Search results
The Intolerable Acts, also known as the Coercive Acts, were a series of controversial laws passed in the Thirteen Colonies in America by the British parliament. In this guide, we’ve explained what the Intolerable Acts did, and how colonists reacted to the new laws.
- Overview
- Coercive Acts Target Boston
- Coercive Acts Lead to Boycott Against Britain
- HISTORY Vault: The Revolution
As colonists grew increasingly defiant, the British government responded with punishing measures that only angered them more.
In 1774, the British Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, a group of measures primarily intended to punish Boston for rebellion against the British government—namely, the Boston Tea Party. However, the impact of these acts stretched far beyond Massachusetts.
The four acts, along with the Quebec Act, became known as the Intolerable Acts among the 13 colonies. The punitive measures marked a major turning point in the conflict between the British government and the colonies and helped set the two sides on the path to the Revolutionary War.
Tea Act
Boston was the focal point of colonial rebellion when Britain passed the Coercive Acts in 1774. In December 1773, colonists dumped British tea into the Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act, which had made taxed British tea as cheap or cheaper than the untaxed and illegally imported Dutch tea that many colonists bought and preferred.
The Coercive Act that most directly responded to the Boston Tea Party was the Boston Port Bill. With this, the British Parliament announced that it was closing Boston Harbor until the city paid for the wasted tea. In addition to this, the Massachusetts Government Act drastically reduced the number of local town hall meetings that communities could hold each year. Though Britain passed the act to punish Boston, it affected all of Massachusetts, and many property-holding white men throughout the colony saw this as a major threat to their local governments and autonomy.
Next were the Administration of Justice Act and the Quartering Act. Though these two acts could potentially apply to any of the 13 colonies, the British Parliament was specifically targeting Boston when it passed them.
The Administration of Justice Act said that British officials accused of capital crimes in the 13 colonies could be tried in Britain. Those in the colonies saw this as a way of protecting soldiers like the ones who killed colonists during the Boston Massacre of 1770, leading some to call it the “Murder Act.”
A 1774 cartoon by Paul Revere depicts Lord North, with the Boston Port Bill extending from a pocket, forcing tea (the Intolerable Acts) down the throat of a female figure representing America.
In the 13 colonies, the Coercive Acts and the 1774 Quebec Act became known as the Intolerable Acts. The Quebec Act was a separate measure that claimed all territory between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers for Quebec, one of Britain's many other North American colonies. Though not intended as a punitive measure, the act angered land speculators in the 13 colonies who wanted to claim more western territory.
Even though most of these acts were meant to punish Boston, colonists outside of Massachusetts worried that if the British Parliament could close down one colony’s port and restrict its local governments, Parliament could potentially do the same to the other 12 colonies, too.
“Parliament’s Coercive Acts led all of the colonies, except for Georgia, to unite behind Massachusetts and boycott trade,” says Woody Holton, a history professor at the University of South Carolina and the author of Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution.
From the roots of the rebellion to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, explore this pivotal era in American history through sweeping cinematic recreations.
WATCH NOW
Many of the Founding Fathers, including George Washington, opposed the Coercive Acts but still wished to remain part of the British Empire. What they took issue with wasn’t the empire itself but Parliament’s treatment of the colonies, sometimes making egregious comparisons between this and their own treatment of enslaved people.
“For my own part, I shall not undertake to say where the line between Great Britain and the Colonies should be drawn, but I am clearly of the opinion that one ought to be drawn,” Washington wrote in a letter shortly before the First Continental Congress. If not, he wrote that Britain “will make us as tame, & abject Slaves, as the Blacks we Rule over with such arbitrary Sway.”
Rather than rallying colonists to declare independence, the Coercive Acts made prominent colonists ask, “What are terms under which the colonists can stay in the empire?” says Alan Taylor, a history professor at the University of Virginia and author of American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804.
“What the Coercive Acts do is they make it much more unlikely that there will be a compromise,” Taylor says. “The Coercive Acts raise the stakes of this confrontation in a dramatic new way, and they make it much more likely that there will be a war.”
- Becky Little
- 4 min
Jan 28, 2022 · Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party by passing four acts, known as the Coercive Acts, that were aimed at punishing the town of Boston and the colony of Massachusetts, along with a fifth act that was meant to appease the French inhabitants of the Province of Quebec.
- Randal Rust
Sep 28, 2023 · The Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, were five laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774, which prompted the calling of the First Continental Congress.
- Harry Searles
In the United States, debt bondage was a common means by which southern farmers kept a labor force of African American people and poor White people at their disposal. It also trapped many Asian laborers who immigrated to South America, even after their contracts had expired.
How have unfree people and coerced workers navigated, collaborated with, and resisted these systems? And how have individual and community efforts at liberation contributed to modern ideas of citizenship, equality, and human rights? We'll explore these and other questions over three days of presentations and discussion.
People also ask
What were the Coercive Acts?
How did the Coercive Acts affect democracy?
How did the Coercive Acts affect Quebec?
How did the Coercive Acts affect Boston?
Right after passing the Coercive Acts, it passed the Quebec Act, a law that recognized the Roman Catholic Church as the established church in Quebec. An appointed council, rather than an elected body, would make the major decisions for the colony.
