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Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was an act of political protest carried out by American colonists on 16 December 1773, in Boston, Massachusetts. Disguised as Mohawk Native Americans, the colonists dumped 342 crates of tea into Boston Harbor to protest...
Definition
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman and political thinker. His most famous work is Reflections on the Revolution in France a critique of the social and political turmoil in that country in the final decade of the 18th century...
Definition
John Hancock
John Hancock (1737-1793) was a merchant, politician, and Founding Father of the United States, who helped lead the Patriot movement during the American Revolution (1765-1789). He served as president of the Second Continental Congress from...
Definition
Social Contract
The social contract is an idea in philosophy that at some real or hypothetical point in the past, humans left the state of nature to join together and form societies by mutually agreeing which rights they would enjoy and how they would be...
Definition
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an Anglo-American Enlightenment thinker whose radical ideas were taken up by revolutionaries in both the American Revolution (1765-1783) and the French Revolution (1789-1799). A Founding Father through his influence...
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The Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes: The Sovereign and the State
We all live in states today, and Thomas Hobbes has a good claim to have been the first person to articulate this concept in its modern sense. The intention of Hobbes’s civil science was to lower the temperature of politics, and his concept...
Definition
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts, also known as the Coercive Acts, were five laws passed by the Parliament of Great Britain in 1774 to punish the Thirteen Colonies of British North America for the Boston Tea Party. Though the acts primarily targeted...
Definition
Mercy Otis Warren
Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) was an American poet, playwright, and activist during the era of the American Revolution (1765-1789). Through her works of political satire, she advocated for the Patriot cause and became acquainted with several...
Definition
Gaspee Affair
The Gaspee Affair was an incident that occurred on 10 June 1772, when a group of American colonists from Rhode Island seized and burned the Royal Navy schooner HMS Gaspee after it had run aground. The affair contributed to the worsening of...
Definition
First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies of British North America that gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 5 September to 26 October 1774. Its primary purpose was to coordinate...