road to revolution Flashcards
What is Mercantilism?
Economic system where colonies exist to benefit the mother country
How does Mercantilism affect the colonies?
Colonies are required to trade raw materials/natural resources with their mother country and are also a market for their finished products
What are the Navigation Acts?
Laws made to control trade with the American colonies- requiring the colonies to sell their raw materials to England first
Why did England create the Navigation Act?
England will get rich by buying the raw materials cheap and using them to make expensive finished products to sell
What were the causes of the French and Indian War?
England and France were fighting over control of North America (Ohio River Valley)
Fur trade and Mississippi River
Who fought the French and Indian War? List the advantages and disadvantages both parties had?
British: Larger population, and they have troops in the country.
French and most other Native Americans (except Iroquois):
Had forts
All under same governor
Had more help from Native American
Why didn’t Native American tribes like the British colonists?
British colonists cut down forests to build homes and make farms
Destroys Native American hunting grounds - forcing them to leave
What was the purpose of Benjamin Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union?
To unite the 13 colonies for common defense in French and Indian War
What did the Treaty of Paris of 1763 say?
Ended French power in North America
Had to give up their land to England and Spain
What did the Proclamation of 1763 state? Why did England create this law?
Law that prohibited colonists moving West of the Appalachian Mountains onto the Ohio River Valley that they just won.
England did this so there wouldn’t be more fights with Native Americans
This made colonists angry
Why did Great Britain begin taxing the colonies?
To pay off war debt from the French and Indian War
What is the Stamp Act?
law that taxed legal documents newspapers, playing cards, dice
Why did Sam Adams create the Sons of Liberty?
To protest British policies of taxation without representation
What does the phrase “no taxation without representation” mean?
Parliament should not pass laws that created taxes in the colonies because no one was representing the colonies in Parliament
What does it mean to boycott?
Refusing to buy goods
What goods did the Townshend Acts tax?
Laws that taxed paper, glass, tea, lead and paint
Explain what happened at the Boston Massacre.
British troops shot and killed 5 colonists after being surrounded by colonists and soldiers being harassed and assaulted.
Colonists used this as propaganda against England
Why did colonists destroy British tea by throwing it in Boston Harbor?
Protest of the Tea Act
Did not want to be forced into buying tea from England
Why did England pass the Intolerable Acts?
To punish the colonists of Boston and Massachusetts for destroying more than 400 chests of British tea in the ‘Boston Tea Party’
What are the four laws of the Intolerable Acts?
*a. Boston Port Act - closed Boston Harbor
b. Massachusetts Government Act - limited town meetings to once a year
c. Administration of Justice Act - British officials stand trial in England not in the colonies
*d. Quartering Act - soldiers can live in colonists houses
What colony did not attend the First Continental Congress? Why?
Georgia because they needed British troops to help fight against Native Americans
What was decided at the First Continental Congress?
Boycott all British goods
No exports to Britain
Each colony creates a militia
What is the purpose of a militia?
To have a volunteer army of citizens in case of an emergency
What happened at Lexington and Concord?
First fighting between British soldiers and colonial militias -
**Paul Revere had warned the militias the soldiers were coming!
What does it mean to be a Patriot?
a colonists who supported independence from England - wants the colonies to fight England to be their own country
What does it mean to be a Loyalist?
a colonists who is loyal to England and does not want to separate
Why did the Second Continental Congress send the Olive Branch Petition to King George? What was his response?
They were promising peace if the Intolerable Acts are repealed
King George didn’t even read it
What was the impact of Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’?
pamphlet written by Thomas Paine
convinced people to be Patriots
Why did the colonists write the Declaration of Independence?
To explain why the colonists are separating from England and starting the American Revolution
What important ideas are presented in the Declaration of Independence?
All men are created equal
People are born with natural rights - life, liberty, pursuit of happiness
Government gets its power from the people
