| Term | Definition |
|---|
| mercantilism | This economic theory advocated a favorable balance of trade to guarantee the economic self-sufficiency of the British empire and the growth of its wealth and power. Supporters of this theory advocated possession of colonies as places where the mother country could acquire raw materials not available at home. |
| Navigation Acts | These laws were passed by Parliament to implement mercantilistic assumptions about trade. They were intended to regulate the flow of goods in imperial commerce to the greater benefit of the mother county. One of these laws, for example, called for imperial trade to be conducted using English or colonial ships with mainly English crews. Another law created vice-admiralty courts in the colonies. |
| enumerated articles | These were specific goods, including sugar, cotton, and tobacco, that, under the Navigation Act of 1660, colonists could ship only to British ports. |
| salutary neglect | British colonial policy that relaxed supervision of internal colonial affairs by royal bureacrats contributed significantly to the rise of American self government |
| Great Awakening | This term describes the widespread evangelical revival movement of the 1740s and 1750s. Sparked by the tour of the English evangelical minister George Whitefield, revival divided congregations and weakened the authority of established churches in the colonies. |
| George Whitfield | He was an Anglican minister with great oratorical skills. His emotion-charged sermons were a centerpiece of the Great Awakening in the American colonies in the 1740s. |
| New Lights | This term applies to those who embraced the revivals that spread through the colonies during the Great Awakening as opposd who supported more traditional services and congregations. |
| Jonathan Edwards | This theologian was an American revivalist of the Great Awakening. He was both deeply pious and passionately devoted to intellectual pursuits. His most popular sermon titled, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," appealed to thousands of re-awakened Christians. |
| Enlightenment | This was an intellectual movement of the eighteenth century that celebrated human reasoning powers. Prominent thinkers of this time emphasized the role of human reason in understanding the world and directing its events. Their ideas placed less emphasis on God's role in ordering worldly affairs. This rationalism had a major impact on American political thought. |
| Iroquois Confederacy | This group was the dominant Native American military power in North America during the 18th century. The five separate nations composing this group were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. Their peaceful coexistence allowed the their to benefit economically from trade with both the English and the French. They worked with colonial leaders like Ben Franklin in the mid-18th century exchanging political and social ideas. But the American Revolution itself was a catastrophe for this group. The dispute separated the Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, who sided with the British, from the Oneidas and Tuscaroras who fought with the patriots. |
| French and Indian War | This conflict had its focal point in North America and pitted the French and their Native American allies against the English and their Native American allies. Althought it lasted from 1754-1763, the event was known in Europe as the Seven Years' War. This struggle drove the French from North America. |
| George Washington | His first military action occurred on the frontier in 1754. During a campaign to dislodge French and Indian troops in the Ohio Valley, his troops were overwhelmed at Fort Necessity by a larger and better positioned French and Indian force. Released by the French, he later becme an aide to British General Edward Braddock. By 1758, he participated in the expedition that prompted French evacuation of Fort Duquesne, and British establishment of Pittsburgh. |
| William Pitt | His appointment in 1757 as British prime minister was perhaps the turning point in the French and Indian War. He recognized the potential value of North America so he poured the full resources of the British Treasury onto the contest and dramatically increased the number of British forces fighting in North America. |
| Treaty of Paris (1763) | This treaty ended the French and Indian War (Great War for the Empire) in 1763. France abandoned nearly all its territorial claims in North America to Great Britain. |
| Pontiac's Rebellion | This indian uprising began in 1763 when a grand council of Potawatomis, Hurons Ottawas was called to rise up against the British and American colonials and drive them back across the mountains. The British sent 15 regiments to restore order, but the war had been costly for the white settlements that were affected: an estimated 2,000 civilians and some 400 soldiers died during the conflict. To prevent future conflict with the indians, the British restricted American settlement west of the Appalachian mountains. |
| Proclamation of 1763 | In an effort to avoid any future conflict with the Native Americans after the French and Indian War, the British issued this proclamation--that no |
| George Grenville | He became the Prime Minister of England in 1763. He was eager to reduce government spending, and he proposed the Sugar and Stamp acts to raise revenue in the colonies to defray the expenses of the French and Indian War and maintain Britain's expanded empire in America. |
| Sugar Act | This 1764 Act initiated prime minister George Grenville's plan to place tariffs on some colonial imports as a means of raising revenue needed to finance England's expanded North American empire. It also called for more strict enforcement of the Navigation Acts. The end of "salutary neglect" and the effort to curb smuggling led to many of the early colonial protests against British interference in colonial affairs. |
| James Otis | From 1761 to 1769, he was a political leader of Massachusetts and the chief publicist of the American cause. His pamphlets explaining the patriot perspective on the relationship between the American colonies and England laid the broad theoretical groundwork for American independence. In 1764 he wrote that everyone should be "free from all taxes but what he consents to in person, or by his representative." |
