The Intolerable Acts were punitive (given as a punishment) laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest. The Tea Party protest had been a reaction to unfair changes in taxation by the British government. In Great Britain, these laws were referred to as the Coercive Acts.
The acts took away self-governance and rights that Massachusetts had enjoyed since its founding, bringing outrage and anger in the Thirteen Colonies. The Intolerable Acts were part of the colonist's reasons for beginning the American Revolutionary War in April 1775.
Four of the acts were issued in direct response to the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773. The British Parliament hoped to make an example of Massachusetts and bring an end to the resistance to their authority that had begun when they enacted the 1764 Sugar Act. A fifth act, the Quebec Act, was passed in the same legislative session and therefore seen by the colonists as one of the Intolerable acts. The Patriots viewed the acts as a violation of the rights of Massachusetts, and in September 1774 they organized the First Continental Congress to organize a protest. As tensions grew, the American Revolutionary War broke out in April 1775, leading to the declaration of an independent United States of America in July 1776.
Relations between the Thirteen Colonies and the British Parliament slowly but steadily worsened after the end of the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War) in 1763. The war was expensive to the British government, so the British Parliament looked for ways to increase tax revenue from the colonies to pay for it. Parliament believed that acts such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 were a legal way to have the colonies pay their share of the costs of maintaining the British Empire. Although protests led to the repeal (reversal) of the Stamp and Townshend Acts, Parliament stuck to the position that it had the right to make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever" in the Declaratory Act of 1766.
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