Continental Association

Continental Association
The Association adopted by the Continental Congress was published and often signed by local leaders. Thomas Jefferson, who was not yet a delegate to Congress, signed this copy (lower left) with other Virginians.
Created	October 20, 1774
Date effective	December 1, 1774
Signatories	Edward Rutledge, George Ross, Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean, George Read, Matthew Tilghman, Thomas Johnson, William Paca, John Morton, Samuel Chase, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison V, Edmund Pendleton, John Dickinson, Charles Humphreys, Thomas Mifflin, Edward Biddle, John Rutledge, Christopher Gadsden, Thomas Lynch, Henry Middleton, Richard Caswell, Peyton Randolph, John Sullivan, Nathaniel Folsom, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Stephen Hopkins, Samuel Ward, Eliphalet Dyer, Roger Sherman, Silas Deane, Isaac Low, John Alsop, John Jay, James Duane, Philip Livingston, William Floyd, Henry Wisner, Simon Boerum, James Kinsey, Robert Treat Paine, William Livingston, Stephen Crane, Richard Smith, John De Hart, Joseph Galloway, Joseph Hewes, William Hooper

The Continental Association, often known simply as the "Association", was a system created by the First Continental Congress in 1774 for implementing a trade boycott with Great Britain. Congress hoped that by imposing economic sanctions, they would pressure Great Britain into redressing the grievances of the colonies, in particular repealing the Intolerable Acts passed by the British Parliament. The Association aimed to alter Britain's policies towards the colonies without severing allegiance.

The boycott became operative on December 1, 1774. The Association was fairly successful while it lasted. Trade with Great Britain fell sharply, and the British responded with the New England Restraining Act of 1775. The outbreak of the American Revolutionary War effectively superseded the attempt to boycott British goods.

The British Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774 to reform colonial administration in British America and, in part, to punish the Province of Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party. Many American colonists saw the Coercive Acts as a violation of the British Constitution and a threat to the liberties of all of British America, not just Massachusetts. As they had done during the 1760s—most effectively during the Stamp Act crisis of 1765—colonists turned to economic boycotts to protest what they saw as unconstitutional legislation. The word boycott had not yet been coined; colonists referred to their economic protests as, depending upon the specific activity, "non-importation", "non-exportation", or "non-consumption".