Big Ideas, Bigger Rebellion
This idea holds that people possess fundamental rights simply because they are human, including life and liberty.
What are natural rights?
Passed in 1765, this controversial law taxed printed materials such as newspapers, pamphlets, legal documents, and playing cards.
What is the Stamp Act?
These English religious reformers established settlements in New England in the 1630s and sought to purify the Church of England.
Who were the Puritans?
Established in Virginia in 1619, this representative assembly became an important early example of colonial self-government.
What was the Virginia House of Burgesses?
In 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd in Boston, killing five colonists, including Crispus Attucks.
What was the Boston Massacre?
This term describes the hypothetical condition of human beings before governments and formal political authority exist.
What is the state of nature?
These 1767 laws imposed duties on imported items such as glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. Colonial resistance helped persuade Britain to repeal most of the duties in 1770, while retaining the tea tax.
What are the Townshend Acts?
This religious revival began in the American colonies during the 1730s and emphasized personal conversion, emotional preaching, and an individual's relationship with God.
What was the First Great Awakening?
These New England gatherings allowed community members to discuss local affairs and participate in decisions about their communities.
What were town meetings?
In December 1773, protesters dumped tea into Boston Harbor to protest British tea policy and taxation.
What was the Boston Tea Party?
According to this political concept, people agree to establish a government in exchange for protection, order, and the defense of their rights.
What is the social contract?
After the French and Indian War, Britain faced substantial debts and sought more revenue and tighter imperial control. Explain how this created an economic and political conflict with the colonies.
Britain attempted to raise revenue through measures such as the Sugar Act and Stamp Act and to enforce trade regulations more effectively. Many colonists objected to taxation without representation and restrictions on their economic freedom. British efforts to manage imperial debt and trade helped intensify colonial resistance.
By the eighteenth century, colonial religious life included Baptists, Anglicans, Catholics, Quakers, Presbyterians, and Methodists, among others. What broader historical development does this illustrate?
The growth of religious diversity in the colonies.
This 1643 alliance united four New England colonies for mutual defense and cooperation.
What was the New England Confederation?
These punitive measures, also called the Coercive Acts, closed Boston's port and restricted Massachusetts self-government after the Tea Party.
What were the Intolerable Acts?
This English philosopher argued that people possess natural rights and can replace a government that violates them.
Who is John Locke?
These British laws regulated colonial commerce and directed much of it through the British Empire.
What are the Navigation Acts?
This principle holds that individuals should have the freedom to practice their religion, or not practice a religion, without improper government interference.
What is religious liberty?
Name the two major intercolonial meetings held in 1754 and 1765 that helped colonists consider collective action before the Continental Congresses.
The Albany Congress of 1754 and the Stamp Act Congress of 1765.
This 1776 pamphlet by Thomas Paine argued that monarchy was unjust and that the American colonies should declare independence from Britain.
What was Common Sense?
This English philosopher feared that life without a strong governing authority would be violent and insecure. His views contrasted with Locke's more optimistic account of people's rights and ability to establish legitimate government.
Who is Thomas Hobbes? Hobbes emphasized the need for a powerful sovereign to preserve peace and order.
This economic system held that colonies should help enrich the mother country through controlled trade, favorable trade balances, and the acquisition of wealth.
What is mercantilism?
What is the significance of America's religious history in terms of understanding the causes of the American Revolution?
It provided early training for the expression of economic and political independence. It also highlighted growing importance of participatory democracy.
Britain's relatively loose enforcement of some imperial regulations allowed colonists to become accustomed to managing many of their own affairs.
What was salutary neglect?
This 1775 meeting was called after the shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. This assembly also created the Declaration of Independence.
What was the Second Continental Congress?