Timeline of the American Revolution—timeline of the political upheaval culminating in the 18th century in which Thirteen Colonies in North America joined for independence from the British Empire, and after victory in the Revolutionary War combined to form the United States of America. The American Revolution includes political, social, and military aspects.
The revolutionary era is generally considered to have begun in the wake of the French and Indian War (1754-1763), as the British government abandoned its longstanding practice of salutary neglect of the colonies, now seeking greater control over them. Ten thousand regular British army troops were left stationed in North America after the war ended. Parliament passed measures to increase revenues from the colonies. The Stamp Act in 1765 and ended with the ratification of the United States Bill of Rights in 1791.
The military phase of the revolution, the American Revolutionary War, lasted from 1775 to 1783, but the land war effectively ended with the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia October 19, 1781. Britain continued the international conflict after Yorktown, fighting naval engagements with France and Spain until the signing of the Peace Treaty of Paris in 1783. Historical background to the break between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain includes a chronology of the dynasties of Britain, ideas of kingship, its relation to Parliament; establishment of colonies with assemblies ruling local affairs, including taxation. British American colonists had the historical example a century before, 1649-1660, Commonwealth of England, the Interregnum. Charles I had ruled as an autocrat, without Parliament, and abused power. Wars ensued, which the king lost. Parliament put him on trial and executed him, establishing a republic with a written constitution. American colonists in the 18th century saw the erosion of their rights as freeborn English subjects, which were enshrined in English law, particularly the Magna Carta (1215), Habeas corpus, and the English Bill of Rights (1689).
Gathering Storm, 1762-1774 American Revolution, 1775-1800
List of military leaders in the American Revolutionary War List of American Revolutionary War battles in chronological order, with location, outcome
Origins of English rights
1215
Magna Carta ("Great Charter"). Rebellious barons forced John I of England to sign the charter which defined and limited the power of monarch and established that the monarch was not above the law. It mandated the prompt administration of justice, forbade the sale of justice, and established the principle of due process. Power was to be exercised with consent. It forbade the king from introducing new forms of taxation without consent. Although King John almost immediately repudiated it, saying he had signed it under duress, but he died shortly thereafter. His son Henry III affirmed Magna Carta in 1225 with some changed language, explicitly of his volition. It was reissued at intervals over the years, as a fundamental document protecting English rights. Starting with Elizabeth I's 1578 grant to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, charters contained key provisions: English colonists retained their rights as Englishmen under common law, of which Magna Carta was the first statute; colonial charters made explicit the right to an elective legislature. When American colonists fought against Britain, they were fighting not so much for new freedoms, but to preserve liberties and rights that they believed to be enshrined in Magna Carta.
1236 Establishment of the English Parliament
Tudor dynasty (1485–1603)
House of Tudor rules England from 1485 victory of Henry Tudor's victory in a dynastic war, making him Henry VII.
1485-1509, Henry VII First voyages of exploration by Portugal and Spain; voyage of Christopher Columbus, claiming sovereignty for Spain in the Western Hemisphere; division of the world between Portugal and Spain with the Treaty of Tordesillas(1494); first English voyages of exploration
1497-1498 John Cabot voyages of exploration to the Western Hemisphere.
1509-1547, Henry VIII
1516 Sir Thomas More publishes Utopia, full title The Best State of a Commonwealth and the New Island of Utopia
1529-1536 English Reformation Parliament begins meeting 3 November 1529, lasting until 14 April 1536; established the legal basis for the English Reformation, passing major pieces of legislation, such as the Act of Supremacy making the monarch not the pope head of the church. The Reformation Parliament was the first in English history to deal with major religious legislation, transferring many aspects of English life away from the control of the Catholic Church to control under the Crown, and setting a precedent for future monarchs to utilize parliamentary statutes affecting the Church of England. It strengthened the role of the English Parliament and resulted in a massive transfer of wealth from the Catholic Church to the English Crown.
1536-1541 Dissolution of the monasteries was the set of sweeping administrative and legal processes by which Henry VIII exercised unprecedented monarchical power over the Catholic Church, gutting all monasteries, priories, convents, and friaries in England, Wales, and Ireland; seized their wealth; disposed of their assets; destroyed buildings and relics; dispersed or destroyed libraries; and provided for a few of their former personnel and functions.
1534-1541 Jacques Cartier explores North America for France, sailing up the St Lawrence River, claiming territory for Francis I of France.
1536-1603 Tudor conquest of Ireland - Henry VIII (and his successors) become rulers of Ireland by the Crown of Ireland Act 1542. The conquest involved assimilating the Gaelic nobility by way of "surrender and regrant"; the confiscation and colonization ('plantation') of lands with settlers from Britain; imposing English law and language; banning Catholicism, dissolving the monasteries, and making Anglican Protestantism the state religion.
