American Revolution and Imperial Crisis Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards generated directly from the lecture notes covering the French and Indian War, imperial tax acts, colonial resistance movements, and key events leading to independence.

Sons of Liberty

Colonists, primarily middling merchants and artisans, who banded together in 1765 to protest the Stamp Act and other imperial reforms.

John Dickens

Author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768) who urged colonists to oppose parliamentary taxes and remember their ancestors and posterity.

Boston Massacre

Incident on March 5, 1770, where British redcoats fired into a crowd, killing five townspeople, which Boston's Radical Whigs used to rally sentiment against imperial power.

Phillis Wheatley

Poet born in West Africa and enslaved as a child who authored Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773).

Declatory Act

Law issued by Parliament asserting its unassailable right to legislate for the British colonies "in all cases whatsoever".

Townstead Act

British law establishing new duties on tea, glass, lead, paper, and painters' colors imported into the colonies.

Alon Importation Agreement

Boycotts attempted by colonists in 1766, 1768, and 1774 pressuring merchants to stop importing British goods.

Daughters of Liberty

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

Patriots

Colonists who opposed British laws and questioned Parliament's authority to impose laws without colonial representation.

Albany Plan Union

1754 proposal by Benjamin Franklin, inspired by the Iroquois Confederacy, to create one general government and a continental assembly across the colonies.

Arable land

Land which is able to grow crops.

Covenant chains

Agreements through which the Iroquois expanded their influence and established authority over other Native groups in the region.

Ohio river valley

Area of arable land in French-claimed territory claimed by the Ohio Company of Virginia for settlement.

William Pitt

Committed British expansionist who planned to cripple France by seizing its colonies during the French and Indian War.

French & Indian War

War in North America between the British and French over rivalries, alliances with indigenous nations, and disputed territory.

Treaty of Paris 1763

Peace treaty that ended the French and Indian War and ended French land claims in North America.

Pontiacs Rebellion

A major 1763 uprising originating at Detroit where indigenous nations attacked British forts throughout the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley.

Paxton Boys

A group of Scots-Irish frontiersmen who in 1763 massacred twenty assimilated Conestoga Indians.

Proclamation of 1763

British order prohibiting colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains on territory acquired from the French and Indian War.

Regulators

Landowning protestors in North and South Carolina in the 1760s and 1770s demanding western districts receive fairer taxation, more courts, and assembly representation.

Salutary Neglect

Period when Britain maintained Navigation Acts to regulate colonial trade but failed to strictly enforce them.

Currency Act of 1764

Law banning American colonies from using paper money as legal tender to pay debts to British merchants.

Sugar Act

British legislation that decreased the duty on French molasses, increased smuggling penalties, and mandated trials in Vice Admiralty courts.

Vice Admiralty courts

Maritime tribunals presided over by a royally appointed judge without a jury, used to prosecute colonial smugglers.

Stamp Act 1765

British law imposing a tax on all paper used in the colonies, leading to widespread colonial resistance.

Stamp Act Congress

October 1765 meeting in New York City of delegates from nine assemblies to protest imperial taxation and defend trial by jury.

Quartering Act 1765

British law requested by General Thomas Gage requiring colonial governments to provide food and housing for British troops.

Revenue Act

Also known as the Townshend Duties, an act imposing excise taxes on paint, glass, lead, and tea, while authorizing Writs of Assistance.

Virtual representation

British assertion that colonial interests were represented in Parliament by transatlantic merchants and West Indies sugar planters.

Committees of Correspondants

Communications network proposed by Samuel Adams to quickly disseminate news about key political developments among colonial towns.

Tea Act

1773 act lowering tea taxes and granting exemptions to the East India Company to make its tea cheaper in the colonies.

Boston Tea Party

December 16, 1773 action where colonists disguised as indigenous people dumped £10,000 worth of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor.

Coercive Acts

Four 1774 British acts designed to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party, known in America as the Intolerable Acts.

Quebec Act

1774 law extending Quebec's boundary into western lands, allowing French residents to practice Catholicism, and omitting an elected assembly.

1st Continental Congress

September 1774 gathering of colonial delegates in Philadelphia to address the crisis caused by the Coercive Acts.

Loyalists

Colonists who remained loyal to the British crown during the American Revolution.

2nd Continental Congress

Governing body from May 1775 through the Revolutionary War that created the Continental Army, issued currency, and declared independence.

Lexington & Concord

Opening skirmishes of the Revolutionary War on April 19, 1775, sparked when British troops sought to capture colonial leaders and supplies.

Minutemen

Colonial militiamen ready to mobilize on short notice who formed the core army confronting British regulars at Lexington and Concord.

Continental Army

Military force established by the Second Continental Congress to fight for American liberty, commanded by George Washington.

Common Sense

January 1776 pamphlet authored by Thomas Paine calling for American independence and a republican form of government.

Declaration of Independence

Document adopted on July 4, 1776, outlining philosophical principles and grievances to declare separation from Great Britain.

Popular Sovereignty

The political principle that ultimate power lies in the hands of the electorate.

John Adams

embassador for france with thomas jefferson

Battle of Yorktown

final major land battle of the American Revolutionary War

Ohio company of virginia

a land speculation company established in 1747 to settle the Ohio Country and trade with Native Americans