Stamp Act Crisis
The Stamp Act of 22 March 1765 was Britain's first direct internal tax on the American colonies — a revenue measure requiring tax stamps on all legal documents, newspapers, pamphlets, playing cards, and commercial papers. Prime Minister George Grenville had calculated that the colonists, who paid almost no taxes compared to Britons at home, should contribute to their own defence; the Seven Years' War had nearly doubled the national debt to £130 million, and maintaining garrisons in North America was expensive. The colonial reaction was swift and, to London, shocking. The Virginia Assembly passed Patrick Henry's resolves denying Parliament's right to tax colonists without their consent. Massachusetts called a Stamp Act Congress of nine colonial assemblies in October 1765, producing coordinated petitions and a declaration of rights. On the streets, Sons of Liberty organisations formed in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, attacking the homes of stamp distributors and burning tax stamps. By the Act's enforcement date of 1 November 1765, every colonial stamp distributor had resigned under pressure. The economic boycott of British goods that accompanied the political protest alarmed British merchants, who lobbied Parliament for repeal. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in March 1766 — but simultaneously passed the Declaratory Act asserting its absolute right to legislate for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever.' The episode established the template for subsequent crises: colonial constitutional objection, street organisation, economic leverage, British repeal — followed by an immediate reassertion of sovereignty that made each subsequent dispute sharper than the last.
- Year: 1765 CE
- Category: Political
