sign in sign up
<<
Home , Tea Act, Townshend Acts

TOWNSHEND ACTS

A series of measures introduced into the English Parliament by Chancellor in 1767, the imposed taxes on glass, lead, paints, paper and imported into the colonies. Townshend hoped the acts would finance British expenses in the colonies, but many Americans viewed the taxation as an abuse of power. Colonists had argued against Parliament’s power to impose the Stamp Act on the ground that it was a direct tax, British leaders convinced themselves that the colonists would accept a so-called indirect tax such as import taxes, a wishful misunderstanding of colonial opinion. In April 1770, Parliament repealed all the Townshend duties except the tax on tea, which it retained in order to assert its right to tax the colonies. This led to a sort of truce, which lasted until the burning of the British patrol boat Gaspee in 1772. In the years before the Revolution, resistance to the tea tax became a symbol of American patriotism.

TEA ACT

The of 1773 was one of several measures imposed on the American colonists by the heavily indebted British government in the decade leading up to the American War (1775-83). The act’s main purpose was not to raise revenue from the colonies, but to bail out the struggling , a key actor in the British economy. The British government granted the company a monopoly on the importation and sale of tea in the colonies. The colonists had never accepted the constitutionality of the tax on tea, and the Tea Act reawakened their opposition to it. Their resistance culminated in the Tea Party on , 1773, in which colonists boarded East India Company ships and dumped their loads of tea overboard. Parliament responded with a series of harsh measures intended to stifle colonial resistance to British rule; two years later, the war began.

STAMP ACT

The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British government. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents and products in the colonies, came at a time when the was deep in debt from the (aka the Seven Years War) and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source. Arguing that only their own colonial representative assemblies could tax them, the colonists insisted that the act was unconstitutional, and they resorted to mob violence to intimidate stamp collectors into resigning. They would use bullying techniques and burn effigies to show their lack of support. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766. The issues of taxation and representation raised by the Stamp Act strained relations with the colonies to the point that, 10 years later, the colonists rose in armed rebellion against the British.

INTOLERABLE ACT

The Intolerable Act was the American’s name for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the . They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor. In Great Britain, these laws were referred to as the Coercive Acts. There were several parts to this act. The first part of the Act closed the port of Boston until the East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea and until the king was satisfied that order had been restored. Colonists objected that the Port Act punished all of Boston rather than just the individuals who had destroyed the tea, and that they were being punished without having been given an opportunity to testify in their own defense. The second part provoked even more outrage than the first because it literally altered the government of Massachusetts to bring it under control of the British government. Under the terms of the Act, almost all positions in the colonial government were to be appointed by the governor, parliament, or king. The act also severely limited the activities of town meetings in Massachusetts to one meeting a year, unless the Governor called for one. Colonists outside Massachusetts feared that their governments could now also be changed by Parliament.

SUGAR ACT

This 1764 Act that put a three-cent tax on foreign refined sugar and increased taxes on coffee, indigo, and certain kinds of wine. It banned importation of rum and French wines. The levied such high taxes on refined sugar and molasses that was made and then imported from French and Dutch sources in the Caribbean, that it became unaffordable to buy it from them. The act thus granted a virtual monopoly of the American sugar market to the British West Indies sugar planters. These taxes affected only a certain part of the population, but the merchants it did affect were very vocal about their dislike of the law. The taxes were enacted (or raised) without the consent of the colonists. This became the point of contention for the colonists. This was one of the first instances in which colonists wanted a say in how much they were taxed.

QUARTERING ACT

British officers who had fought in the French and Indian War found it hard to persuade colonial assemblies to pay for quartering and provisioning of their troops. Lieutenant General , Commander in Chief of British North American Forces, asked Parliament to do something about it. Many colonies had supplied the troops with provisions during wartime, but this issue was now being debated during peacetime. The Quartering Act of 1765 went way beyond what Thomas Gage had requested. The law stated that Great Britain would house its soldiers in American barracks and public houses. And if the soldiers outnumbered colonial housing, they would be quartered in inns, alehouses, barns, other buildings, etc. Protest erupted, especially in New York. All other colonies, with the exception of Pennsylvania, refused to comply with the Quartering Act.

DECLARATORY ACT

The was passed at the same time as the repeal of the Stamp Act. Its purpose was to reaffirm parliament’s authority to pass any colonial legislation it saw fit. The law stated that Parliament could make laws for the colonies just like it did for the people of Great Britain. Colonists during the Stamp Act protests had argued that only local colonial governments could make decisions for them. The purpose of this act was to put an end to this question once and for all. It clearly stated that parliament would make all decisions in all cases for the colonies. The Act also hinted that more acts might be coming which left many colonist feeling uneasy, but widespread protests for this act never occurred.

Proclamation of 1763

When French-allied Native Americans learned they had lost the French and Indian War, and their land was to be handed over to Great Britain, several tribes joined together to push the British out. They were led by a chief named Pontiac. He was not successful in driving out the British from their new land, but a war fatigued and cash strapped Britain wanted nothing to do with anymore fighting of any kind. Therefore, the Proclamation of 1763 stated that no colonist could settle in the area west of the Appalachian Mountains. Colonists were outraged because they just fought a war to win that exact same land. Many colonists had already purchased land in the area and were inclined to ignore the proclamation. Settlers on the far side of the line could have been arrested and forcefully removed from the area.