Editing First Continental Congress (section)

== Background and Causes ==

The crisis that prompted the First Continental Congress had been building for over a decade. Following the French and Indian War (1754-1763), Britain sought to recoup its war expenses and pay for ongoing colonial defense by imposing new taxes on the American colonies. The Stamp Act of 1765 and Townshend Acts of 1767 provoked colonial resistance and were eventually repealed, but the underlying conflict over parliamentary authority remained unresolved. The Tea Act of 1773, which granted the British East India Company a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies, prompted colonists in Boston to board Company ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor—an act of defiance that would be remembered as the Boston Tea Party.<ref name="middlekauff">{{cite book |last=Middlekauff |first=Robert |title=The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 |year=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York}}</ref>

Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party with a series of punitive measures that colonists called the Intolerable Acts or Coercive Acts. The Boston Port Act closed the harbor until the destroyed tea was paid for. The Massachusetts Government Act revoked the colony's charter and placed it under direct royal control. The Administration of Justice Act allowed British officials accused of crimes to be tried in England rather than colonial courts. The Quartering Act required colonists to house British soldiers in private buildings. These acts, intended to isolate and punish Massachusetts, instead united the colonies in opposition. Colonial leaders recognized that if Parliament could arbitrarily revoke one colony's charter, no colony's rights were secure. Calls arose throughout the summer of 1774 for an intercolonial congress to coordinate the colonial response.<ref name="rakove">{{cite book |last=Rakove |first=Jack N. |title=The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress |year=1979 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York}}</ref>