Permanent British settlement in North America started in the first decades of the 1600s and expanded in fits and starts over the next century, until eventually, the 13 original colonies all formed along the Eastern Seaboard.

From very early on, some people in the new colonies started to think of themselves as having their own identity, perhaps descended from Britain, but separate and distinct.

A land filled with unfamiliar plants, animals and people, along with the vast distance of the Atlantic Ocean, shaped the people who lived there, instilling in them a sense of resilience and self-sufficiency.

By 150 years or so after the first permanent British settlers arrived in the American colonies, many people there felt American first and British second.

But to the government, every colonist was supposed to be, first and foremost, a loyal subject to the crown.

The French and Indian War, which lasted from 1754 through 1763, was part of a larger global conflict, and put two of the world’s superpowers, France and Great Britain, against one another in their colonial empires.

It was an expensive fight, and one the British believed the colonists should help finance.

That tension, with the colonists chafing under British demands and the British infuriated by what they saw as ingratitude from the colonists, would simmer for years before finally boiling over in the 1770s.

After the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British government was in need of money, and believed the colonies should help bear the burden, because much of the war had been fought in those colonies.

The 1764 Sugar Act and the 1765 Stamp Act are two of the most infamous taxes from that period, and were the subject of immediate outrage and widespread resistance.

To get goods the British were heavily taxing, smuggling became a thriving industry, with prominent merchants like John Hancock working to evade taxes.

The widespread resistance to taxes and laws like the Quartering Act, which required the colonies to support British troops with supplies and shelter, led to debates both in America and in Parliament.

During those debates, an Irish Member of Parliament, Isaac Barré, defended the colonists and argued they were right in their opposition.

“The people I believe are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has, but a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated; but the subject is too delicate and I will say no more,” he said.

That speech would give the name to one of the most famous organizations to come out of the Revolutionary time period.

Barré said the colonists were “sons of liberty,” and in 1765, in Boston a group formed under that name, dedicated to civil disobedience and resisting what members saw as British tyranny.

Around the same time, delegates met in New York City and produced “Declaration of Rights and Grievances,” an argument against the legality of the Stamp Act.

The document was about more than just the Stamp Act, though. Other issues raised included what allegiance colonists owed the crown, and argued no tax could be levied on the colonists unless they had representation in Parliament.

While the Sons of Liberty and the delegates who drafted the Declaration were in disagreement about the methods that should be used to resist unjust laws, both groups were unified around the cry of “No taxation without representation.”

In 1766, Parliament repealed the Stamp and Sugar acts, while also passing another act insisting on its own right to levy taxes on the colonies.

If the Sons of Liberty thought they had won, though, they were in for a surprise.

The next year, 1767, Parliament passed the Townsend Acts, which put taxes on tea, lead, glass and paint, among other items imported to the colonies.

While Parliament had believed that an import duty, rather than a tax imposed directly on the final purchaser, would be easier for the colonists to accept, outrage over the taxes was widespread.

Boycotts of all British goods soon started throughout the colonies.

And John Dickinson, a Pennsylvania lawyer who had been instrumental in the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, published “Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer,” a collection of 12 essays set up in the form of letters that argued that while Parliament could pass laws to govern the entire British Empire, only the colonies had the right to pass taxes on themselves.

Dickinson’s letters were reprinted widely and became the one of the most influential Revolutionary texts until Thomas Paine published “Common Sense” nearly a decade later.

Another founding father, Samuel Adams, also wrote a public letter, known as the Massachusetts Circular Letter, that argued the Townsend Acts were unconstitutional.

When the Massachusetts Assembly endorsed the letter, the royal governor ordered them to reverse their decision. When the Legislature refused, he dissolved the body in July 1768.

But as he was doing that, other colonial assemblies were endorsing the letter, as well.

While the governor and the Assembly were in a standoff in Boston, another spark was thrown when British customs officials seized Hancock’s ship, Liberty, accusing him of smuggling. A riot broke out, and in response, the British sent a huge warship to control Boston harbor.

The Liberty wasn’t done causing trouble yet, though. The British refitted the ship and used it to patrol off the coast of Rhode Island for smugglers.

In February 1769, the ship caught two vessels and towed them back to harbor.

In response, a mob seized the ship, scuttled it and then set it ablaze.

