The American Revolution was a colonial revolt that took place between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies won independence from Great Britain, becoming the United States of America. They defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War in alliance with France and others.
Members of American colonial society argued the position of "no taxation without representation", starting with the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. They rejected the authority of the British Parliament to tax them because they lacked members in that governing body. Protests steadily escalated to the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, followed by the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, during which Patriots destroyed a consignment of taxed tea. The British responded by closing Boston Harbor, then followed with a series of legislative acts which effectively rescinded Massachusetts Bay Colony's rights of self - government and caused the other colonies to rally behind Massachusetts. In late 1774, the Patriots set up their own alternative government to better coordinate their resistance efforts against Great Britain ; other colonists preferred to remain aligned to the Crown and were known as Loyalists or Tories.
Tensions erupted into battle between Patriot militia and British regulars when the king 's army attempted to capture and destroy Colonial military supplies at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The conflict then developed into a global war, during which the Patriots (and later their French, Spanish, and Dutch allies) fought the British and Loyalists in what became known as the American Revolutionary War (1775–83).
