Intolerable Acts

Audience

Although the clear target of the Intolerable Acts was Boston and Massachusetts Bay, the audience of the legislation included every potential radical or oppositional figure in the British world. The dramatic alteration of the Massachusetts charter and constitution, for example, was a deliberate display of the supremacy of Parliament within the British Empire, a serious lesson to be learned by all of the colonies, from Ireland to Barbados. Should the legislation succeed in bringing Boston to heel, no disaffected upstarts, especially those in the ostensibly self-reliant polities on the Atlantic seaboard, could legitimately claim sovereignty and authority derived from any source outside of Westminster.