Social Sciences and History / Unit 1 SSH 0017 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Sequencing the Road to Independence, 1763–1776
The idea
Exam questions on the Revolution often hand you four events and ask for the order, or name one event and ask what it answered. The chain has a logic: each British measure raised money or asserted control, each colonial answer widened the circle of resistance, and the next measure punished the answer. Hold the chain as cause and reply rather than as a list of dates, and the order recovers itself.
In practice
Seventeen sixty-three, the Treaty of Paris and the Proclamation Line, and the debt behind both. Seventeen sixty-five, the Stamp Act, answered by the Virginia Resolves and the Sons of Liberty; seventeen sixty-six, repeal. The Townshend Acts, answered by non-importation; seventeen seventy, the Boston Massacre. Seventeen seventy-three, the Tea Act, answered by the destruction of the tea. Seventeen seventy-four, the Coercive Acts, answered by the First Continental Congress. April seventeen seventy-five, Lexington and Concord. July seventeen seventy-six, the Declaration. Given the four events Stamp Act, Coercive Acts, Boston Massacre and Tea Act, the order is Stamp, Massacre, Tea, Coercive: sixty-five, seventy, seventy-three, seventy-four.
Where people slip
The trap is the repeal. The Stamp Act was repealed before the Townshend Acts passed, so a question dating "the first tax crisis" after seventeen seventy is wrong on its face. Anchor the chain at sixty-five and seventy-four and the middle falls into place.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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