by Jerry Curtis

Created on: August 26, 2008   Last Updated: August 22, 2009

A Timeline of events leading up to the Revolutionary War

All wars have both long-term and immediate causes. The long-term causes of the Revolutionary War dated back to the end of the French and Indian War (11 years before the Declaration of Independence) when the American colonies became a burdensome expense to the British crown. The immediate causes of the rebellion was the resistance of colonists, who viewed British taxation and the Acts of Parliament designed for said collection as intolerable.

* Salutary Neglect Abandoned

Before the French and Indian (or Seven-Years) War, Britain was not concerned much with interfering in their American colonies. Practicing what historians have termed "salutary neglect," Parliament permitted a sort of quasi-independence through the auspices of appointed royal governors, who, for the most part worked well with the variety of colonial legislatures and judges.

* Britain Goes Broke

Seven years of war with the French and their allies, however, had taken a heavy financial toll on the British treasury. Millions of pounds in debt, the British needed to do something. The already overtaxed British citizenry would not tolerate tax increases, so the logical next step was to ask the American colonists to ante up and pay some of the costs of dispatching and maintaining the British army, who protected colonists from the marauding French and their scary Native American allies.

* The Not-So-Sweet Sugar Tax

One of the first taxation measures was the so-called "Sugar Tax" of 1763. The tax was partially a protective tariff against non-British produced sugar and molasses at the rate of sixpence per gallon, a hefty tax in those days. Since sugar and molasses were the staple for New England rum producers, colonists were hit hard and chafed over such restrictive business taxation.

* Stamping Out the Stamp Act

Close on the heels of the Sugar Tax was the even more hated Stamp Act of 1765, which the colonists found totally unacceptable. As a way to pay the expenses for British troops in the Colonies, the Act placed a tax on just about all reading material and legal documents (including rather oddly, play cards). Newspapers, wills, summons, deeds - everything required a tax collector's stamp. To rub salt in the wounds, violators were tried in the British Navy courts.

Furor over the Stamp Act resulted in riots and attacks on tax collectors. The tax was so universally unpopular that the colonies convened a "Stamp Act Congress" to coordinate

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