Revolutionary Period (1763-1789)
Part 1: Causes of the American Revolution
The Revolutionary Period refers to the time when the 13 British colonies united and declared their
independence from Great Britain and wrote their own constitution. The period begins with the signing
of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 at the end of the French and Indian War. It ends with the election of
George Washington as the first President of the United States in 1789. This page covers the causes of
the American Revolution (1763-1775).
British Actions
Colonial Protests
The British Parliament passed a number of laws
to force the colonies to pay off the French and
Indian War debt.
The colonists chose many different ways to protest
the laws passed by Parliament.
Proclamation of 1763
- prohibited colonists
from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains
Stamp Act
- tax on documents
Quartering Act
- required colonists to
allow British troops in their home
Townshend Acts
sold in the colonies
- tax on British goods
Tea Act
- tax on tea
Intolerable Acts
for the Boston Tea Party
- punishment
Boston Massacre
No taxation without representation - colonists
believed Parliament could not tax them without
representation in Parliament
Stamp Act Congress
- group of 7 colonies united
and used a boycott (refusal to buy goods) to force
Parliament to repeal (take away) the Stamp Act
Sons of Liberty - protest group founded by Sam
Adams; they used both boycotts and violence, such
as tar and feathering, to oppose the British
Boston Tea Party - organized by the Sons of Liberty;
colonists destroyed British tea to protest the Tea Act
Tension between colonists and British soldiers led
to the death of five colonists, including African
American Crispus Attucks, on March 5, 1770.
Who was at fault?
First Continental Congress - meeting of 12 colonies;
organized a boycott and decided to form militias, or
citizen armies