The immediate reason of the war of independence was the use of tallow-greased cartridges and misbehaving with Indian soldiers.
The War of Independence, also known as the American Revolution and the Revolutionary War, was fought from 1775 to 1783 between Great Britain and the 13 British colonies in North America. The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, gave the 13 colonies political independence and led to the formation of the United States of America.
The war had its roots in the growing economic power of the colonies and the limited political freedom granted by Great Britain to the colonists for managing their affairs. Acts of British Parliament in the 1760s that imposed taxes and import duties on the colonies increased these tensions.
he British victory in the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years' War (1756–63), removed France as a power in North America, yet the costs of the war were staggering for Great Britain. Faced with a large national debt, Parliament passed the Molasses Act and the Sugar Act in 1764, which imposed a duty on molasses and sugar imported by the colonies. The Stamp Act of 1765 taxed papers such as legal documents, newspapers, and almanacs. The Quartering Act indirectly taxed the colonists by requiring them to house, feed, and supply British troops.
American colonists reacted angrily to these tax measures, believing that it was unfair of Great Britain to subject them to taxation when the colonies had no representation in Parliament. British leaders repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, but the following year Parliament passed the townshend act, which imposed a series of new taxes on goods arriving at American ports. The new taxes were designed to pay the salaries of royal governors and other colonial appointees of Britain's King George III. The Townshend Act also restructured the customs service in the colonies, placing its headquarters in Boston.
The Townshend Act evoked more protests from the colonists. Groups such as the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty organized protests against customs officials and boycotts of taxed goods. Merchants agreed not to sell imported goods.
British customs agents in Boston extorted money and seized American ships with little justification, leading to a riot in March 1770. The British troops, popularly known as redcoats because of their red uniforms, fired on the crowd, killing five people. The episode became known as the boston massacre.
Great Britain again reacted to economic pressure by removing most of the Townshend Act taxes. A notable exception was the tax on tea, which remained a symbol of Parliament's authority to tax colonists. In 1773 Britain tried to save the financially troubled British East India Company by passing the Tea Act, which lowered the tax on tea shipped by the company to the colonies, giving the company an edge over tea smugglers. The colonists responded by refusing to buy English tea and refusing to allow it to be unloaded from British ships. In Boston protesters dressed as American Indians dumped crates of tea into the water, and the event came to be known as the Boston Tea Party