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Nov 24, 2023 · 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 Company a monopoly on the American tea trade and included a Parliamentary tax; the colonists viewed this as another attempt by Britain to dominate them.
- 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).
- 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...
Apr 18, 2024 · Boston Tea Party, precursor to the American Revolution in which 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company were thrown into Boston Harbor by American patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians on December 16, 1773. They were protesting a tax on tea and the East India Company’s perceived monopoly.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Did the Boston Tea Party happen during the American Revolution?The Boston Tea Party took place on the night of December 16, 1773, a few years before the start of the American Revolution in 1775. It was an act o...
- How did the Boston Tea Party start?The passage of the Tea Act (1773) by the British Parliament gave the East India Company exclusive rights to transport tea to the colonies and empow...
- What did the Boston Tea Party lead to?The Boston Tea Party pushed Britain’s Parliament to assert its authority—and it passed the Intolerable Acts in 1774. These punitive measures includ...
by Edward St. Germain. Learn about the Boston Tea Party. Discover what happened in Boston in 1773, and find out about the aftermath and effects of the incident.
- 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]
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The Boston Tea Party was a dramatic incident in December 1773 that followed Parliament’s passing of the Tea Act, legislation designed to circumvent the colonial trade in smuggled tea. Frustrated by what they saw as another attempt to raise revenue from the colonies, gangs of Bostonians boarded cargo vessels anchored in the city’s harbour ...
A culminating event after a series of protests over various British taxes over previous years, Great Britain had introduced the Tea Act on May 10, 1773 to reassert itself as the governing authority of the American colonies and spare the East India Company from financial ruin.
Feb 15, 2020 · March 4, 2020. Why did the Boston Tea Party Occur? Who was involved? We cover these facts and more on this page on one of the most momentous events of the American Revolution. The broadside below was posted all over Boston on November 29, 1773, shortly after the arrival of three ships carrying tea owned by the East India Company.
