Causes of the American Revolution

People often say the American Revolution “started” with one event, such as the Boston Tea Party. Historians see a longer chain: a series of laws, protests and arguments between 1763 and 1775, which ended with the first fighting in April 1775. In this lesson you will follow that chain, learn the ideas colonists used to explain their complaints, and meet the colonists who disagreed with one another. You will also see that no single event caused the Revolution by itself, and that the rights people argued about in the 1770s did not reach everyone. The lesson stops at Lexington and Concord. The war that followed and the Declaration of Independence have their own lessons.

Before 1763: loose rules and local self-government

In the 1700s, Britain ruled thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America. Parliament, Britain's law-making body, passed trade laws, such as the Navigation Acts. They said that colonial trade had to be carried on British ships and that certain goods had to be sold through Britain. But for many years these laws were enforced only loosely, and smuggling was common. Historians call this salutary neglect. “Salutary” means helpful, so the phrase means neglect that turned out to be helpful to the colonies.

The colonies also governed much of their daily lives themselves. Each had an elected assembly (voting was limited, as you will see below), and in New England many local decisions were made at town meetings. Many colonists came to expect that taxes would be set by their own assemblies.

Britain still held real power. In most colonies the King or a proprietor chose the governor, and the Crown could cancel colonial laws. Salutary neglect means loose enforcement of trade rules, not that Britain had no control.

A war changes the deal: the French and Indian War

From 1754 to 1763, Britain and France fought over land and power in North America, especially in the Ohio River valley and Canada. This conflict is called the French and Indian War. Native nations fought on both sides, and many colonists served in the fighting. Britain won. In the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France gave up Canada and most of its other land in North America east of the Mississippi River.

Victory brought new problems. The war had cost Britain a great deal of money, and its government debt had grown very large. Britain now ruled a much bigger area and kept soldiers in North America to defend it. British leaders reasoned that the colonies had been protected, so colonists should help pay. Many colonists answered that they had helped fight and had spent money too. Some wondered why so many soldiers were still needed now that France had lost Canada.

The two sides came out of the war wanting different things. For this reason, historians often treat the end of the war as the start of the road to the Revolution.

Western land: the Proclamation of 1763

In October 1763, King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763. It drew a line along the Appalachian Mountains and told colonists not to settle west of it. British leaders wanted to avoid more costly fighting with Native nations, who lived on that land. Earlier in 1763, several Native nations had attacked British forts in a conflict often called Pontiac's War.

Many colonists were angry, including farm families and investors who hoped to buy land in the west. The line was hard to enforce, and settlers kept crossing it. The Proclamation was not a tax. But it showed that decisions about colonial land could be made in London, and it did not end the pressure on Native land.

New laws, new taxes (1764 to 1767)

Before 1763, most British laws about the colonies were about trade. After the war, Parliament also passed laws meant to raise money.

• The Sugar Act (1764). It lowered the tax on imported molasses, but Britain began to collect the tax strictly and to punish smuggling. It was passed to raise money for Britain.
• The Stamp Act (1765). It required a stamp, showing that the tax had been paid, on printed papers such as newspapers, legal documents and playing cards. The tax reached many people, including lawyers, printers and merchants. Colonists protested. Crowds pressured the men chosen to collect the tax, and many of them resigned. Groups calling themselves the Sons of Liberty organized protests. Many colonists joined a boycott of British goods (a boycott is a refusal to buy). In October 1765, delegates from nine colonies met in New York at the Stamp Act Congress and declared that only their own elected assemblies could tax them. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766. On the same day it passed the Declaratory Act, which said that Parliament could make laws for the colonies in all cases.
• The Townshend Acts (1767). These taxed goods imported into the colonies: glass, lead, paint, paper and tea. Part of the money was meant to pay royal governors and judges, so that they would not depend on colonial assemblies for their pay. Colonists boycotted again. John Dickinson, a Pennsylvania lawyer, argued in a series of newspaper essays that Parliament could regulate trade but should not tax the colonies to raise money. In 1768, Britain sent soldiers to Boston to support customs officers. In 1770, Parliament repealed most of the Townshend taxes but kept the tax on tea.

“No taxation without representation”

This slogan sums up the colonists' main argument. The colonies had elected assemblies, but no colonist elected a member of Parliament. Colonists argued that it was an old right of British subjects to be taxed only with the consent of their elected representatives. So taxes passed by a Parliament with no colonial members seemed unfair to them.

British leaders disagreed. They said that Parliament spoke for all British subjects, wherever they lived, including people in Britain who could not vote and towns that sent no member. This idea is called virtual representation. Colonists replied that members of Parliament did not know them, were not chosen by them, and did not share their interests.

Notice what both sides agreed on in the 1760s: they were all British subjects. The argument was about what that meant.

Ideas behind the arguments

Colonists explained their complaints with ideas from the Enlightenment, a European movement of the 1600s and 1700s that stressed reason and questioned how governments should work. The English thinker John Locke wrote that people have natural rights, including life, liberty and property, that exist before any government. He argued that governments are created to protect those rights and that a government's power comes from the consent of the governed. If a government breaks that trust, Locke wrote, people may change it.

