• Virginia House of Burgesses
• Mayflower Compact
• New England town meetings
• Fundamental Orders of Connecticut
• Colonial charters
• English liberties
• British constitution
• First Great Awakening
• Enlightenment
• Philosophes (Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, etc.)
• Mercantilism
• Navigation Acts
• Sugar Act
• Albany Congress (1754)
• Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War), 1754–1763
• Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763)
• Royal Proclamation of 1763
• Virtual representation
• Sons of Liberty (Massachusetts)
• First and Second Continental Congress
• State constitution-making
• Committees of safety
• Committees of correspondence
• Nonimportation/nonconsumption
• Quartering Act (1765)
• Vice admiralty courts
• The Declaration of Rights and Grievances (1765)
• Stamp Act and protests (1765–1766)
• Stamp Act Congress
• “No taxation without representation”
• Declaratory Act (1766) — authority to pass any law regulating colonies “in all cases whatsoever”
• Townshend Acts (1767)
• Boston Massacre (1770)
• Tea Act (1773) — British East India Co. can sell to colonies without tax
• Boston Tea Party (1773)
• Coercive/Intolerable Acts (1773)
• First and Second Continental Congress
• Lexington and Concord
• Olive Branch Petition (1775)
• Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
• Declaration of Independence (1776)