As 1770 dawned, the unrest in the colonies continued to spread, and British authorities began to turn to force in response.

In New York City, in January 1770, a group of British soldiers were trying to post handbills criticizing the Sons of Liberty when they were stopped by a crowd who took several captive and began to march them toward the mayor’s office.

Other soldiers tried to assist but were ordered back to their barracks. On their way they encountered a mob, and a bloody battle that left multiple people on both sides wounded ensued.

Weeks later, in February, a crowd in Boston attacked the shop of a loyalist merchant and were disbursed by the customs agent, Ebenezer Richardson.

Soon after, a mob gathered outside Richardson’s home. He fired into the crowd and struck 11-year-old Christopher Seider, who died the next day. His funeral was a massive affair.

Seider is often called the first casualty of the American Revolution, and he’d be quickly followed by more.

Less than two weeks after Seider was shot, a British officer found himself in an altercation with a 13-year-old apprentice when another soldier, this one a private, stepped in and hit the boy on the head with his musket. The boy’s cry of pain drew a friend, and the growing fight attracted passersby.

White was using his musket to hold the growing crowd at bay when one person in the crowd warned him that he’d be killed if he fired.

Bells started ringing and more and more people came to the scene, as did a force of eight more British soldiers, including British Capt. Thomas Preston.

Preston, too, was warned that if his men fired, they’d be killed by the mob, and he said he already understood that.

Preston ordered his men to load their muskets and the crowd to disperse. Instead, the crowd continued to taunt the soldiers, daring them to fire and throwing snowballs, ice, oyster shells and rocks.

One of the soldiers was knocked down by something the crowd threw and dropped his weapon. He retrieved it, stood back up, pointed the weapon at the crowd and fired.

After a pause, the rest of the soldiers opened fire, despite Preston never having given the order to do so. The shots struck 11 people, killing five: Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Crispus Attucks, Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr.

While the mob didn’t attack the soldiers, it didn’t disperse either, despite Preston calling in more soldiers.

It took a promise from acting Gov. Thomas Hutchinson that there would be a fair inquiry into the shooting for the crowd to eventually agree to break up.

The soldier were arrested and charged with murder, and in the meantime, two competing narratives emerged. One said the soldiers were bloodthirsty and firing on unarmed civilians with no provocation, while the other said mob violence and the colonists’ denial of Parliament’s authority to levy taxes caused the incident.

At the trial of the soldiers, founding father John Adams, a Boston attorney, served on the defense team.

Of the nine, seven were acquitted and two were found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder and were branded.

Adams said several years later that the trial had caused him anxiety.

“It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country,” he said.

While troops had been withdrawn from Boston in the immediate aftermath of what would become known as the Boston Massacre, the British had no intention on giving up using their standing army in the colonies.

One of the Townsend Acts placed heavy import duties on tea, which led to smuggling.

According to some estimates, nearly 1 million pounds of tea were smuggled into the colonies annually, almost twice as much as was purchased legally.

At the same time, the British East India Company, which relied on the tea trade for its revenue, hit difficult times.

British officials saw a chance to handle several problems at once. The 1773 Tea Act barred the importation of tea into the colonies by anyone but the British East India Company while also lowering the duties charged on that tea.

The idea was British tea, which was better quality, would be more appealing when it was cheaper, but the Townsend Act import duties were still charged, asserting Parliament’s right to tax the colonies.

The more radical colonists saw this as further proof of British tyranny, and across the colonies, ships loaded with tea from the British East India Company were sent back to Boston, a major shipping hub at the time.

In Boston, the governor refused to send the ships loaded with tea away, but the colonists prevented the tea from being unloaded from the ships.

On Dec. 16, 1773, after a raucous meeting where it became clear the British authorities would soon unload the tea over the colonists’ objections, members of the Sons of Liberty disguised themselves as Native Americans and boarded the ships in Boston Harbor that held the tea.

A group of as many as 130 methodically destroyed more than 90,000 pounds of tea, worth a little less than $1.8 million in today’s money.

The reaction in Britain was nearly unanimous outrage at the destruction of property.

Many in the colonies were in agreement, though. Boston silversmith Paul Revere made a somewhat less famous ride between his home and New York City to deliver word of what had happened.

A newspaper report said New Yorkers, “highly extolled the Bostonians” in the wake of the Tea Party.

