It’s Tuesday, and that means another ​Excursions​ essay from George H. Smith. This week, Smith looks an under-appreciated but key link in the chain that lead to revolution.

The Boston Tea Party has often been called a pivotal event that led to the American Revolution, but it would be more accurate to say that the British response was the true catalyst.

Beginning in March 1774, in retaliation for the destruction of tea in Boston Harbor, Parliament passed four pieces of legislation known as the Coercive Acts. (Some historians include a fifth, The Quebec Act, among the Coercive Acts, but this had been in the works for some time and was not a direct response to the Boston Tea Party.) These measures, which many Americans called the Intolerable Acts, amounted to a declaration of martial law in Boston. They left Americans with no plausible course of action between the extremes of total submission and revolution.

Read it here.