1. Tea Act of 1773
To ease tensions in the colonies, Parliament repealed taxes on imported goods in the Townshend Acts, except tea from the East India Company. Tea was an extremely popular colonial drink, but many colonists were smuggling tea into the colonies in order to avoid the tax. The East India Company, a British tea company, was near bankruptcy. Parliament hoped they could help the East India Company by making the colonists only buy tea from them.

2. French & Indian War
The war began in North America as a result of ongoing British-American expansion into the Ohio River Valley, which was also claimed by France.
The French, determined to secure the territory against British/colonial traders and land speculators, built a chain of forts and allied with Native Americans in the area. The British ministry ordered colonial governors to repel the French advance, "by force" if necessary.

3. Committees of Correspondence & the Sons/Daughters of Liberty
There were widespread protests against the Stamp Act. The Massachusetts colonial Assembly created a Committee of Correspondence to efficiently communicate with the other colonies on protests and boycotts of British goods. New York invited the other colonies to send delegates to a meeting and organized the Stamp Act Congress to draft formal petitions of protest to Parliament. In Boston, Samuel Adams organized the Sons of Liberty to protest the law, sometimes violently.

4. The Navigation Acts: End of Salutary Neglect
Before the French & Indian War, Britain had passed laws that controlled and restricted colonial trade so that colonists would buy and sell goods only with Britain. However, the British had not enforced these laws very strictly before the war and the colonists either smuggled or got used to trading with other countries.
After the war, the British increasingly saw the colonies as a source of money to pay off debts from the French and Indian War. The British started to strictly enforce their mercantile laws (known as the Navigation Acts) that restricted colonial trade.

5. Causes of the Revolution: Teenage Troubles Analogy Game
You have a series of scenarios and a set of British policies and events after the French & Indian War. Match each scenario to the historic event it represents. The first person or team to get them all correct wins!

6. The Townshend Acts
By 1767, colonial protests led the British to repeal the Stamp Act. In its place the British passed the Townshend Acts, which taxed “luxury” goods like china, glass, lead, paint, paper and tea. The British sent troops to America to enforce the unpopular new laws, further heightening tensions between Great Britain and the American colonies. In response, the colonists boycotted (refused to buy) British goods.

7. The Boston Tea Party--1773
When British officials attempted to force colonists to pay the tea tax, the Sons of Liberty organized a group of men, disguised as Native Americans, who snuck onto British East India Ships delivering tea and dumped the tea (90,000 tons of it) into the harbor. It would cost nearly $1,000,000 today.

8. Stamp Act of 1765
To pay the cost of stationing troops and defending the colonies after the French and Indian War, Parliament passed the Stamp Act. A tax was collected on every document or newspaper printed or used in the colonies. Previously only colonial governments could pass tax laws. It was the first and only tax that the individual colonists had to pay themselves. British Prime Minister Grenville felt it was fair because British citizens already paid taxes that were similar.

9. Intolerable/Coercive Acts 1774
Calami-tea
The British called their responsive measures to the Boston Tea Party the COERCIVE ACTS. Boston Harbor was closed to trade until the owners of the tea were repaid. Only food and firewood were permitted into the port. Town meetings were banned, and the authority of the royal governor was increased.
To add insult to injury, General Gage, the British commander of North American forces, was appointed governor of Massachusetts. British troops and officials would now be tried outside Massachusetts for crimes of murder.

10. Quartering Act-1765
After the French and Indian War, the British government decided troops needed to remain in the colonies for additional defense. However, it was expensive to maintain troops in the colonies. Parliament therefore passed the Quartering Act of 1765, requiring colonial assemblies to provide housing, food and drink to British troops stationed in their towns with the purpose of improving living conditions and decreasing the cost to the crown.

11. Proclamation of 1763
As a result of the Seven Years’ War, Native Americans found it increasingly difficult to slow the advance of white settlers. In 1763, Chief Pontiac led a rebellion against colonists.
In response, Parliament passed the Proclamation of 1763 in an attempt to prevent any more American colonists from settling beyond the Appalachian Mountains. They hoped this would prevent future conflict between colonists and Native Americans.

12. Lexington & Concord 1775
Sensing that they could be fighting a war soon, colonial leaders stored weapons at a city called Concord in Massachusetts. British General Gage panned to send troops to confiscate the weapons.
But spies and friends of the Americans leaked word of Gage's plan, allowing Paul Revere and William Dawes to warn colonists that the British were coming. The colonial patriots organized a militia and met the British troops at the town of Lexington, where the first shots of the war were fired.

13. First Continental Congress--1774
In 1774, Committees of Correspondence called for a secret meeting of the colonies in Philadelphia. The the first Continental Congress was formed to organize resistance to British policies and try to negotiate to avoid war.

14. The Declaratory Act
The Declaratory Act was a measure issued by British Parliament asserting its authority to make laws binding the colonists “in all cases whatsoever” including the right to tax. The Declaratory Act was a reaction of British Parliament to the failure of the Stamp Act. They did not want to give up on the principle of imperial taxation, asserting its legal right to tax colonies.
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. The colonies did not dispute the notion of Parliamentary supremacy over the law. But the ability to tax without representation was another matter.

15. Sugar Act (1764)
The American Revenue Act of 1764, so called Sugar Act, was a law that attempted to curb the smuggling of sugar and molasses in the colonies by reducing the previous tax rate and enforcing the collection of duties. Colonists had been buying sugar from the French to avoid paying a high tax on British sugar. The British therefore lowered their sugar tax to make their sugar cheaper, thinking it would persuade the colonists to stop buying illegally from the French.

16. Writs of Assistance (1760)
In order to try to stop smuggling, the British government approves writs of assistance, allowing British officials to search homes and ships for smuggled goods without a warrant.

17. Whose Rebellion?
Think about the nature of each tax/policy we just discussed
What was being taxed or regulated?
Who would these policies affect the most?
Were colonists justified in rebelling?