchase of British manufactured goods. This Act, and the Currency Act, set the stage for the revolt at the imposition of the Stamp Act.

The Stamp Act (1765)

The Seven Years War (175463) doubled the debt of the British government and at the same time greatly increased British possessions in America. The British government therefore decided to station British troops in the colonies to prevent the French from recovering Canada and to defend the colonies against the Natives. Most Englishmen thought it only right that the colonies should help pay for the support of these troops. For a partial support of the troops the British Parliament therefore passed the Stamp Act in 1765. This provided that stamps purchased from the British government should be used on all important documents, periodicals, almanacs, pamphlets, and playing cards. This tax aroused great opposition among the colonists for three reasons: the colonists thought they should not be taxed except by their own representatives; they opposed the presence of British troops; and the tax had to be paid in silver. This would carry so much of their sound money to England that it would seriously interfere with business. Benjamin Franklin, in England at the time, counselled compliance with the law. But a Stamp Act Congress, representing nine colonies, met in New York City on 7 October 1765, and declared that only the colonial assemblies should tax the colonists. The congress also petitioned the king and Parliament for repeal of the objectionable measures. When the stamped papers began to arrive, mobs seized them or forced the ships captains to take them back to England. They also forced stamp commissioners to resign, so that even where the stamps were landed there was no one to distribute them. Many wealthy merchants favoured stopping all business that required the use of stamped papers. This, they said, would be perfectly legal, and it would so seriously interfere with the business of British merchants that Parliament would be forced to repeal the law. But printers and lawyers, small shopkeepers and labourers, who would be hurt if business stopped, wanted to disregard the Stamp Act entirely. Eventually, the resistance to the Stamp Act resulted in its repeal in March 1766.

The Townshend Acts (1767)

From 15 June to 2 July 1767, the British Parliament issued a series of resolutions called the Townshend Acts to generate revenue in the colonies. Military expenses and territorial gains from its victory in the Seven Years War put great strain on Britains finances. In addition to financing its debts, Great Britain also used the Townshend Acts as a means of reinforcing its authority in the colonies. The Acts burdened the colonies with oppressive mandates and excessive taxes on essential imported British commodities. One of the Townshend Acts, the Suspending Act, ordered the New York representative assembly to cease all activity until it complied with the terms of the Quartering Act of 1765. According to the Quartering Act, the colonists were required to provide housing, food, medical care, and transportation to British soldiers stationed in colonial towns. The Townshend duties were direct taxes on imported British goods in the colonies such as glass, paper, paint, and tea. Great Britain used the proceeds from these taxes to finance the defence of the new British territories. France ceded all of its land east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain in the Treaty of Paris of 1763 after the Seven Years War. The Townshend Acts also established the Board of Customs Commissioners with headquarters in Boston for the collection of the Townshend duties. Aside from customs agents, British military officers and coast guard vessels also enforced tax payments in the colonies with search warrants and other legal documents necessary to ensure compliance. With no representation in Parliament, colonial legislative assemblies were limited in their abilities to contest the Townshend Acts. Resistance to the acts followed as colonists withheld payments, staged public demonstrations denouncing the taxes and boycotted British imports, which put an economic strain on markets in Great Britain. Pressure from colonial protests and the non-importation agreement among merchants caused the British government to ease the resolutions. On 5 March 1770, Parliament repealed all the Townshend Acts except for a tea tax.

The Boston Massacre (1770)

The incident known as the Boston Massacre was the climax of several brawls in Boston, Massachusetts, where workers and sailors clashed with British soldiers who were enforcing British Parliaments laws in the town. Hostilities intensified in the colonies against Great Britains rule in the years preceding the American Revolution, and skirmishes such as the Boston Massacre erupted between colonists and British troops. The incident began on 5 March 1770, when a young wigmakers apprentice named Edward Garrick called out to a British officer, Captain John Goldfinch, that he was late paying his barbers bill. Goldfinch had in fact settled his account that day but did not reply to the boy. When Garrick remained quite vocal in his complaints an hour later, the British sentry outside the customs house, Private Hugh White, called the boy over and clubbed him on the head. Garricks companions yelled at the sentry, and a British sergeant chased them away. The apprentices returned with more locals, shouting insults at the sentry and throwing snowballs and litter at British soldiers. The soldiers fired their muskets into the crowd as the outraged mob insulted and threatened them. As a result of the shootings five colonists were killed, including a former slave named Crispus Attucks, while several others were wounded. Attucks was the first victim to fall and gained notoriety as one of the first people to die for the cause of independence. Despite his opposition to British authority in the colonies, John Adams, one of Bostons leading attorneys at the time, defended the British soldiers involved in the altercation. Adams attested in court that the soldiers were provoked into firing at the group of colonists. Six of the soldiers were acquitted, while the other two were released after being charged with manslaughter and branded on the thumbs. The Boston Massacre struck some colonial legislative delegates as a battle for liberty against the oppressive British regime. The encounter led to additional acts of retaliation in the colonies against the harsh mandates and heavy taxes imposed by Parliament.

