The other colonies rallied behind Massachusetts, and twelve of the thirteen colonies sent delegates in late 1774 to form a Continental Congress for the coordination of their resistance to Britain. The British responded by closing Boston Harbor and enacting a series of punitive laws which effectively rescinded Massachusetts Bay Colony's privileges of self-government. The burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, the passage of the Tea Act of 1773 and the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 led to a new escalation in tensions.
The British government repealed most of the Townshend duties in 1770, but retained the tax on tea in order to symbolically assert Parliament's right to tax the colonies. The British government deployed troops to Boston in 1768 to quell unrest, leading to the Boston Massacre in 1770. Tensions relaxed with the British repeal of the Stamp Act, but flared again with the passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767. The passage of the Stamp Act of 1765 imposed internal taxes on the colonies, which led to colonial protest, and the meeting of representatives of several colonies in the Stamp Act Congress. Before the 1760s, Britain's American colonies had enjoyed a high level of autonomy in their internal affairs, which were locally governed by colonial legislatures. Īmerican colonists objected to being taxed by the British Parliament, a body in which they had no direct representation.
The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), gaining independence from the British Crown and establishing the United States of America, the first modern constitutional liberal democracy.
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 17.
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