1547-1553, Edward VI
Henry VIII dies, succeeded by his Protestant young son Edward VI by Jane Seymour, who dies before he reaches his majority and rule in his own right. The transformation of the Church of England into a recognizably Protestant body occurs under Edward, who even as a youth took great interest in religious matters. Although Henry VIII had severed the link between the English Church and Rome it continued to uphold most Catholic doctrine and ceremony. Under Edward, Protestantism was established for the first time in England, with reforms that included the abolition of clerical celibacy and the Mass and the imposition of compulsory English rather than Latin in church services. Edward VI dies, age 15. Succession is complicated because his older half-sister Mary is Catholic.
1553-1558, Mary I
Mary I of England, oldest child of Henry VIII, daughter of Catherine of Aragon, succeeds to the throne. She is the first ruling queen in English history. She attempts to return England to Catholicism and restore church properties that her father Henry VIII had confiscated. Mary I weds Philip II of Spain; the marriage is childless. Her death in 1558 ends the attempt to restore Catholicism in England.
1558-1603, Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I, Protestant, daughter of Anne Boleyn succeeds to the throne as a ruling queen, reigning 44 years. She never marries, leaving succession in doubt. England begins explorations in North America, aiming at planting colonies on the fringes of Spain's New World Empire.
1558 Act of Supremacy, the act of Parliament restoring the English monarch and successors as head of the Church, reversing the policy of Mary I, and restoring Protestantism.
1560s
Expansion of the Tudor conquest of Ireland, aimed at subjugating the entire island and maintain it as a primitive economy with England supplying manufactured goods; beginning of plantation of Protestant English settlers. Ireland becomes a "laboratory of empire" for England. English come to have similar attitudes to the "wild Irish" and Native Americans during colonization of North America.
1578
Elizabeth I grants a charter to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, veteran colonizer of Protestants in Ireland, to explore and colonize territories "unclaimed by Christian kingdoms". The terms of the charter granted by the Queen had two key provisions, which all subsequent colonial charters contained: that English colonists brought with them the rights of Englishmen under common law colonial charters were to make explicit the implied right of an elected legislature. Gilbert understood it to give him rights to all territory in the New World north of Spanish Florida. Led by Gilbert, the English briefly claimed St. John's, Newfoundland, in 1583, as the first English territory in North America at the royal prerogative of Queen Elizabeth I, but Gilbert was lost at sea on his return journey to England.
1584
Richard Hakluyt writes A Particuler Discourse Concerninge the Greate Necessitie and Manifolde Commodyties That Are Like to Growe to This Realme of Englande by the Westerne Discoueries Lately Attempted, Written in the Yere 1584, commissioned Sir Walter Raleigh and presented to the Queen. His objective was to recommend the enterprise of establishing English plantations in the region of North America not yet colonized by Europeans, and thus gain the Queen's support for Raleigh's expedition.
Raleigh granted a a royal charter authorizing him to explore, colonize and rule any "remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countries and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian Prince or inhabited by Christian People", in return for one-fifth of all the gold and silver that might be mined there. (March)
1585–1590 Roanoke Colony, two failed attempts by Sir Walter Raleigh to found the first permanent English settlement in North America. The first colony was established at Roanoke Island in 1585 as a military outpost, and was evacuated in 1586. The more famous second colony, known as the Lost Colony, began when a new group of settlers under John White arrived on the island in 1587; a relief ship in 1590 found the colony mysteriously abandoned. The fate of the 112 to 121 colonists remains unknown.
1586 Welsh colonist Sir William Herbert plants a Protestant colony in Ireland; he had been granted lands confiscated from the Irish Catholic noble Gerald Fitzgerald, 15th Earl of Desmond. Herbert wrote a defense of colonization in Ireland, Croftus Sive de Hibernia Liber. He warned that colonists should not mix with the indigenous population, and urged the former to compel the latter to assimilate to the colonizers' culture.Mancall, Peter C, Envisioning America: English Plans for the Colonization of North America, 2nd ed.. Bedford/ St Martin's 2017, 9-10
1588 Spanish Armada fails to conquer England.
Thomas Harriot published A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, an account of his voyage to Roanoke; contains an early account of the Native American population encountered by the expedition; it proved very influential upon later English explorers and colonists.
1603 Elizabeth I, "the Virgin Queen", last Tudor monarch dies (March 24)
1603–1649, Stuart Dynasty House of Stuart rules England, Scotland, and Ireland; seizing of islands in the Caribbean, previously monopolized by the Spanish; settlement of Protestants in majority Catholic Ireland, England's first colony; successful overseas English settlements established in North America and the Caribbean.
1603-1625, James I of England