Other Boston patriots, like Samuel Adams, who was suspected of being an organizer of the event at the time, argued the act was measured and targeted.

In Britain, however, no one was defending the colonists.

The feeling was that something had to be done. Lord Frederick North, the prime minister, summed up the feeling when he said, “Whatever may be the consequence, we must risk something; if we do not, all is over.”

Within months of the Boston Tea Party, Parliament took action by passing four acts in response to the destruction of property. Three of them, the Boston Port, Massachusetts Government and Impartial Administration of Justice acts, applied only in Massachusetts. They closed Boston Harbor, revoked the colony’s royal charter, placing it under direct British control, and allowed royal officials accused of crimes in Massachusetts to be tried in Britain. The fourth, the Quartering Act, applied to all 13 colonies and allowed royal governors to billet troops in buildings if the colonial government didn’t provide accommodations.

Reaction in the colonies was as quick and as negative as the response in Britain had been to the Boston Tea Party.

Richard Henry Lee of Virginia called the acts, “a most wicked System for destroying the liberty of America.”

In September 1774, the First Continental Congress convened and issued a declaration affirming the rights of the colonists.

Two of the most important documents the congress produced were the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress and the Petition to the King.

The declaration asserted that colonists had every right that English people did, including the right to be represented when taxed.

One part of the declaration reads: “That the foundation of English Liberty, and of all free Government, is a right in the people to participate in their Legislative Council: and as the English Colonists are not represented, and from their local and other circumstances cannot be properly represented in the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several Provincial Legislatures …”

The Petition to the King asked King George III to repeal the Townsend Acts, something he didn’t have the power to do by that time in British history.

As 1775 dawned, tensions continued to rise in the colonies. Massachusetts in particular was a hotbed of resistance, with militias forming in small towns.

One of those towns was Salem, Mass., and in February 1775, a group of British soldiers were sent to Salem to seize a store of gunpowder and other military equipment.

A standoff ensued, with the eventual result that the British were allowed to enter the town, but that they would abandon the search for weapons and march off.

The very next day, in England, Parliament would pass a resolution that offered colonies who agreed to contribute to defense would be exempt from all taxes except import duties, and the proceeds from those would be returned to the colony.

The Conciliatory Resolution, as it came to be known, wouldn’t arrive in time.

While that resolution was en route, another set of troops were sent to a different set of towns in Massachusetts to seize gunpowder and weapons.

They landed on April 18, 1775, and set off for Lexington and Concord, two villages near Boston.

Revere would make his much more famous ride that night, alerting patriots along his route that British soldiers were on their way.

They prepared, and around sunrise on April 19, 1775, at Lexington, Mass., the militia encountered the redcoats. The two sides exchanged fire and eight militia members were killed, with another 10 wounded, while only one British soldier was wounded.

The militia withdrew and the British split into several smaller companies and advanced toward Concord, Mass.

A few hours after the first encounter, 100 British soldiers encountered 400 or so militia members and the two sides again exchanged fire.

The British withdrew and joined the rest of their compatriots and eventually returned to Boston without having found much military equipment.

But what was supposed to be a routine seizure of weapons turned into what generations of school children in the U.S. would learn to call the “Shot Heard ’Round the World.”

The British authorities in Massachusetts were furious and in response, blockaded Boston Harbor.

Many of the leaders among the colonists understood the importance of the moment. John Adams and Thomas Paine both believed the fight had severed the bond between England and the colonies.

George Washington, the man who would do more than anyone to win independence for the colonies, wrote to a friend after hearing the news.

“The once-happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched in blood or inhabited by slaves,” he wrote. “Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?”

A little less than a month after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress met for the first time.

The meeting had been planned since the First Continental Congress met the year before, as a way to handle the response the British had to colonists’ demands.

In the meantime, however, war had broken out. The Second Continental Congress quickly became the de facto government for the colonies. By June, Congress had created the Continental Army, and made George Washington its commander.

The colonists began to blockade Boston to keep the British soldiers from leaving the city. As part of that effort, a group of more than 1,000 militia members occupied Bunker and Breed’s hills in Charlestown.

They set up fortified positions, and on June 17, 1775, the British attacked, hoping to gain control of Boston Harbor.

