The American Revolution - Causes Flashcards
Where did groups of European settlers begin to occupy land during the 16th and early 17th century?
North America
Who owned the land in North America?
Indigenous Americans (also known as Native Americans)
What the British take advantage of after defeating the French?
They used their colonies in North America to make money growing crops to sell all over the world.
What kind of crops did the newly British colonies grow in North America?
Cotton, tobacco and sugar.
Who did the British use to grow crops in North America?
Indentured servants, and later enslaved people.
How many separate English colonies were there by the early 1700s?
13
What was the population of settlers and enslaved people by 1775?
2.5 million
Give 2 reasons why countries such as Britain wanted empires:
They could tax people who lived in the colonies and ensure that they bought British goods.
What did many of the colonists in America, despite being of British descent, now consider themselves as?
American
The British felt it was acceptable to tax the Americans to pay for what and why?
The army as it ‘protected’ the colonists from other foreign powers.
When was the Stamp Tax?
1765
What was the Stamp Tax of 1765?
A tax on documents such as legal papers and newspapers.
How did colonists respond to the Stamp Tax of 1765?
By rioting.
What were Navigation Acts?
They ensured only British goods were imported into America.
Through what years were there Navigation Acts?
Through the 1760s.
What could colonists not do with other countries?
Trade.
What could colonists not do if the British produced something?
They could not buy the same thing from another country.
What did the colonists feel the British were doing to them?
Bossing them
What were the colonists given boundaries on by the British?
The land that they could not cross.
Why did the American colonists feel that they had no one to speak up for them?
They were ruled directly from Britain yet had no representatives in parliament in London.
What did colonists start to state?
No taxation without representation
When was the Boston Massacre?
1770
What was the Boston Massacre of 1770?
When anti-British colonists threw snowballs and sticks at the British army on 5 March, the army opened fire and killed some of them.
What was the Boston Tea Party?
When colonists, unhappy with the heavily taxed British tea they were forced to buy, boarded a ship and poured the tea out into the harbour.
What did the British do in retaliation to the Boston Tea Party?
They closed the port of Boston.
What happened in 1775 regarding the British army?
Anti-British feeling was so strong that when the British army tried to seize a supply of gunpowder in Concord they were fired on by 20,000 ‘minutemen’.
Who were ‘minutemen?
Local farmers, clerks and ploughboys who had enough of British rule.
What did the incident in 1775 become known as?
The Lexington incident.
What did the Lexington incident mark the start of?
Revolution against the British.
Who and when did the Americans make the leader of their army?
By 1775 they had made George Washington the leader of their army.
What did the Americans meet in to decide what to do?
In Congress
What is Congress?
National legislative body in the USA that makes laws.
When did the Congress issue of Declaration of Independence?
1776
What did the issuing of the Declaration of Independence state?
That the 13 colonies were free and that all control from Britain had ended.
How many years of fighting would there be before the colonists were victorious and an independent America was a reality?
7 years
