Chapter 5: The Problem of Empire (1763–1776) - Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, legislation, and organizations from Chapter 5: The Problem of Empire, 1763–1776.

Revenue Act of 1762

A parliamentary law passed to enforce the collection of trade duties, which colonial merchants had evaded for decades by bribing customs officials.

Currency Act of 1764

A law passed under Prime Minister George Grenville that banned the American colonies from using paper money as legal tender to pay debts to British merchants.

Sugar Act of 1764

British legislation that replaced the Molasses Act of 1733, setting a duty of 3 pence per gallon on French molasses while tightening customs enforcement.

Vice-Admiralty Courts

Tribunals governing the high seas run by British-appointed judges without local juries, extended by revenue acts to try accused colonial smugglers.

Stamp Act of 1765

A parliamentary tax requiring a stamp on all printed items in the colonies, designed to raise revenue to offset the cost of keeping British troops in America.

Virtual Representation

The argument by British politicians that American colonists were already represented in Parliament because some of its members were transatlantic merchants and West Indian sugar planters.

Quartering Act of 1765

A law passed by Parliament at the request of General Thomas Gage requiring colonial governments to provide barracks and food for British troops.

Patriots

Defenders of American rights who organized formal and informal protests against imperial reforms and fashioned an ideology of resistance.

Stamp Act Congress

A meeting of delegates from nine assemblies in New York City in October 1765 that protested the loss of rights like trial by jury and asserted that only elected colonial representatives could levy taxes.

Sons of Liberty

Colonial groups led largely by middling artisans and minor merchants that orchestrated crowd actions, intimidated tax collectors, and enforced boycotts against British policies.

English Common Law

The centuries-old body of legal rules and procedures in England that protected the lives and property of the monarch's subjects.

Declaratory Act of 1766

Legislation passed under Lord Rockingham that explicitly reaffirmed Parliament's full power and authority to make laws binding the American colonies in all cases whatsoever.

Townshend Act of 1767

A law imposing duties on colonial imports of paper, paint, glass, and tea to raise revenue earmarked to pay the salaries of royal governors, judges, and imperial officials.

Revenue Act of 1767

Legislation devised by Charles Townshend that established a board of customs commissioners in Boston and vice-admiralty courts in Halifax, Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston.

Daughters of Liberty

Colonial women who supported the nonimportation movement by reducing household consumption of imported goods and producing homespun cloth.

Proclamation Line

A boundary established by the British crown prohibiting white settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Scioto Confederacy

An alliance formed in 1770 by Shawnees and other Indian leaders at Chillicothe to oppose further European-American expansion into the Ohio country.

Boston Massacre

The event on March 5, 1770, in which nine British redcoats fired into a crowd in Boston, killing five townspeople.