American Revolutionary History

The American Revolution was a political upheaval that took place between 1765 and 1783 during which rebel colonists in the Thirteen American Colonies rejected the British monarchy and aristocracy, overthrew the authority of Great Britain, and founded the United States of America.

Starting in 1765, members of American colonial society rejected the authority of the British Parliament to tax them and resisted renewed British attempts to collect duties on goods such as sugar and molasses that for many years had gone uncollected through widespread smuggling by colonists.[1] During the following decade, protests by rebellious colonists—known as patriots—continued to escalate, as in the Boston Tea Party in 1773 during which patriots destroyed a consignment of taxed English tea whose price had been reduced to combat smuggling.[2] The British responded by imposing punitive laws—the Coercive Acts—on Massachusetts in 1774 until the tea had been paid for, following which Patriots in the other colonies rallied behind Massachusetts. In late 1774 the Patriots set up their own alternative government to better coordinate their resistance efforts against Britain, while other colonists, known as loyalists, preferred to remain subjects of the British Crown. For some who identified themselves with the Patriot cause, particularly colonial merchants in Virginia, a break with Britain offered a chance to repudiate long-standing debts to British creditors.