Seven Years War Dbq

During the mid-seventeenth century, the Seven Years’ War caused a disaster leading to a huge debt. The British were unable to pay back the debt and needed to find ways. Parliament found a way to decrease the debt by taxing items. They created the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, and Tea Act in order to repay the war debt, which had affected the colonists greatly. In 1764, Parliament created one of the many acts called Sugar Act, which helped lower the amount of smuggling by raising penalties. The act lowered the price of French molasses to three pence. The Molasses Act was a harsh tax, costing sixpence per gallon on any molasses being shipped to the British colonies from other places. The Sugar Act originally evolved from the Molasses Act. Many people …show more content…
Most of the oppositions came from the Americans involved in shipping trades. The British colonists thought the Sugar Act was reasonable and helped maintain the colonies. The American shippers were mainly affected upon the act than the British colonists.
The Stamp Act was created in 1765, a year after the Sugar Act was first devised. A major conflict erupted between Britain and the colonists based on the taxation. The Stamp Act imposed tax on all papers being used. Such as pamphlets, licenses, wills, ships’ cargo lists, newspapers, and court documents. “The stamp tax was a clear departure as a fee-per-document tax” (141). Every piece of paper being issued must have a stamp for proof that taxes had been paid off. The majority of the colonists were affected, however, he users of official documents, business and legal communities were affected greatly due to this act. Before the Stamp Act took place, a list of resolutions were being debated and passed in the House of Burgesses assembly. This was also called the Virginia Resolves. A total of seven Virginia Resolves were passed and printed. The first resolve mentioned that Virginians were considered as British citizens and the second resolve stated that Virginians liked …show more content…
Parliament created the Tea Act to lower the tax on tea, making Americans buy it. Americans continued buying the taxed tea, but also started smuggling large amount of Dutch tea. The act was hoped to enforce Americans to obey the law and reduce the amount of smuggled Dutch tea. Americans first thought the act was a trick for them to buy the tea, however, some people believed it was to increase the salaries for the judges and royal governors. This reason led to people wanting to resist but there were not much ways in resisting the Tea Act. Colonists thought about the idea of non-importation, however, “because the tea trade was too lucrative to expect merchants to give it up willingly,” (150) the idea did not follow through. The tea trade created beneficial profits for the merchants to agree with the plan. Like the Stamp Act distributors, the tea agents were pressured by the Sons of Liberty to resign to their positions. The consequence of getting rid of the tea agents would mean “tea cargoes either landed duty-free or were sent home” (150). Therefore, the tea agents were needed in order to import tea cargoes. In November, three ships were carrying tea arriving to Boston. The ship unloaded everything on the ship except for tea. Governor Hutchinson would not allow the captain of the ship to leave Boston until the tea duty was paid off. The ship captain was given twenty days to pay before the tea would be taken. One month after,

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