The American Revolution was a political disruption, as the Thirteen American Colonies broke from the British Empire and formed the independent nation, the United States of America. Starting in 1765 the Americans rejected the authority of Parliament to tax them without elected representation. Protests escalated as in the Boston Tea Party of 1773, and the British imposed punitive laws on Massachusetts in 1774. Then in 1774 the Patriots put an end to the Loyalists and expelled all royal officials. Each colony then had their own form of government. That was when the British sent combat troops to try to regain royal control and through the Second Continental Congress, the Patriots fought the British in the American Revolutionary War of 1775 to 1783.