United States history overview
If Apple Books doesn't open, click the Books app in your Dock. Click I Have iTunes to open it now. History Demystified Demystified Stephanie Muntone. View More by This Author. Description Never surrender to U. Other Books in This Series. Pre-calculus Demystified, Second Edition And obviously there were some Indians that were also on the side of the British, but it's called the French and Indian War because these were the people that the British were fighting against.
They'll really just call that the American theater of the Seven Years' War because it eventually evolves into a much bigger conflict between Great Britain and France that's going on in Europe, and the French and Indian War was really just the American theater of it. So between-- the French and Indian War starts in based on these disputes over Pittsburgh. But that wasn't the only thing. You had all of these other things, all of these other tensions that were developing. The thing that starts the war is never the only factor. It's always just the tipping point. But that leads to a bigger war in Europe.
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And that's the Seven Years' War that starts in And they both end because they're really the same war. They both end in with the Treaty of Paris. Treaty of Paris, And the big takeaway of that is that really most of what France had in the New World now becomes essentially a part of the British Empire, now becomes British colonies or British territories. And even Louisiana goes over to Spain at this point. And we'll see it goes back to France for a little bit in , and then it goes back to the United States in , but we'll see that in a second. So , the British-- it was this huge costly war-- but they were able to win.
And at least from the point of view of the British, they felt that the main beneficiaries of this war were the Americans. They were able to get all this new territory, all this new area that they can now trade with, or they could now potentially settle. And so the British decide to start taxing the Americans to recoup some portion of the cost of the war. So in they pass the Stamp Act. And this wasn't a tax on stamps. What this was is that they essentially declared that a whole set of paper that had to be used in the New World.
So the stuff for legal documents, stuff that maybe even newspaper. That that paper would have to be produced in Great Britain, and it had to have a special stamp on it in order for the contracts or whatever was on top of it, in order for them to be legitimate. So essentially it was a huge tax on paper and on documents. And essentially, this is what societies ran on. So it was just a way to extract money from the colonists in order to, I guess, help pay back some of the costs that the empire felt that they had incurred on behalf of the colonists.
You could debate whether who was the main beneficiary, but regardless you could imagine this didn't make-- this whole period over here-- the colonists weren't happy. Especially because they didn't have any representation in Parliament.
US History Overview 1: Jamestown to the Civil War (video) | Khan Academy
This was done without anybody from the colony saying, hey, wait I don't think that's fair. Or this is fair or whatever. And so you fast forward. But there was three ships in Boston Harbor full of tea and the tea was owned by the East India Tea company. And they decide, in protest, and there was a whole series of acts and other taxes that went back and forth, but once again, we're not going to go into the details here.
But in revolt they dumped the tea.
They dressed up as Indians, as American Indians, and they dumped the tea into Boston Harbor, and then you could imagine well that was kind of a very exciting act for the colonists, but it didn't make the British very happy. And then after that, they passed the Coercive Act. They essentially did a blockade of Boston. So things started to get really, really, really tense in the early s.
And then you fast forward to , you have essentially the first conflicts of the American Revolutionary War, and we're going to do a whole series of videos on really the whole Revolutionary War.
U.S. History Demystified
This is them right here drafting the Declaration of Independence. And that's really just saying, hey, we've had enough of you Great Britain! We are now declaring ourselves as an independent country. No more of this colonies business. And so all the way until you have the American Revolutionary War. And once again, you can do a lot of videos on this, but I'm just going to go over it just so you have a sense of when everything happened and when everything ended.
And we can later dig deeper into the scaffold. And it ends with the Treaty of Paris. The US becomes a free independent state. And then you fast forward. But the Constitution that we have now, it was drafted in It was ratified-- it had to get at least nine of the states to ratify it-- that happened in And then it went into effect in So it depends what you consider the birth of the country.
Well, it would definitely be the Declaration of Independence, but the country in its current form, with its current institutions, with this current constitution, started in And that was also the beginning of Washington's first of two terms as president, and those ended in And then John Adams comes into the picture. And the reason why I put this-- obviously this is actually the only president that I showed-- is that it was actually very important that he decided to step down after two terms.
He was hugely popular.
US History Overview 1: Jamestown to the Civil War
If he wanted to, he probably could have become one of these characters that stick around maybe a little bit longer than some people would want. So it was really good that he set this example of stepping down after two terms, and that he wasn't this kind of power hungry dude. You fast forward a little bit more.
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