In order to reduce the staggering debt against the British government, Parliament enacted several laws to increase the taxes throughout the empire. The Navigation Acts, which were originally passed in 1651, stipulated that any goods imported or exported by British colonies in Africa, Asia, or America be shipped on vessels constructed by English shipbuilders and sailed by crews that were 75 percent English. Goods imported from the colonies into England also had to arrive on English vessels. Goods from foreign countries were restricted to vessels from the exporting nation or to English ships. Over the course of time, many of the colonists began to disregard these laws. It was revealed to British authorities that colonial merchants were trading with France and other countries, even while Great Britain was at war with them.

Parliament and King George decided that the lightly-taxed colonists should shoulder more of the empire's defense costs and the Navigation Acts were to be strictly enforced. Soon thereafter, in March 1765, Parliament passed the first of many acts to collect more revenue. The STAMP ACT, as it was called, required the colonists to purchase and use specially stamped (water-marked) paper for all official documents, deeds, mortgages, newspapers, and pamphlets. Violators would be prosecuted in vice-admiralty courts, without juries. Revenues derived from the act were intended to pay part of the cost of maintaining a permanent force of 10,000 British troops to prevent hostilities between the colonists and the Indians of the western frontiers.

The Stamp Act provoked almost unanimous opposition among the colonists, who regarded it as a violation of their rights. They believed in a federal theory of empire that divided authority between the colonies and Great Britain. From their beginnings, the colonial assemblies had modeled themselves on Parliament and had legislated internal matters, including raising taxes and armies, and overseeing the judiciary. They felt that in practice, Britain was responsible for external matters such as declaring war and peace, presiding over foreign affairs, and regulating trade, Indian affairs and the post office. To the colonists, the Stamp Act violated the right of English subjects not to be taxed without represenation; it undermined the independence of their colonial assemblies; and it appeared to be one step in a plot to deprive them of their liberty.

Storms of protest arose against the Stamp Act. In the months before November 1765, when the act would go into effect, riots organized by the Sons of Liberty broke out in colonial cities and prevented British-appointed stamp distributors from assuming their posts. Colonial assemblies passed resolves denouncing the Stamp Act and petitioned Parliament requesting its repeal. To add strength the formal protest, American merchants banded together in nonimportation agreements, pledging not to buy British goods. This colonial boycott was so effective that commerce between Great Britain and America came to a standstill. In October 1765 delegates from nine colonies met in New York City in the Stamp Act Congress and petitioned Parliament and the king concerning colonial grievances. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in March 1766, yielding not to the colonists' constitutional objections to taxation, but to the demands of economically depressed British merchants.

Repeal of the Stamp Acts left Britain's financial problems unresolved. Parliament had not given up the right to tax the colonies and in 1767, at the urging of Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend, passed the TOWNSHEND ACTS, which imposed taxes on lead, glass, tea, paint and paper that Americans imported from Britain. In an effort to strengthen its own authority and the power of royal colonial officials, Parliament, at Townshend's request, also created the American Board of Customs Commissioners whose member would strictly enforce the Navigation Acts. Revenue raised by the new tariffs would be used to free royal officials from financial dependence on colonial assemblies, thus further encroaching on colonial autonomy.

Once again the colonists protested vigorously. In December 1767, John Dickinson, a Philadelphia lawyer, published 12 popular essays that reiterated the colonists' denial of Parliament's right to tax them. The Sons of Liberty organized protests against customs officials, merchants entered into nonimportation agreements, and the Daughters of Liberty advocated the nonconsumption of products, such as tea, taxed by the Townshend Acts. The Massachusetts legislature sent the other colonies a circular letter condemning the Townshend Acts and calling for a united American resistance. British officials then ordered the dissolution of the Massachusetts General Court if it failed to withdraw its circular letter; the court refused, by a vote of 92-17, and was summarily dismissed. The other colonial assemblies, which were initially reluctant to protest the acts, now defiantly signed the circular letter, outraged at British interference with a colonial legistlature.

Once again, British actions united Americans in protest. The Board of Customs Commissioners extorted money from colonial merchants and used flimsy excuses to justify seizing American vessels and impressing sailors. These actions heightened tensions, which exploded on June 21, 1768, when customs officials seixed Boston merchant John Hancock's sloop, Liberty. Thousands of Bostonians rioted, threatening the customs commissioners' lives and forcing them to flee the city. When news of the Liberty riot reached London, four regiments of British army troops - some 400 soldiers - were sent to Boston to protect the commissioners.

The contempt of British troops for the colonists, combined with the soldiers' moonlighting activities that deprived Boston laborers of jobs, inevitably led to violence. In March 1770, a riot occured between British troops and Boston citizens, who jeered and taunted the soldiers. The troops fired into the mob, killing five people. The Boston Massacre, as the incident has been called, aroused great colonial resentment and this anger soon boiled over when Parliament passed another set of laws.

While the Prime Minister capitulated to the colonial economic boycotts and repealed the Townshend Acts, he retained the tax on tea. In 1773, Parliament passed the TEA ACT, to rescue the British East India company from bankruptcy. This act reduced the tax on tea shipped to the colonies so that the company could sell it in America at a price lower than that of smuggled tea. The colonists saw through this manuever and refused to buy the tea, instead choosing to drink coffee. They viewed the Tea Act as another violation of their right not to be taxed without representation. In Philadelphia and New York city, the colonists' refused to let the tea be unloaded from the ships. So the East India company sent the tea to Boston. The Sons of Liberty proceeded to dump the cargoes of tea into Boston Harbor, disguised as indians. This moment would go down in history as the Boston Tea Party.

In retaliation, Parliament in 1774 passed a series of laws called the Coercive Acts, designed to punish the province of Massachusetts and demostrate Parliament's sovereignty. These were dubbed the INTOLERABLE ACTS by the colonists. The Boston Port Act closed that city's port to trade until its citizens compensated the East India Company for the destroyed tea. The Massachusetts Government Act altered the colony's charter by permitting the Crown rather than the House of Representatives to appoint the Governor's Council and by restricting town meetings to one a year and only to elect town officials. The Impartial Administration of Justice Act allowed a royal official or soldier accused of a capital crime in Massachusetts to be tried in England, where he would not have to face a hostile colonial jury. The Quartering Act allowed the housing of British troops in uninhabited private buildings or barns. To oversee the enforcement of the Coercive Acts, Parliament appointed as governor of Massachusetts, Lt. Gen. Thomas Gage, commander of the British Army in North America.

Rather than seeing Parliament's actions, from Britain's point of view, as sensible measures to centralize British authority in America or as legitimate efforts to share the expense of running an empire, many colonists saw in the Coercive Acts another attempt to deny them their rights as English subjects, subvert their colonial assemblies, and fuse military and civilian authority.

An article from Funk & Wagnalls® New Encyclopedia. © 2005 World Almanac Education Group. A WRC Media Company. All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted by written agreement, uses of the work inconsistent with U.S. and applicable foreign copyright and related laws are prohibited.