The colonial forces were able to repulse two attacks by the redcoats, but were finally driven to retreat after a third assault.

Despite the British having a slight numerical advantage, with 3,000 troops to the 2,400 or so the colonists had, they took very high casualties. More than a third of the British troops were either killed or wounded during the fighting, while fewer than a quarter of the Americans were killed, wounded or captured.

The news of the costly victory further infuriated the British government and resulted in the Declaration of Rebellion, where King George III declared everyone who sided with those who’d taken up arms were in open rebellion against the crown.

By early 1776, more and more people were calling for full independence from Britain.

And in January, a pamphlet would be published that would do more than nearly anything else to sway opinion over to independence. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” was published in January and was nearly an instant hit, selling 500,000 copies at a time when the colonial population was just 2.5 million, making it the bestselling book in American history to date.

While many, including fellow Founding Fathers, had criticism for the form of government Paine advocated in the pamphlet, the idea that the colonies needed to free themselves from the tyranny of the British became more and more widespread.

On June 7, 1776, more than a year after the first shots were fired, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a resolution in the Second Continental Congress that Congress should declare independence from Britain, form foreign alliances, and prepare a plan of colonial confederation. John Adams of Massachusetts seconded it and a committee made up of Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Livingston and Roger Sherman were tasked with drafting a document declaring independence.

Between June 11 and June 28, 1776, Jefferson toiled in a room in Philadelphia, drafting what would become the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1776, after days of debate and revisions to the Declaration, Congress voted to declare independence and adopt the Declaration.

It was signed Aug. 2, 1776.

The Americans went into the signing of the Declaration of Independence on something of a high note. After nearly a yearlong siege, the Americans had driven the British out of Boston in March 1776.

But the advantage in both numbers and training the British held would make things difficult for the Continental Army in 1776.

The first major engagement after the Declaration of Independence was the Battle of Long Island, in August 1776.

Washington had moved his army to New York City after the British evacuated Boston in March, hoping to keep control of the city’s essential harbor.

The British saw the strategic necessity of controlling New York, though, and prepared an invasion in the summer of 1776.

By the end of August, 15,000 redcoats and 5,000 German mercenaries had landed on Long Island, compared with a force of fewer than 7,000 Americans.

The American forces were eventually surrounded, and Washington withdrew to Manhattan. He’d soon be forced to retreat through New Jersey into Pennsylvania, and the British would hold New York City for the remainder of the war.

For the rest of the fall and into the winter, the Americans would be beaten and chased by the British. Things were getting desperate and after 18 months, the enlistment terms for Washington’s soldiers were coming to an end.

Finally, on the day after Christmas, their fortune’s changed.

Washington led his army across the Delaware River and attacked a garrison at Trenton, N.J., taking them by surprise and capturing 1,000 German mercenaries.

It was a much needed victory, but it didn’t turn the tide yet. For much of 1777, the Americans were handed defeat after defeat at the hands of the British, but Washington managed to extricate his forces in every case.

Still, the Americans were losing ground. In September 1777, the Americans and British met at the Battle of Brandywine and the British were victorious, allowing them to capture Philadelphia days later.

Around the same time farther to the north, the Americans defeated the British at the Second Battle of Saratoga, forcing British Gen. John Burgoyne to surrender. That victory would convince the French government that the Americans were a force worth supporting, and in 1778, they would ally with the Americans.

Starting in December 1777, Washington quartered his troops at Valley Forge, near Philadelphia, for the winter. While dealing with major supply shortages, Washington used the winter to drill and train the Continental Army to become a fighting force that could consistently stand up to the British.

Before the encampment ended, the alliance with France had been signed and official military aid from abroad began.

The addition of France to the war and, soon after, Spain, which never allied with the Americans but did offer support, had a larger effect.

With three global superpowers involved in the war, the theaters expanded. French and Spanish attacks on British colonies gave the Americans much needed breathing room.

By the middle of 1778, the Americans had driven the British out of Philadelphia, at which point the British strategy changed.

Understanding the economic importance of the Southern colonies, the British began to focus their efforts in that direction. In December 1778, the British captured Savannah, Ga., launching an attempt to control the South.

They would make progress, but in 1781, the defeat at Yorktown essentially ended the war, making independence finally a realty, after decades of unrest, upheaval and rebellion.