Colonial-era soldiers and a tattered flag against a smoke-filled sky

Home / Events / The American Revolution

The American Revolution: A Timeline

From a tax dispute over stamped paper to a new republic's treaty in Paris.

Interactive timeline — click any point

1765 Stamp Act passed 1773 Boston Tea Party 1775 Lexington and Concord 1776 Declaration of Independence 1777 Victory at Saratoga 1781 Siege of Yorktown 1783 Treaty of Paris signed

1765 Parliament passes the Stamp Act

Britain imposes a direct tax on printed materials in the thirteen colonies, provoking the rallying cry of "no taxation without representation."

1773 Colonists stage the Boston Tea Party

Protesters board East India Company ships in Boston Harbor and dump chests of tea into the water, defying the Tea Act.

1775 Fighting breaks out at Lexington and Concord

British troops and colonial militia exchange the first shots of the war on April 19, 1775, near Boston.

1776 The Declaration of Independence is adopted

The Second Continental Congress formally declares the thirteen colonies independent states on July 4, 1776.

1777 American forces win at Saratoga

A decisive defeat of a British army in upstate New York helps persuade France to enter the war as an American ally.

1781 British forces surrender at Yorktown

A combined American and French force traps and defeats Lord Cornwallis's army, effectively ending major fighting in North America.

1783 The Treaty of Paris ends the war

Britain formally recognizes American independence, concluding the conflict and setting the young nation's initial borders.

Last updated: August 2026

History Timelines. (August 2026). The American Revolution: A Timeline. Retrieved from https://history-timelines.org.uk/events/american-revolution/

Rising Tension, 1765–1774

The roots of the American Revolution lie in a series of British attempts to raise revenue from the thirteen colonies after the costly Seven Years’ War. The Stamp Act of 1765, which taxed printed documents from newspapers to legal papers, met with organized colonial resistance and was repealed the following year, but Parliament continued to test its authority with further duties, including the Townshend Acts. Resentment came to a head in 1773, when colonists opposed to the Tea Act boarded ships in Boston Harbor and destroyed an entire cargo of tea rather than accept a tax they had no voice in approving. Britain responded with the punitive Coercive Acts, which colonists came to call the “Intolerable Acts,” closing Boston’s port and tightening royal control over Massachusetts. In response, delegates from twelve colonies convened the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774 to coordinate a common response, still hoping for reconciliation rather than separation.

War Breaks Out, 1775–1778

Armed conflict began on April 19, 1775, when British troops marching to seize colonial military supplies clashed with local militia at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, in the engagement later remembered as “the shot heard round the world.” The Second Continental Congress subsequently formed the Continental Army under George Washington’s command and, after more than a year of fighting and failed attempts at negotiation, adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, asserting that the colonies were now free and independent states. The war’s early years brought hardship as well as fighting: the Continental Army endured a grueling winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in 1777–1778, short on food and supplies. That same period also brought a turning point on the battlefield. The American victory at Saratoga in 1777, which forced the surrender of a British army, convinced France that the colonies could win and led to a formal French alliance in 1778, bringing crucial money, troops, and naval power into the American cause.

Toward Independence, 1778–1783

A weathered flintlock musket and powder horn resting on a folded tricorn hat beside a torn scrap of an early American flag

With French support, the war gradually shifted in the Americans’ favor, though fighting dragged on for several more years across the northern and southern colonies. The decisive blow came in 1781 at Yorktown, Virginia, where a combined American and French force under Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau, aided by a French naval blockade that cut off British reinforcement and retreat by sea, besieged and forced the surrender of General Lord Cornwallis’s army. Yorktown effectively ended major military operations in North America, though the war did not formally conclude for two more years. Peace negotiations in Paris produced the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, in which Britain recognized the independence of the United States and established boundaries for the new nation stretching to the Mississippi River. The treaty closed a conflict that had begun as a dispute over taxation and representation and ended with the creation of a new republic, whose institutions and founding debates would shape American political life for generations afterward.