The main act of provocation to the colonists was the stamp act. The stamp act was protested upon the principle of no taxation without representation. The stamp act was affecting virtually all the colonists, and restricted economic prosperity, thus colonists protested it. The Townshend acts were also a factor in the economy. The parliament was taxing illegally! Most colonists agreed, and a boycott of British goods resulted. When the British passed the Currency act, this left the paper money worthless, and the colonists had to rely on England for Hard Currency. The colonies were economically subordinate to England by the tea and coercive acts. The tea act was an act where the colonist merchants were being bypassed, and the British did the trading. This hurt the economic prosperity of the colonists, mobs had strengthened in anger and the Boston tea Party followed. The British were irate at the colonial resistance to British law, therefore the British passed the Coercive Act or Intolerable Act. The Intolerable act closed off the Boston Port, which closed off the center of economic prosperity of New England. England was also limiting the colonists to raw material production, which hindered the colonists' economic prosperity.
The colonists saw a conspiracy to destroy their liberty in British policies. So, when the colonists were forming the Declaration of Independence, the main goal was to show the Americans' concern for the importance of liberty. The colonials claimed that Parliament had the sovereign power to legislate in the interest of the entire British Empire, but that it could only tax those actually represented in Parliament. The military struggle, indeed, was preceded by a long and fierce political contest, of which it formed the inevitable conclusion.
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