United States: Independence Movement

Tensions between Great Britain and its thirteen North American colonies escalated after 1763, as Parliament sought new revenue to offset war debts and imposed a series of taxes, including the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767, without direct colonial representation. Resistance took shape through boycotts, pamphleteering, and organized networks such as the Committees of Correspondence, and colonial anger deepened after events like the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the Boston Tea Party in 1773. By 1774, delegates from twelve colonies convened the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia to coordinate a unified response to British policy.

Armed conflict began on 19 April 1775 with skirmishes between British regulars and colonial militia at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. The Second Continental Congress subsequently assumed governing responsibilities, appointed George Washington to command the newly formed Continental Army, and on 4 July 1776 adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted principally by Thomas Jefferson, which formally proclaimed the colonies' separation from Britain. The war that followed drew in France as a key ally after the American victory at Saratoga in 1777, providing crucial military and financial support to the colonial cause.

The surrender of British forces at Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781 effectively ended major fighting, and the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, formally recognized the independence of the United States. The successful revolution established one of the first large-scale republics to break from a European colonial power and became a reference point for later independence and revolutionary movements throughout the Americas and Europe.