8. The move to independence: the colonies in their fight to protect their liberties, the Tea Act and Boston Tea Party.

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The Tea Act was an Act of Parliament of the Parliament of Great Britain to expand the British East India Company's monopoly on the tea trade to all British Colonies, selling excess tea at a reduced price. It was passed on May 10, 1773.

The Boston Tea Party most appalled British political opinion makers of all stripes. The action united all parties in Britain against the American radicals. After the Boston tea party, Britain decided to close down the Boston Harbor until the tea was further paid for, as provided in the Boston Port Act. This was the first of the so-called Intolerable Acts, or Coercive Acts as they were called by the British, passed by Parliament in response to the Boston Tea Party. All this united many colonists even more in their frustrations against Britain, and was one of the many causes of the American Revolution.

The Act was repealed by the Taxation of Colonies Act 1778, though unable at that point to quell the on-going revolt.

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea coming into the colonies. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and other political protests often refer to it.

The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, embattled Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain. He apparently did not expect that the protestors would choose to destroy the tea rather than concede the authority of a legislature in which they were not directly represented.

The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, closed Boston's commerce until the British East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. Colonists in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.

Tea Act 1773

The Indemnity Act of 1767, which gave the East India Company a refund of the duty on tea that was re-exported to the colonies, expired in 1772. Parliament passed a new act in 1772 that reduced this refund, effectively leaving a 10% duty on tea imported into Britain. The act also restored the tea taxes within Britain that had been repealed in 1767, and left in place the three pence Townshend duty in the colonies. With this new tax burden driving up the price of British tea, sales plummeted. The company continued to import tea into Great Britain, however, amassing a huge surplus of product that no one would buy. For these and other reasons, by late 1772 the East India Company, one of Britain's most important commercial institutions, was in a serious financial crisis.

Eliminating some of the taxes was one obvious solution to the crisis. The East India Company initially sought to have the Townshend duty repealed, but the North ministry was unwilling because such an action might be interpreted as a retreat from Parliament's position that it had the right to tax the colonies. More importantly, the tax collected from the Townshend duty was used to pay the salaries of some colonial governors and judges. This was in fact the purpose of the Townshend tax: previously these officials had been paid by the colonial assemblies, but Parliament now paid their salaries to keep them dependent on the British government rather than allowing them to be accountable to the colonists.

Another possible solution for reducing the growing mound of tea in the East India Company warehouses was to sell it cheaply in Europe. This possibility was investigated, but it was determined that the tea would simply be smuggled back into Great Britain, where it would undersell the taxed product. The best market for the East India Company's surplus tea, so it seemed, was the American colonies, if a way could be found to make it cheaper than the smuggled Dutch tea.

The North ministry's solution was the Tea Act, which received the assent of King George on May 10, 1773. This act restored the East India Company's full refund on the duty for importing tea into Britain, and also permitted the company, for the first time, to export tea to the colonies on its own account. This would allow the company to reduce costs by eliminating the middlemen who bought the tea at wholesale auctions in London. Instead of selling to middlemen, the company now appointed colonial merchants to receive the tea on consignment; the consignees would in turn sell the tea for a commission. In July 1773, tea consignees were selected in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston.

The Tea Act retained the three pence Townshend duty on tea imported to the colonies. Some members of Parliament wanted to eliminate this tax, arguing that there was no reason to provoke another colonial controversy. Former Chancellor of the Exchequer William Dowdeswell, for example, warned Lord North that the Americans would not accept the tea if the Townshend duty remained. But North did not want to give up the revenue from the Townshend tax, primarily because it was used to pay the salaries of colonial officials; maintaining the right of taxing the Americans was a secondary concern. According to historian Benjamin Labaree, "A stubborn Lord North had unwittingly hammered a nail in the coffin of the old British Empire."

Even with the Townshend duty in effect, the Tea Act would allow the East India Company to sell tea more cheaply than before, undercutting the prices offered by smugglers. In 1772, legally imported Bohea, the most common variety of tea, sold for about 3 shillings (3s) per pound. After the Tea Act, colonial consignees would be able to sell it for 2 shillings per pound (2s), just under the smugglers' price of 2 shillings and 1 penny (2s 1d). Realizing that the payment of the Townshend duty was politically sensitive, the company hoped to conceal the tax by making arrangements to have it paid either in London once the tea was landed in the colonies, or have the consignees quietly pay the duties after the tea was sold. This effort to hide the tax from the colonists was unsuccessful.

