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French and Indian War - 1756 through 1763

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French and Indian War - 1756 through 1763

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The French and Indian war, also referred to as the Seven Years’ War, represented another phase in the ongoing imperial rivalry between Britain and France. France's expansion into the Ohio River valley resulted in ongoing conflicts with the British colonies, ultimately leading to a sequence of battles that prompted the official declaration of war by Britain in 1756. Backed by the financial support of upcoming Prime Minister William Pitt, the British reversed their fortunes with successes at Louisbourg, Fort Frontenac, and the French-Canadian stronghold of Quebec. During the 1763 peace talks, Britain obtained Canada from France and Florida from Spain, allowing for westward growth into the Mississippi Valley.

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The Navigation Acts aimed to bolster English ship construction and limit competition in trade from England's rivals, notably the Dutch. The actions eventually led to increased colonial anger due to the implementation of extra taxes on sugar, tobacco, and molasses.

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On April 5, 1764, Parliament approved a revised edition of the expiring Sugar and Molasses Act of 1733. During the time of the Molasses Act, colonial merchants were obligated to pay a tax of six pence for every gallon of foreign molasses that they imported. However, due to corruption, they frequently avoided paying taxes and went against the purpose of the tax — which was to make English products cheaper than those from the French West Indies. This negatively impacted the British West Indies market for molasses, sugar, and rum, as the colonies were producing a large quantity of rum using the more affordable French molasses. Lord Grenville, who served as both the First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, aimed to enforce tax compliance among the colonies. He had increased the Navy's presence and directed them to be more proactive in enforcing customs. Parliament deemed it prudent to implement some changes to the trade regulations. The Sugar Act lowered the tax rate on molasses from six pence to three pence per gallon and Grenville ensured that the duty was strictly implemented.

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The Currency Act was passed by Parliament on September 1, 1764, taking over the colonial currency system. The law banned the issuance of new bills and the re-issuance of current currency. Parliament supported a currency system tied to the pound sterling, known as a "hard currency", but did not want to control the colonial bills. Instead, they just eliminated them. The colonies strongly protested against this. They started with a trade deficit with Great Britain and claimed that the lack of solid capital would make the situation worse.

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The Sons of Liberty in colonial America were a group of troublemakers who employed extreme civil disobedience tactics, such as threats and violence, to intimidate loyalists and anger the British government. The radicals aimed to incite moderate colonial leaders to challenge the British Crown, and the Sons achieved an early success in December 1765. Just a month after the British government imposed the Stamp Act, the first direct tax on American colonists, a letter was sent to Andrew Oliver by Boston merchants and craftsmen, protesting his appointment as collector. The group told Oliver to appear at the Liberty Tree in the city's South End at noon the following day to publicly announce his resignation.

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The Stamp Act of 1765 marked the initial imposition of an internal tax on American colonists by the British Parliament. The measure, which enforced a duty on every paper record in the colonies, was implemented during a period when the British Empire was heavily indebted from the Seven Years' War (1756-63) and turning to its North American colonies for income. The colonists believed that the act was unconstitutional and argued that only their elected assemblies had the right to tax them, using mob violence to pressure stamp collectors to step down. Parliament approved the Stamp Act on March 22, 1765 and revoked it in 1766, while simultaneously implementing a Declaratory Act to confirm its power to enact any colonial laws it deemed necessary. The problems regarding taxation and representation brought up by the Stamp Act caused tensions with the colonies, leading to armed rebellion against the British a decade later.

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The Townshend Acts, implemented in 1767 by the British Parliament, were a collection of laws that imposed taxes on items brought into the American colonies. However, the American colonists, lacking representation in Parliament, viewed the Acts as a misuse of authority. The British deployed soldiers to America to uphold the controversial new laws, escalating tensions between Great Britain and the American colonies leading up to the American Revolutionary War. The British Crown was successful in the French and Indian War of 1763, however, protecting the North American colonies from French expansion had been very expensive for England. The expenses incurred by the colonists during the French and Indian War were minimal in comparison to the debts of Great Britain. The settlers, who may have had a better quality of life than their British peers, paid less than 5% of the taxes paid by British residents in England.

