These dice are made of bone (likely cow or whale) and bear the stamp of King George III, which definitively identifies this die as being from the year 1765.
The Stamp Act
The Stamp Act of 1765 was ratified by the British parliament under King George III. It imposed a tax on all papers and official documents in the American colonies, though not in England. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source.
The colonists may well have accepted the stamp tax had it been imposed by their own representatives and with their consent. However, the colonists’ emerging sense of independence nurtured by the mother country and justified by their multiple interactions with other trading nations, heightened the colonists’ sense of indignation and feelings of injustice.
Few colonists believed that they could do anything more than grumble and buy the stamps until the Virginia House of Burgesses adopted Patrick Henry’s Stamp Act Resolves. These resolves declared that Americans possessed the same rights as the English, especially the right to be taxed only by their own representatives; that Virginians should pay no taxes except those voted by the Virginia House of Burgesses; and that anyone supporting the right of Parliament to tax Virginians should be considered an enemy of the colony.
Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, but issued a Declaratory Act at the same time to reaffirm its authority to pass any colonial legislation it saw fit. The issues of taxation and representation raised by the Stamp Act strained relations with the colonies to the point that, ten years later, the colonists rose in armed rebellion against the British.
About this piece
Playing dice were the only non-paper item listed under the Stamp Act of 1765 and were taxed at a rate of ten shillings.
These dice are made of bone (likely cow or whale) and bear the stamp of King George III, which definitively identifies this die as being from the year 1765.