1754-1774

7 Years War 1756-1763

Albany Congress: 1754

25 delegates from each colony
and over 200 delegates from
native tribes gathered to To forge a stronger alliance with the Iroquois
Coordinate plans for intercolonial defense

Fighting over the Ohio Valley

French Settlers

Ohio Company

Native tribes

Treaty of Paris; 1763
declared the war over

Result; Britain took Quebec and ousted the French from the continent

The Natives now find that their long-used tactics of setting foreign powers against each other is now useless

Post Seven Years War

Britain had the challenge of raising
revenue in order to pay the national
debt that the war put them in

George Grenville: elected prime minister,
believed the colonies should shoulder
some of this debt and wanted to get a
tighter grip on the affairs of the colonies

Proclamation line of 1763

designated how the headwaters of of rivers flowing into the Atlantic from the Appalachians as the western boundary for colonial settlement

colonists began to have grievances with Parliament due to this.

Real Whigs: stressed the dangers posed by a powerful government/monarch - Britain’s attempt to tighten the reins and raise revenues on the colonies had them begin to think this idea applied to them.

Sugar Act: 1764

Revised existing customs such as the
navigation acts, laid new duties on some
imports to the colonies

Some colonists saw this as a threat, others
such as Caribbean sugar planters benefitted

Currency Act: 1764

outlawed most colonial paper money

Stamp Act: 1764

required taxed stamps on every piece of printed material bought by colonists- broke the colonial tradition of self-imposed taxation

sparked protest; loyal nine, sons and
daughters of liberty, boycotting British
goods

Townshend Acts: 1767

Duties proposed by Charles Townshend on trade goods like paper, glass tea, etc

Boston Massacre, 1770: confrontation in Boston between British troops and Boston civilians that led to the death of 5 civilians

Tea Act: 1773

tea would be sold in America only by agents of the East india company

The idea that this was a method of parliamentary
control became exceedingly popular

Boston tea party - men dumped british tea into the harbor while dressed as natives

Intolerable Acts: 1774

punishment for the Boston tea Party;
closed trade harbors until the citizens
paid debt

Quebec Act:1774

intended to ease strains that had arisen since the British conquest of the formerly french colony of Quebec