The document provides information about the causes of the American Revolution in the form of a timeline and descriptions of Acts passed by the British Parliament between the 1650s-1774 that angered the colonists. It includes the Navigation Acts, Sugar Act, Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, Tea Act, Intolerable Acts and key events like the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party. The timeline is to be used to complete a chart in the student's spiral notebook titled "Causes of the American Revolution" that lists these Acts and events and their impact on colonists' unrest with British rule.

1. In your spiral, create a chart like the one below.
Title your chart: Causes of the American Revolution and use the
information in this presentation to complete it.

4. First set of “ACTS” (new laws from England) were over a period of 100 years. . . .

6. Navigation Acts
1650s
-
1750s
Navigation
Acts
 Colonists could only
trade with Britain
(mercantilism)
Smuggling to
avoid paying
the taxes

7. 1764
Why would the Sugar Act, that taxed sugar &
molasses cause anger?
What was Taxation without Representation?
Colonists considered
this Act tyranny -
Unjust use of power
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svffj4MwG1U
1:37

8. 1765
Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKnN8Jg36kA
1 min

9. Watch
https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=mivLguvRF
7Y
4:32
1765 Stamp Act
passed
(repealed
1766)

10. •Sam Adams – “Why not our lands? Why not the produce
of our lands and, in short, everything we possess and
make use of?”
•Patrick Henry: - “If this be treason, make the most of it!”
•protest! – Stamp Act Congress
•Petition the King – right to tax should be given to
colonial assemblies
Sons of Liberty formed – secret
societies to oppose the British
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo0kldbQ9-w
2 min – leading to Stamp Act Congress

11. 1766 Declaratory
Act passed
The Declaratory Act of 1766 was passed in conjunction with the repeal of the
Stamp Act, which had hurt trade between Britain and the colonies. The Stamp Act
upset the colonists, as they questioned Britain's right to tax them, leading to the
popular slogan "no taxation without representation." The Declaratory Act became a
way for Britain to save face after the colonies' disdain of the Stamp Act, while also
asserting its authority over the colonists.
The Declaratory Act stated the British parliament had the power to legislate for the
colonies “in all cases whatsoever”. The declaration stated that Parliament's
authority was the same in America as in Britain and asserted Parliament's
authority to pass laws that were binding on the American colonies.

12. 1767 Townshend
Acts passed
(repealed
1770)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epZpkNDExsk 4:30

13. Protests immediately broke out at
news of the Townshend Acts
Went against “natural rights” (JOHN LOCKE)
“No one ought to harm another in his life,
health, liberty or possessions”

14. Paul Revere’s Engraving of the Boston Massacre – propaganda for the world
https://youtu.be
/2L0JLVDnpt4

15. Boston Massacre - 1770
1770 Boston
Massacre

16. 1773 Tea Act passed
In 1773, the British Parliament passes the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India
Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and,
thus, granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. Because all legal tea entered the colonies
through England, allowing the East India Company to pay lower taxes in Britain also allowed it to
sell tea more cheaply in the colonies. Even untaxed Dutch tea, which entered the colonies
illegally through smuggling, was more expensive the East India tea, after the act took effect.
British Prime Minister, Frederick, Lord North, who initiated the legislation, thought it impossible
that the colonists would protest cheap tea; he was wrong. Many colonists viewed the act as yet
another example of taxation tyranny, precisely because it left an earlier duty on tea entering the
colonies in place, while removing the duty on tea entering England.
When three tea ships carrying East India Company tea, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and
the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to
England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to send back the cargo,
Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the so-called Boston Tea Party with about 60 members of
the radically anti-British Sons of Liberty. On December 16, 1773, the Patriots boarded the British
ships disguised as Mohawk Indians and dumped the tea chests, valued then at £18,000 (nearly
$1 million in today’s money), into the water.
Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British
property, enacted the Coercive Acts, known to colonists as the Intolerable Acts, the following year.
The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in
Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America and required
colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental
Congress to consider a united American resistance to what they saw as British oppression.

17. 1774 Intolerable
Acts
(Coercive
Acts) passed
1. Closed the Port of Boston until the
colonists paid for the destroyed tea
2. Placed the government of
Massachusetts under British control
3. British soldiers accused of murder
would stand trial in Britain, not the
colonies
4. Sent even more British troops to
enforce the new law
First Continental
Congress bans
trade;
militias
organized

18. The Intolerable Acts
“To coerce” means to force someone to do something. The British passed the Coercive Acts in reaction to the
Boston Tea Party. They hoped to force colonists to pay for the 392 barrels of tea lost and to obey British rule.
The Coercive Acts closed the port of Boston and placed the government of Massachusetts under British
military control. All local legislature and town meetings were suspended and more British troops arrived to
enforce the new laws. The acts also said all British soldiers accused of murder in the colonies, would now
stand trial and Britain instead.
Sam Adams, whose picture is here, helped to stir up colonial response to these acts. The colonists call the
acts the “Intolerable Acts” because they did not feel that they could tolerate them. The taxes they had been
battling were nothing in comparison to this harsh British crackdown on colonial rights. Although the acts
applied only to Massachusetts, the other colonies rallied to protest them, too. The colonists feared that if
such British actions continued, the rest of the colonies were in danger of losing their liberties as well. On the
day the acts went into effect, flags throughout the colonies were flow at half-mast.
Meanwhile, in the towns surrounding Boston, “minutemen” militia began to store arms and to train for
possible battle at a minute’s notice.

20. Place your graphic organizer in your spiral.
Use it and the timeline below to create your own timeline in your spiral.