Before the civil war that engulfed England in the 1640s, life in the American colonies was regulated by orders occasionally received from the mother country. After the restoration of the Stuart power in 1660, control over trade with the colonies was further strengthened. A Navigation Act restricted the delivery of certain goods, in particular tobacco and sugar, to British ports. New navigational laws, and especially the Sugar Act, hurt the lucrative trade for the West Indies for American merchants. Doubled duties on the import of industrial products from England led to an unprecedented high cost.
The Stamp Act, passed in 1765 by the British Parliament, triggered the first massive outbreak of violence. The law, requiring tax on all legal documents, newspapers and other printed materials, has not entered into force. The riots, initiated by merchants and lawyers under the auspices of the secret society Sons of Liberty, forced to withdraw tax collectors.
In the colonies, the threads of the conspiracy spread. New legislation was seen as part of a carefully planned and far-reaching strategy of imperial domination. New laws and officials encroached on American traditional freedoms; regular army units were thrown against them, five people were killed in clashes in Boston; jury trials were abolished, and taxes were imposed for the third time without the consent of the colonists. All these events taken together could mean only one thing: the king and his ministers intended to establish a system of absolutism in America.
Revolutionary sentiments were especially strong in New England. In December 1773, several colonists disguised as Indians made their way to merchant ships and dropped 342 chests of tea into Boston Bay. In response, Lord North secured the consent of the angry parliament to take tough repressive measures. British lawmakers regretted their conciliatory decision to repeal the Stamp Act and Townshend Duty. In accordance with repressive laws, which the colonists dubbed “intolerable,” the port of Boston was closed reimbursement of damages for tea destroyed, and the powers of self-government in Massachusetts were cut off. But such a harsh reaction from the English parliament rallied the colonists even more closely.
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