My favorite books on the what caused the American Revolution

This book, first published seventy years ago, offers an in-depth look at the Parliamentary act that did more than any other to enrage the American colonists: the Stamp Act of 1765. Edmund and Helen Morgan explore the law in depth from what it was (a tax on all paper used in the colonies) and how it was received in America (poorly). The Stamp Act Crisis provides a rich portrayal of the riots that rocked American cities throughout the summer and fall of 1765. I really like the short biographies of the most important people involved, such as Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard, customs collector John Robinson, and pamphleteer Daniel Dulany.

Revolutionary historians are familiar with the Townshend Acts, import duties approved by Parliament in 1767 that pushed the Americans closer toward independence. Patrick Griffin explores the man for who the taxes were named—Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend—but also his brother George who served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1767 to 1772. By comparing and contrasting these two brothers who ran the British Empire for a brief moment, Griffin invites us to consider the American Revolution within its imperial context. I found the parallels between America where independence efforts succeeded and Ireland where they failed particularly thought-provoking. 

On March 5, 1770, British soldiers stationed in Boston killed five colonists, outraging the continent. and pushing Americans toward war. Serena Zabin offers a fresh perspective on the Boston Massacre, focusing on the people involved in the incident and their families. This book takes us on a tour of eighteenth-century Boston, detailing where soldiers lived among the colonists, and how they became part of the civic family through friendships, marriage, and shared interests. I especially like how Zabin looks at the women involved in this story. We meet Jane Chambers who accompanied her redcoat husband to America, as well as colonist Jane Crothers who witnessed the fateful event.

Also key to the coming of the Revolution was the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, when colonists tossed thousands of pounds of tea into the harbor. Benjamin Carp looks at the Tea Act of 1773, which lowered the duty on tea as a means of convincing Americans to agree to taxation without representation. He also traces the affairs of the East India Company in Asia and asks how its priorities affected America. Carp also investigates the protests against the Tea Act (of which the party in Boston was but one), asking how colonial resistance affected American politics. The defiance of the Patriots detailed here is not just a refutation of British imperial rule, but of a corrupt placemen and political inequality. 

All of the Parliamentary laws and massacres ultimately led to the day in July 1776 when the delegates at the Second Continental Congress declared their independence from King George III. Pauline Maier looks at the founding document of the United States in-depth, explaining how colonial grievances against the Quartering Act and other laws became the poetry we still know. I really like how Maier traces the ideas contained in the Declaration and how Thomas Jefferson’s words were altered in congress, in particular, removing passages that condemned the king for slavery. Ultimately, she leaves us thinking about the impact of the Declaration on American history from abolitionism to women’s suffrage to twenty-century wars for independence.