| Virtual Representation | This theory, used by Prime Minister Grenville to rebut colonial cries of "taxation without representation" stated that every member of Parliament stood for the interests of every British subject in the empire. |
| No Taxation without Representation | This is a principle dating back to the Magna Carta that means if citizens are not represented in the government, then the government should not have the authority to tax them. The American colonists cited this principle when they opposed the authority of the British Parliament to tax them. |
| Stamp Act | This 1765 Act of Parliament was the first purely direct (revenue) tax Parliament imposed on the colonies. It was an excise tax on printed matter, including legal documents, publications, and playing cards, and the revenue produced was supposed to defray expenses for defending the colonies. Americans opposed it as "taxation without representation" and prevented its enforcement; Parliament repealed it a year after its enactment. |
| Stamp Act Congress | This meeting took place in New York City in 1765 to formulate a response to the ___ Act. The delegates composed a list of grievances, and they petitioned King George III and Parliament to repeal the hated act. This meeting marked the beginnings of cooperation between the 13 colonies that ultimately led to a full movement for independence. |
| Sons of Liberty | Wealthy merchants John Hancock and Samuel Adams formed this radical patriot organization in Boston in 1765. This group engaged in direct action against British rule, more or less covertly. In 1773, for example, they organized and executed the Boston Tea Party. Throughout the revolutionary period, they continued to fight, eventually disbanding in 1783 with the end of the war. |
| Declaratory Act | Parliament passed this act in 1766 when it repealed the Stamp Act. It stated that the colonies were entirely subordinate to Parliament's authority, and that Parliament had the authority to legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." |
| Townshend Acts | These acts of Parliament, passed in 1767, imposed duties on colonial tea, lead, paint, paper, and glass. Designed to take advantage of the supposed American distinction between internal and external taxes, these duties were to help support government in America. The act prompted a successful colonial nonimportation movement. Parliament gradually rescinded the tax on all of the items enumerated in the laws except tea. The episode served as another important step in the coming of the American Revolution. |
| Admiralty Courts | Starting with the Proclamation of 1763, these courts were given jurisdiction over a number of laws affecting the colonies. The jurisdiction was expanded in later acts of the Parliament, such as the Stamp Act of 1765. The colonists' objections were based on several factors, most notably that there was no trial by jury, and evidence standards were weaker than in criminal courts. |
| Massachusetts Circular Letter | The work primarily of Boston radical Samuel Adams, this was a plea to all colonial assemblies to unite in their protests against the hated Townshend Acts (1767). The British government viewed the letter as a direct challenge to Parliament's authority to rule the colonies ended the legislative session. Patriots in ___ used the episode to heighten colonial fears over the British government's lack of respect for colonial rights. |
| John Dickinson | In the years leading up to the Revolution, his writings were widely read in both America and England and he gained a reputation as the "penman of the Revolution." Essays like his "Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer" helped to define American grievances. He was a member of the First and Second Continental Congresses and he helped to write the Articles of Confederation. |
| Boston Massacre | This violent confrontation between British troops and a Boston mob occurred on March 5, 1770. Five citizens were killed when the troops fired on the crowd that had been harassing them. The incident inflamed anti-British sentiment in the colony. |
| Committees of Correspondence | Colonial radicals formed these groups in 1772 in order to step up communications among the colonies, and to plan joint action in case of trouble. Their organization was a key step in the direction of establishing an organized colony-wide resistance movement. |
| Boston Tea Party | In 1773, patriot colonists led by the Sons of Liberty protested the Tea Act and the monopoly granted to the British East India Company by boarding three British ships in Boston Harbor and destroying 342 chests of Britsh Tea. |
| Coercive Acts | Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party by passing these acts in 1774. They intended to punish Boston and Massachusetts generally for the crime committed by a few individuals. Colonists called these the Intolerable Acts. |
| First Continental Congress | Delegates from twelve colonies attended this meeting in Philadelphia in 1774. The delegates denied Parliament's authority to legislate for the colonies, adopted the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, created a Continental Association to enforce a boycott, and endorsed a call to take up arms. |
| Joseph Galloway | This influential politician in colonial Pennsylvania served in the First Continental Congress in 1774. In an effort to defuse the growing political crisis, he proposed a plan of imperial union with Great Britain in which the British Parliament and a Colonial Congress would both have to approve colonial legislation. But as Americans grew more radical and pushed for independence, the congress as a whole rejected his compromise proposal by a vote of six colonies to five. |
| Continental Association | In 1774, the First Continental Congress called for the boycott of British goods and the stopping of exports to England. This organization was created to enforce these measures. Local committees were established to enforce the provisions of the association. |
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