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The Boston Massacre was a riot that occurred on March 5th, 1770 and ended in quite a few deaths, on King Street in Boston. It began as a brawl between the American colonist and a British soldier, but quickly escalated into a manslaughter. The problem motivated anti-British sentiment and laid the path for the American Revolution.

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The British government, heavily in debt, imposed The Tea Act of 1773 on the American colonists, among other measures, in the ten years before the American Revolutionary War. The primary aim of the act was not to generate income from the colonies but to rescue the struggling East India Company, a crucial player in the British economy. The company was given exclusive rights by the British government to import and sell tea in the colonies. The colonists had always disputed the constitutionality of the tax on tea, and the Tea Act reignited their resistance to it. Their defiance reached its peak during the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when colonists went onto East India Company vessels and threw the tea cargo into the ocean. Parliament reacted by implementing a set of strict measures to suppress colonial opposition to British control; the conflict started two years later.

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The Boston Tea Part was a protest that occurred on December 16th, 1773, located at Griffith's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonist, aggravated and furious at Britain for imposing "Taxation without representation", dumped around 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. This event was the first act of defiance to British rule over the colonist. It showed Great Britain that American's would not tolerate taxation and tyranny sitting, and rallied American patriots across the 13 colonies to fight for independence.

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In 1774, the Coercive Acts were enacted by the British Parliament to primarily penalize Boston for their defiance against the British government, specifically during the Boston Tea Party. Nevertheless, the consequences of these actions had a broad reach outside of Massachusetts. The Intolerable Acts, including the Quebec Act, were referred to as the four acts by the 13 colonies. The punitive actions were a significant milestone in the dispute between the British government and the colonies, leading them towards the Revolutionary War.

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The Stamp Act Congress approved a "Declaration of Rights and Grievances," asserting that American colonists had the same rights as British citizens, objected to being taxed without representation, and argued that Parliament could not tax them without their representation.

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The Battle of Lexington and Concord - 1775

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The Battle of Lexington and Concord - 1775

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The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Strained relations had been brewing for a long time between inhabitants of the 13 American colonies and British officials, especially in Massachusetts. During the evening of April 18, 1775, numerous British soldiers marched from Boston to Concord with the objective of capturing a stockpile of weapons. Paul Revere and fellow riders raised the alarm, causing colonial militiamen to start preparing to stop the Redcoat column. The conflict began on Lexington town green, leading to the British quickly retreating amid intense fighting.

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When the armed conflict started between American colonists and British soldiers in April 1775, the Americans were believed to be fighting solely for their rights as subjects of the British monarchy. By the next summer, during the Revolutionary War, the push for freedom from Britain had increased, and the Continental Congress delegates had to decide on independence. In the middle of June in 1776, a group of five men, which included Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, was assigned the job of writing a formal declaration of the colonies' plans. The Declaration of Independence, mostly penned by Jefferson, was officially approved by Congress in Philadelphia on July 4th, a day now recognized as the start of American independence.

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Women established the Daughters of Liberty in 1766 in order to solidify their political influence in response to the Stamp Act crisis. They frequently offered assistance to the Sons of Liberty, a group of politically engaged men in and around Boston, Massachusetts, who had been established in that year

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The declaratory act was published on March 18th, 1766. The removal of the Stamp Act did not signify that Great Britain was relinquishing any authority over its colonies. The Declaratory Act, passed on the day the Stamp Act was repealed, declared that Parliament had the right to pass laws that would be followed by the American colonies in all circumstances.

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The Battle of Saratoga took place in September and October of 1777, in the second year of the American Revolution. It consisted of two important battles, occurring eighteen days apart, and marked a significant win for the Continental Army as well as a pivotal moment in the Revolutionary War.

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The surrender of British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and his army to General George Washington’s American force and its French allies at the Battle of Yorktown on October 19, 1781, represented more than just a military victory. The result in Yorktown, Virginia signaled the end of the final significant clash in the American Revolution and the beginning of a new country's freedom. It solidified Washington's image as an excellent leader, leading to his eventual election as the first president of the United States.

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The American Revolutionary War was officially brought to a close by the Treaty of Paris of 1783. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay, American statesmen, brokered the peace treaty with King George III of Great Britain's representatives. In the Treaty of Paris, the British Crown officially acknowledged American independence and gave up a large portion of its land east of the Mississippi River to the United States, which effectively doubled the size of the country and allowed for further expansion towards the west.