Background: a war that changed the colonies
By the mid-1700s, Britain held thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America. They had their own elected assemblies and a good deal of day-to-day self-government. The colonies grew out of the earlier Age of Exploration and the settlement that followed it, and by this time were home to a fast-growing population.
The Seven Years’ War (1754-1763), known in North America as the French and Indian War, ended with Britain gaining French territory in Canada and east of the Mississippi. Victory left Britain with large debts and new lands to administer. Many in London thought the colonists should help pay for their defense. Many colonists thought they were being asked to pay without having a voice in Parliament.
Rising tensions, 1763-1773
The Proclamation of 1763 limited colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, which angered some settlers and land speculators. Parliament then passed a series of revenue measures. The Stamp Act of 1765 taxed printed materials, and protests across the colonies, along with boycotts of British goods, led to its repeal in 1766. At the same time, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act, asserting its right to legislate for the colonies.
Further duties, the Townshend Acts of 1767, brought more protest. British troops were stationed in Boston, and in March 1770 soldiers fired on a crowd, killing five people in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Colonial writers and speakers used the slogan “no taxation without representation,” and pamphlets and newspapers, helped by the spread of the printing press, carried arguments quickly from colony to colony.
Crisis, 1773-1775
The Tea Act of 1773 changed the way tea was sold and did not raise the tax, but many colonists saw it as a further assertion of Parliament’s power. In December 1773, protesters in Boston dumped tea from ships into the harbor. Britain responded in 1774 with measures the colonists called the Intolerable Acts, which closed Boston’s port and curbed Massachusetts’s self-government.
Delegates from most colonies met at the First Continental Congress in September 1774 and organized a boycott. In April 1775, British troops marching to seize military supplies clashed with colonial militia at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. This is generally taken as the start of the war.
From rebellion to independence, 1775-1776
The Second Continental Congress met in May 1775 and named George Washington to command a new Continental Army. At first, many colonists still sought to settle matters within the British empire. Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, published in January 1776, argued directly for independence and was widely read. On July 2, 1776, Congress voted for independence, and on July 4 it approved the Declaration of Independence, drafted mainly by Thomas Jefferson. Drawing on Enlightenment ideas that grew in part from the Scientific Revolution’s emphasis on reason, it stated that governments rest on the consent of the governed. The words “all men are created equal” sat alongside the continued practice of slavery, a contradiction noted at the time and ever since.
The war, 1776-1781
The war was long and uncertain. The British took New York City in 1776, and the Continental Army suffered several defeats but survived. Washington’s crossing of the Delaware and victory at Trenton in December 1776 raised morale. The American victory at Saratoga in October 1777 is widely seen as a turning point because it helped persuade France to ally with the Americans in 1778. French money, ships and troops then became important. Spain and the Netherlands also joined the war against Britain.
Fighting later shifted to the southern colonies. In 1781, a combined American and French force, supported by the French fleet, besieged a British army under Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. Cornwallis surrendered in October 1781. Combat did not end at once, but Britain’s will to continue the war weakened.
Colonial society was divided. Many colonists were Loyalists who remained loyal to the Crown, and many others tried to stay neutral. Enslaved people and Native nations made their own choices, often based on which side seemed more likely to offer freedom or protect their lands. Historians continue to study how varied those choices were.
Peace and a new government
The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, recognized American independence and set boundaries for the new country. The first national government, under the Articles of Confederation (ratified in 1781), proved weak, with limited power to tax. A convention in Philadelphia in 1787 drafted the Constitution, which took effect after ratification in 1788, and the Bill of Rights was added in 1791.
Wider effects
The Revolution inspired later movements for self-government, and the French Revolution, which began in 1789, was influenced in part by its example, though the two followed very different paths. For the United States, independence opened the way to westward expansion, which came at the expense of Native nations. In later decades, the country also became a center of the Industrial Revolution.
Historians still debate how revolutionary the events were: whether they were mainly a conservative defense of existing colonial rights, or a deeper change in political life. Both views have evidence behind them, and the period remains a major subject of research.