单选题 . 
    When the French and Indian War concluded in 1763, the result was an overwhelming British victory over the French that resulted in the losers being driven from most of their North American colonies. The British government, for its part, was left deeply in debt. After the hostilities ended, the British Parliament enacted several new tax laws intended to raise revenue from Britain's American colonies to pay for the war. The American colonists had no voice in Parliament to speak for or against these laws, so the end result was that they developed strong, negative reactions to what they termed "taxation without representation." The colonists accordingly opposed the taxes, and their protests escalated to violence and were ultimately a leading cause of the American Revolution.
    Four main taxes created tension in the colonies: the Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townsend Acts of 1767, and the Tea Act of 1773. The first, the Sugar Act, was enacted to prevent the smuggling of molasses. Under the Molasses Act of 1733, colonists had to pay a duty of six pence per gallon of molasses. Yet customs officials routinely accepted bribes of around one and a half pence per gallon and permitted the molasses to be shipped untaxed. The Sugar Act actually reduced the duty to three pence, but the colonists still refused to pay it. Only when it was lowered to one pence in 1766 did it become cheaper to pay the duty than the bribes. The British government subsequently received around 30,000 pounds of revenue per year—a relatively small amount of money—from the molasses trade.
    The main effect of the Sugar Act was to make the colonists wonder if the British had the right to interfere in their affairs, particularly in matters of trade. Nevertheless, the Sugar Act was not widely protested because it primarily affected those involved in trade and shipping. The same cannot be said of the Stamp Act, which had a wide-ranging effect on every colony. It mandated that many documents the colonists used, especially those related to legal affairs and publishing, could only be written on paper with a crown revenue stamp on it. Essentially, the colonists had to buy special paper from the British government at a higher price than normal paper. Regarding this as a direct form of taxation, the colonists protested the act so vigorously that it was repealed in 1766.
    Despite this setback, the British government was determined to extract revenue from the colonies. The Townsend Acts were designed to tax a wide variety of imported items to raise money to pay the salaries of government officials in the colonies. Once again, however, the colonists objected as they believed that British control of American colonial government officials' salaries would result in more widespread British influence in the colonies. After extensive American boycotts of British goods, the acts were repealed in 1770 except for a tax on tea. This, in turn, led to the Tea Act, which was an attempt by the British government to bestow a monopoly on the sale of tea in the colonies to the East India Company. Among the most famous reactions to this law happened on the night of December 16, 1773. American colonists dressed as Indians stormed on board British ships in Boston Harbor and cast their cargoes of tea into the water in what came to be known as the Boston Tea Party.
    The opposite perceptions each side had of the role of the colonists in the British Empire were the root cause of the difficulties between the opposing sides. To the British, it appeared reasonable to tax the colonists to pay for the war that drove the encroaching French out of North America. The colonists were also part of the global British Empire and had always been regarded as a support system for the motherland. But by the 1760s, the American colonies had existed for nearly 150 years and had attained a high level of autonomy. Though the colonies still belonged to the British Empire, many colonists considered themselves Americans rather than British. This was a recipe for trouble when the British began making demands the colonists thought unreasonable, so this eventually led to the American Revolution and the founding of a new nation.
    *Glossary
    molasses: a thick syrup made by refining sugar
    bribe: money paid to a person such as a public official for the purpose of evading the law
    crown: referring to the sovereign power of a monarchy1. 
    When the French and Indian War concluded in 1763, the result was an overwhelming British victory over the French that resulted in the losers being driven from most of their North American colonies. The British government, for its part, was left deeply in debt. After the hostilities ended, the British
    Parliament enacted several new tax laws intended to raise revenue from Britain's American colonies to pay for the war. The American colonists had no voice in Parliament to speak for or against these laws, so the end result was that they developed strong, negative reactions to what they termed "taxation without representation." The colonists accordingly opposed the taxes, and their protests escalated to violence and were ultimately a leading cause of the American Revolution.
    The word overwhelming in the passage is closest in meaning to ______