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Approximately $1.7 million
- Today’s estimated value of the 342 chests of tea dumped in Boston Harbor in 1773 is approximately $1.7 million.
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May 5, 2021 · How much was the tea worth? According to the Boston Tea Party Museum's website , the British East India Company reported £9,659 worth of damage resulting from the protest. This is the modern equivalent of $1.7 million.
the value of the tea thrown into the sea at Boston in 1773 is estimated at 18 thousand pounds sterling, at eighteen pence per pound. Given that a pound sterling was equivalent to 240 pence this estimate apparently assumes 240,000 pounds of tea.
Nov 24, 2023 · Definition. The Boston Tea Party was an act of political protest carried out by American colonists on 16 December 1773, in Boston, Massachusetts. Disguised as Mohawk Native Americans, the colonists dumped 342 crates of tea into Boston Harbor to protest both a tax on tea and the monopoly of the British East India Company on the tea trade.
- What was the Boston Tea Party?The Boston Tea Party was a protest against British taxation, carried out by Bostonian colonists on 16 December 1773. The colonists, some of whom we...
- When was the Boston Tea Party?The Boston Tea Party took place on 16 December 1773 in the lead-up to the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783).
- Why did the colonists dump tea during the Boston Tea Party?During the Boston Tea Party, the colonists dumped tea into Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act of 1773, which had given the British East India Com...
- What groups were involved with the Boston Tea Party?The Boston Tea Party was committed by Bostonians associated with the Sons of Liberty, while the tea that was destroyed was owned by the British Eas...
- Overview
- British taxation policies
- The Boston Tea Party
- The British empire strikes back
- What do you think?
After Parliament passed the Tea Act, American colonists reacted with a tea party of their own.
After the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, the British Empire was in financial distress. Though the British had won the war, they had spent vast amounts of blood and treasure in the process. At the end of the war, the British Parliament sought to replenish its depleted coffers by taxing the North American colonies.1
When the British Prime Minister, Lord North, proposed the Tea Act in May 1773, he was not even thinking of the North American colonies, but rather of the East India Company, which had assumed control over India. In exchange for the power to appoint its governors, North loaned the company £1.5 million—the equivalent of about $270 million today.2 North also granted the company a monopoly on the right to sell tea in the North American colonies.
As the British authorized the shipment of thousands of pounds of tea to its colonies in North America—Boston, Charleston, New York City, and Philadelphia—colonial tea merchants protested.
In Boston, Governor Thomas Hutchinson, a pro-British Loyalist, demanded that the ships be allowed to dock and that colonial merchants pay the duties on the cargo. Boston was the center of colonial revolutionary fervor, and its radicals did not take kindly to Hutchinson’s demands. The Sons of Liberty, a secret society formed by radical colonists to protest British taxation policies after the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, spearheaded the opposition to the Tea Act.3
On December 16, 1773 at Griffin’s Wharf, a group of approximately 50 Bostonians disguised as Native Americans boarded the ships Beaver, Dartmouth, and Eleanor, and proceeded to dump 342 crates of tea into the Boston harbor. In doing so, they destroyed almost 10 thousand pounds sterling worth of tea—worth about $1.7 million today—that belonged to the British East India Company. The incident, referred to at the time by John Adams as the Destruction of the Tea, would not become known as the Boston Tea Party for another fifty years.4
Paul Revere carried the news of the destruction of the tea to New York, which in turn refused to allow the British ships to unload. In Philadelphia, as well, townspeople gathered to turn the British ships away from harbor. In Charleston, the ship was docked, but customs officials seized the cargo.
Instead of reforming their tax policies or accommodating the demands of the colonists, the British responded to the incident by passing the Coercive Acts, which shut down Boston’s port, modified the charter of Massachusetts—effectively shutting down the colony’s legislative assembly—and sent British troops under General Thomas Gage to occupy Boston.5
Gage was appointed governor, with broadly expanded powers to appoint local sheriffs, lodge troops in private homes, and deny townspeople permission to hold meetings. In response, the colonies called for a continental congress. The First Continental Congress convened in the autumn of 1774 and approved a general boycott of British goods. The stage was set for the ultimate showdown between the British and the colonies in the American War for Independence.
How would you describe British tax policies in the colonies?
How important do you think the Boston Tea Party was in the ultimate outbreak of war between Britain and its North American colonies?
Why do you think the British refused to back down in the face of opposition to its policies?
[Notes and attributions]
Dec 14, 2023 · The Boston Tea Party had very little do with tax hikes. And despite the name, it wasn't a party. ... As word spread about the 92,616 pounds of tea that were destroyed — worth more than $1.5 ...
- Gabrielle Emanuel
How much tea was destroyed and what would it be worth today? Participants in the tea party destroyed 340 chests of tea on the night of December 16, 1773. This amounted to more than 46 tons of tea leaves. Such an amount could have brewed 18,523,000 cups of tea! The East India Company reported losses of £9,659 after the Boston Tea Party.
Dec 15, 2023 · Two and a half centuries later, the act of destruction in question—a December 16, 1773, political protest in which hundreds of men threw more than 90,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor—is ...
