1. The Age of Revolutions
An Introduction

2. Brief Timeline 1756-1763 French and Indian War
1765 Stamp Act; Stamp Act Congress
1766 Repeal of Stamp Act
1767 Townsend Acts
1770 Boston Massacre
1773 Tea Act; Boston Tea P.
1774 Coercive Acts
1775 Lexington and Concord
1776 Thomas Paine’s Common Sense; Continental Congress Declares Independence

3. Brief Timeline
1776 Britain takes NYC; Gen. Wash. victory at Trenton; New State Constitutions
1777 Saratoga, Am. victory
1778 Am.-French alliance
1780 Kings Mountain (Am.)
1781 Brits turned back at Cowpens and Guilford; Yorktown (Am.-Fr.); Articles of Confederation ratified
1783 Treaty of Paris
1787 Constitutional Conv.
1789 Washington inaugurated

5. Britain’s Mercantile Empire
An Uneven Exchange
Raw Materials (Furs, Fish, Grains, Timber, Sugar, Tobacco, Indigo, Tar)
Manufactured
Goods at High and Taxed Prices
Emigrants: Often Poor, Unemployed, or Prisoners
Labor

6. Rising Tensions
From “A wise and salutary neglect” under Robert Walpole (Pr. Min ) to tightened control under George III (ruled )
A habit of self-government through elected legislative assemblies versus lack of representation in England
Surveillance state created by military presence and exacerbated by Quartering Act of 1765

7. Series of tax hikes
1764 Sugar Act, slashed taxes on sugar but imposed new tax on wine, coffee, and spices
1765 Stamp Act. Only official ‘stamped’ paper could be used, even if manufactured in colonies. Repealed 1766.
1766 Townshend Acts, taxed glass, lead, paint, paper, tea. Used revenue to pay royal governors, disrupting balance of power in colonies.

8. Why tax the colonies?
To pay off the Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War)
To pay for military presence in colonies
To even out disparity between what British residents paid in taxes and what colonists paid

9. Colonial Responses
Nonimportation agreements (aka boycott of British cloth and tea). Instead:
Spinning bees to create homespun
Liberty Tea
Major mode of political dissent, largely enacted by women
The “industry and frugality of American ladies” enabled “the political salvation of a whole continent.” Boston Evening Post, 1769

11. Conflict Escalates
Sam Adams and James Otis Jr. circulate letter against ‘taxation without representation’.
Violent incidents, such as Battle at Golden Hill, 1770
Boston Massacre, 1770, first casualties of Revolution

12. The Boston Massacre

13. 1772 Committee of Correspondence
Conflict Escalates
1772 Committee of Correspondence
1773 Boston Tea Party
1774 First Continental
Congress
1775 Lexington
and Concord
Then...

14. John Trumbull, Signing of the Declaration of Independence

15. Additional Resources
America: A Narrative History textbook (borrow from Ms. Conrad)
Revolutions podcast, episodes
PBS The American Experience episodes pre-1800
billofrightsinstitute.org/foundingdocuments/
America The Story of Us (History channel) episode on American Revolution