The Tea Act (1773)

The Tea Act was a piece of British legislation that gave a tea monopoly in the American colonies to the British East India Company. The Act, which was passed by Parliament in May 1773, would launch the final spark to the revolutionary movement in Boston. The Act was not intended to raise revenue in the American colonies, and in fact imposed no new taxes. It adjusted the duty regulations to allow the failing company to sell its large tea surplus below the prices charged by colonial competitors. The Act was opposed by colonists as another example of taxation without representation. Resistance to the act resulted in the Boston Tea Party. The Tea Act was designed to prop up the East India Company which was floundering financially and burdened with eighteen million pounds of unsold tea. This tea was to be shipped directly to the colonies, and sold at a bargain price. The Townshend Duties were still in place, however, and the radical leaders in America found reason to believe that this act was a manoeuvre to buy popular support for the taxes already in force. The direct sale of tea, via British agents, would also have undercut the business of local merchants. Colonists in Philadelphia and New York turned the tea ships back to Britain. In Charleston the cargo was left to rot on the docks. In Boston, the Royal Governor was stubborn and held the ships in port, where the colonists would not allow them to unload. Cargoes of tea filled the harbour, and the British ships crews were stalled in Boston looking for work and often finding trouble. This Act led to widespread boycotts of tea throughout the colonies, and, eventually, to the Boston Tea Party where American colonists, believed to be the Sons of Liberty, dressed up like Native Americans and threw 342 crates of tea from the East India Company ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver into Boston Harbour. This Act, and the retaliatory measures taken by the British government afterwards, united the colonies even more in their frustrations against Britain, and was one of the many causes of the American Revolution.

The Boston Tea Party (1773)

The incident known as the Boston Tea Party occurred when a group of colonists from Boston boarded ships owned by the British East India Company and threw chests of tea into Boston Harbour. The colonists were revolting against a tea tax and the persistent efforts of Great Britain to legislate taxes without colonial representation in the British Parliament. In 1767 Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which levied taxes on British commodities imported in the colonies. In opposition to these measures colonial merchants boycotted British imports, and citizens staged riots in the streets. By 1770 colonial resistance to the taxes was so strong that Parliament repealed all of the Townshend Acts except for a tax on tea. To evade the tea tax, merchants in Boston bought tea smuggled into the colonies by Dutch traders. In 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act, which gave the East India Company exclusive rights to export tea to the colonies. The company was having financial problems and had a surplus of tea that needed to be sold. The Tea Act granted the East India Company a monopoly on all tea exported to the colonies and exempted the company from an export tax. The company carried the tea in its own ships and sold the tea through its own agents, which enabled it to sell the tea at a lower price than its competitors. Colonial merchants resisted the East India Companys monopoly on tea exports by cancelling orders and refusing consignments. In Boston the royal governor, Thomas Hutchinson, allowed three East India Company ships to unload their cargoes of tea and required that the Boston merchants pay the appropriate taxes for the shipments. On the night of 16 December 1773, a group of nearly 60 colonists disguised as Mohawks boarded these ships and tossed 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbour. Great Britain reacted to this event by instituting a series of punitive measures in the colonies known as the Intolerable Acts. Great Britain continued to impose strict control over the colonies with oppressive laws and taxes that created further hostilities toward the British government.

The Intolerable Acts (1774)

The Intolerable Acts, also called the Coercive Acts or the Punitive Acts, were four punitive measures on the American colonies enacted by British Parliament in the spring of 1774. The government spent immense sums of money on troops and equipment in an attempt to subdue the colonists. British merchants had lost huge sums of money on looted, spoiled, and destroyed goods shipped to the colonies, and as a result the British government felt it needed to respond to the rebellious behaviour of the colonists who participated in the Boston Tea Party. In addition to the Boston Tea Party that took place in 1773, similar incidents occurred in Boston where citizens defied British laws and taxes by staging public protests, boycotting British imports, and harassing British soldiers. Colonists were enraged over Parliaments authority to delegate taxation without colonial representation. Consequently, Great Britain was determined to punish the colonies, particularly Massachusetts, for these seditious actions. The Boston Port Act was the first of the Intolerable Acts and closed the citys harbour until restitution was made for the destroyed tea. Second, the Massachusetts Government Act cancelled the colonys charter that was established in 1691. Massachusetts was reduced to a crown colony and a British military government was instated under the command of General Thomas Gage. Next was the Administration of Justice Act, which allowed British law enforcement officials of a certain colony who were charged with capital offences to stand trial in either Great Britain or another colony. The fourth Coercive Act was the renewal of the Quartering Act, which had expired in 1770, that forced colonists to provide housing for British troops. Supplemental to the Intolerable Acts was the Qubec Act of 1774. This Act removed all the territory and fur trade between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from possible colonial jurisdiction and awarded it to the province of Qubec. France had ceded this province to Great Britain in the Treaty of Paris of 1763 after the Seven Years War.