9. The War of Independence (process and consequences) Why is it called the American Revolution? The Continental Congresses. Declaration of Independence (its main parts). From the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution of the US.

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) or American War of Independence, or simply Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers. The war was the result of the political American Revolution, which galvanized around the dispute between the Parliament of Great Britain and colonists opposed to the Stamp Act of 1765, which the Americans protested as unconstitutional. The Parliament insisted on its right to tax colonists; the Americans claimed their rights as Englishmen to No Taxation without Representation. The Americans formed a unifying Continental Congress and a shadow government in each colony. The American boycott of British tea led to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. London responded by ending self government in Massachusetts and putting it under the control of the army with General Thomas Gage as governor. In April of 1775, Gage sent a contingent of troops out of Boston to seize rebel arms. Local militia, known as 'minutemen,' confronted the British troops and nearly destroyed the British column. The Battles of Lexington and Concord ignited the war. Any chance of a compromise ended when the colonies declared independence and formed a new nation, the United States of America in July 1776.

France, Spain and the Dutch Republic all secretly provided supplies, ammunition and weapons to the revolutionaries starting early in 1776. After early British success, the war became a standoff. The British used their naval superiority to capture and occupy American coastal cities while the rebels largely controlled the countryside, where 90 percent of the population lived. British strategy relied on mobilizing Loyalist militia, and was never fully realized. A British invasion from Canada ended in the capture of the British army at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. That American victory persuaded France to enter the war openly in early 1778, balancing the two sides' military strength. Spain and the Dutch Republic—French allies—also went to war with Britain over the next two years, threatening an invasion of Great Britain and severely testing British military strength with campaigns in Europe. Spain's involvement culminated in the expulsion of British armies from West Florida, securing the American southern flank.

French involvement proved decisive. A French naval victory in the Chesapeake forced a second British army to surrender at the Siege of Yorktown in 1781. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris ended the war and recognized the sovereignty of the United States over the territory bounded roughly by what is now Canada to the north, Florida to the south, and the Mississippi River to the west.

The American Revolution began in 1775 as open conflict between the united thirteen colonies and Great Britain. By the Treaty of Paris that ended the war in 1783, the colonies had won their independence. While no one event can be pointed to as the actual cause of the revolution, the war began as a disagreement over the way in which Great Britain treated the colonies versus the way the colonies felt they should be treated. Americans felt they deserved all the rights of Englishmen. The British, on the other hand, felt that the colonies were created to be used in the way that best suited the crown and parliament. This conflict is embodied in one of the rallying cries of the American Revolution: No Taxation Without Representation.

   Consequences Of The War The end of the Revolutionary War brought independence for 13 American states. How Americans would use their newfound freedom was not immediately certain. Between 1776 and 1780, the states wrote new constitutions or changed their old charters to become republics.

When the alliance of the states under the Articles of Confederation proved inadequate, a convention in 1787 produced the Constitution, which remains our governmental framework. The Constitution settled many issues and formed a stronger union of the states, but it also contained contradictions that would echo through our history. Flying in the face of the Declaration of Independence's statement of human equality, the Constitution protected African-American slavery.

In the English-speaking world of 1787, few even entertained the possibility that women possessed equal political or economic rights. Much of American history after 1776 represents a struggle to extend full citizenship to white males without property, to people of color, and to women.

For Indians, the formation of the United States only increased the flow of white settlers onto their lands and led to more clashes. An acknowledgement of the Revolution's deferred promises, however, should not blind us to its far-reaching effects. The republican form of government, with all its powers grounded in the consent of the people, was practiced nowhere else in 1776.

Later revolutions in France, Hispaniola (present-day Haiti), and throughout Latin America drew inspiration from the American Revolution. Once adopted by the United States, the ideals of liberty and self-government would have future effects never imagined by the original revolutionaries.

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The Continental Congress was a convention of delegates called together from the Thirteen Colonies that became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution. The Congress met from 1774 to 1789 in three incarnations. The first call for a convention was made over issues of mounting taxation without representation in Parliament and because of the British blockade. Though at first somewhat divided on issues concerning independence and a break from Crown rule, the new Congress would come to issue a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution, and proclaim the name United States of America as the name of the new nation. It would establish a Continental Army and also have to endure a war with Britain, before fruition of an independent Constitutional government was fully realized among the American colonies.