Colonists also pointed to English traditions that limited the power of kings, such as Magna Carta (1215) and the English Bill of Rights (1689).

Ideas alone did not cause the conflict. They gave colonists words and arguments, and they helped many people see a tax dispute as a question about liberty. Not every colonist agreed about what those ideas meant for the colonies.

Troops in Boston, the Boston Massacre, the Tea Act and the Tea Party (1768 to 1773)

Soldiers sent to Boston in 1768 lived among townspeople who resented them, and tension grew. On March 5, 1770, a crowd gathered near the Custom House in Boston. British soldiers fired into the crowd, and five colonists died. Witnesses disagreed about what led to it and who was to blame. Patriot writers and engravers, including Paul Revere, spread their version of the story and called it a massacre. The soldiers were put on trial in Boston. John Adams, a Patriot lawyer, defended them, and most were found not guilty.

After 1770 the conflict calmed for a few years. Then, in 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act. The British East India Company, a huge trading company in financial trouble, had piles of unsold tea. The Tea Act let the company sell tea directly in the colonies, which made its tea cheaper. The Tea Act did not add a new tax: the Townshend tax on tea was still in place. Many colonists objected anyway. They feared that buying the tea meant accepting Parliament's right to tax them, and colonial merchants feared being pushed aside by a company with special privileges.

In December 1773, protesters in Boston, some in disguise, boarded three ships and threw hundreds of chests of tea into Boston Harbor. This is the Boston Tea Party. It destroyed a great deal of property. Colonists disagreed about it: many cheered, and others, including some who opposed Parliament's taxes, thought it went too far.

Britain answers: the Coercive Acts (1774)

Parliament and the King wanted to punish Boston and make an example of it. In 1774, Parliament passed a group of laws that colonists called the Intolerable Acts and that historians usually call the Coercive Acts. They included the Boston Port Act, which closed Boston Harbor to trade until the destroyed tea was paid for, and the Massachusetts Government Act, which cut back self-government in Massachusetts. Another law in the group dealt with housing British soldiers.

Colonists outside Massachusetts saw a danger for themselves. If Parliament could close a port and cut back self-government in one colony, it might do the same to theirs. Since the early 1770s, committees of correspondence (groups that wrote letters to share news between towns and colonies) had linked colonial leaders. Now other colonies sent food and supplies to Boston, and leaders called for a meeting of the colonies.

The colonies meet: the First Continental Congress (1774)

In September and October 1774, delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies met in Philadelphia. Georgia did not send delegates. This meeting was the First Continental Congress. It did not declare independence. The delegates sent a petition to King George III asking him to fix their complaints, and they agreed on a boycott of British goods. They also agreed to meet again in May 1775 if their complaints were not answered. Many delegates still hoped to settle the dispute inside the British Empire.

April 1775: Lexington and Concord

By early 1775, British soldiers were stationed in Boston, and colonial militias (groups of ordinary citizens trained to defend their communities) were gathering weapons and gunpowder. On the night of April 18, 1775, British soldiers marched out of Boston toward Concord, Massachusetts, to seize military supplies stored there. At dawn on April 19, a small group of militia met them at Lexington, and fighting broke out. More fighting followed at Concord, and militia fired on the soldiers as they marched back to Boston. People on both sides died.

This is where the road to war ends and this lesson stops. The war that followed, and the Declaration of Independence in 1776, have their own lessons.

Several causes, and several views

Historians describe the Revolution as the result of several causes working together, not one. They include the costs of the French and Indian War, the end of salutary neglect and the new taxes, the dispute over taxation and representation, ideas about natural rights and consent, and clashes over trade and western land. Many historians name the argument over Parliament's right to tax the colonies as one major cause. But they weigh the causes differently, and no single event, such as the Tea Party, explains everything.

It helps to separate long-term conditions (such as salutary neglect and the war debt) from triggers (such as the Tea Act or the fighting at Lexington). It also helps to remember hindsight. People at the time did not know a war was coming. In 1765, and even in 1774, most colonists who protested said they were British subjects asking for their rights, not asking for independence.

Colonists were divided. Patriots supported resistance to British policies. Loyalists stayed loyal to the Crown. Many colonists were undecided or neutral, or simply tried to get through the years without taking sides. Loyalists had many reasons: loyalty to the King, jobs or business ties to Britain, a belief that Parliament was the lawful government, or fear that resistance would lead to disorder and war. Historians cannot give exact numbers for each group, and people sometimes changed their minds.

Who was included in “representation”?

In the 1770s, rights and representation did not reach everyone. In most colonies only free men who owned enough property could vote, so many men and nearly all women had no vote. Enslaved people had no vote and no freedom. Native nations were separate peoples with their own governments, and British and colonial decisions about land and trade affected them without their consent.

Some of the colonists who spoke most strongly about liberty held other people in slavery, and people at the time noticed the contradiction. In the 1770s, some enslaved people in Massachusetts petitioned the legislature for their freedom. Later, many groups who had been left out used the ideas of natural rights and consent to argue for a wider meaning of liberty. That is a later story. It shows that the words of the 1770s meant different things to different people.