How the American Response to British Plans for Parliamentary Taxation Set in Motion the Movement for Independence
The year 1764 is of extraordinary importance to the history of the American Revolution. It was a watershed year in the relationship between Great Britain and its North American colonies. 
    In 1763, the British began to strictly enforce the laws of trade in order to advance a newly formulated colonial policy that included use of customs duties as a means of drawing revenue from the colonies. Americans early in 1764 protested that the laws being enforced were economically unsound and would be destructive to the trade of the colonies. Despite knowing of the American discontent, British officials moved forward with their new colonial policy. Resolutions made by the House of Commons in March 1764 not only codified a more restrictive trade policy, but revealed a plan to impose direct parliamentary taxation. A resolution to levy stamp duties brought forth a storm of American petitions and essays in late 1764 that constitute the beginning of what has become known as the Stamp Act Crisis. 
In 1764: The First Year of the American Revolution, Ken Shumate presents the American arguments against the new British policy. The most prominent protests against direct parliamentary taxation were made by New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Supporting the petitions were thoughtful essays by James Otis, Oxenbridge Thacher, Richard Bland, Thomas Fitch, and Stephen Hopkins. Shumate demonstrates the importance of these petitions and essays, written before the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, as establishing the constitutional basis for the heated protests of that year and the following decade. The British interpretation of these writings as rejecting the supremacy of Parliament—even the sovereignty of Great Britain—further motivated the need for the Stamp Act as a demonstration of the fundamental right of Parliament to levy such taxes.

The first act of Parliament to levy direct taxation on the colonies, the Sugar Act of 1764 defined a new colonial policy and prompted a decade of protests that ended in open rebellion against Great Britain. The initial Sugar Act of 1733—also known as the Molasses Act—was designed to secure and encourage the trade of British colonies in the West Indies by placing prohibitive duties on the products of competing foreign colonies. The dramatic revision to that act in 1764 imposed duties for both revenue and trade regulation, in addition strengthening the laws of trade so as to tighten the connection between Great Britain and the colonies. In 1766, a revision to the act of 1764 responded to American grievances, but also transformed the Sugar Act into an explicit law for taxation. Americans, having long seen the act as within Parliament’s authority to regulate their trade, did not at first see the duties as taxes—and paid them without complaint. The resulting revenue was greater than that exacted by any other parliamentary tax on America. 
The Sugar Act and the American Revolution by Ken Shumate is the only book-length treatment of this first great challenge of the revolutionary era. For each of the three incarnations of the act, the author provides a clause-by-clause description, including the British reasoning behind the duties and trade restrictions, and a summary of the resulting American grievance. Following the explanation of each act are chapters describing the protests of American merchants and popular leaders, and the British response to those protests. As a consequence of further parliamentary acts of taxation, the story ends with the demand in 1774 by the First Continental Congress for Parliament to repeal the Sugar Act as being “essentially necessary in order to restore harmony between Great Britain and the American colonies.”