American Revolution

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the American War of Independence,[9] or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies inNorth America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.
The war was the result of the political American Revolution. Colonists galvanized around the position that the StampAct of 1765, imposed by Parliament of Great Britain, was unconstitutional. The British Parliament insisted it had the right to tax colonists. The colonists claimed that, as they were British subjects,taxation without representation was illegal. The American colonists formed a unifying Continental Congress and a shadow government in each colony, though ostensibly claiming loyalty to the monarch anda place in the British Empire. The American boycott of directly taxed British tea led to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. London responded by ending self-government in Massachusetts and putting it underthe control of the British army with General Thomas Gage as governor. In April 1775 Gage learned that weapons were being gathered in Concord, and he sent British troops to seize and destroy them.[10]Local militia, known as 'minutemen,' confronted the troops and exchanged fire (see Battles of Lexington and Concord). After repeated pleas to the British monarchy for intervention with Parliament, anychance of a compromise ended when the Congress were declared traitors by royal decree, and they responded with a declared independence forming a new sovereign nation external to the British Empire,the United States of America, on July 4, 1776.
France, Spain and the Dutch Republic all secretly provided supplies, ammunition and weapons to the revolutionaries starting early in 1776. After earlyBritish success, the war became a standoff. The British used their naval superiority to capture and occupy American coastal cities while the rebels largely controlled the countryside, where 90 percent...