The Boston Tea Party

 

The Boston Tea Party was an event in which patriots in the American colony of Massachusetts dressed as Mohawk Indians and threw 342 chests of tea that belonged to the British East India Company into Boston Harbor. 

The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16th, 1773. 

The Boston Tea Party occurred because the colonists were upset about being taxed on tea without being allowed representation in the English government (taxation without representation). 

The taxes on tea were originally created in the Townshend Acts, which were passed by parliament in 1767. The Townshend Acts imposed taxes on various goods including tea that were imported into the American colonies from Great Britain.  The Townshend Acts were repealed in 1770 due to significant protests and noncompliance from the colonists. However, Parliament left the duty on tea. 

In 1773, Parliament also passed the Tea Act, which created a monopoly for the British East India Company in the tea market and made it impossible for the colonists to avoid the hefty tea taxes by getting tea from non-British sources. This led to a lot of anger and frustration by the colonists who did not enjoy having taxes imposed on them that they had no say over. 

 

In early December, 1773, three British ships, the Eleanor, the Dartmouth, and the Beaver arrived in Boston Harbor. A large group of Massachusetts colonists subsequently demanded that the Governor of Massachusetts at the time, Thomas Hutchinson, send the ships back to England without being able to sell their tea as a form of protest. Hutchinson refused to do this. 

So, on the night of December 16th, 1773, a group of about 60 men led by the famous Massachusetts patriot, Samuel Adams, a future Declaration of Independence signer, boarded the three ships, and dumped all of the tea that they were carrying into the harbor. The men were wearing Native American headdresses while they did this. 

The value of the tea that the men dumped in the water was around 18,000 British pounds at the time of the event. Adjusted for inflation, the value would be over $1.7 million in today’s currency. 

The British government was extremely angered by the blatant destruction of valuable British merchandise and by the complete disregard of British authority by the colonists. As a result, Parliament created the Coercive Acts, which are also known as the “Intolerable Acts” in 1774.

The Coercive Acts imposed a number of changes that were highly punitive to the Massachusetts colonists. Among these were the imposition of formal British military rule in Massachusetts, the closing of Boston Harbor to merchant shipping, the forced quartering of British soldiers by colonists, and it also made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America. 

The colonists viewed this as a significant threat to their freedom and way of life. The First Constitutional Congress was convened shortly after this on September 5th, 1774 in Philadelphia near the home of Benjamin Franklin to discuss resistance to the British. Considering the fact that the American Revolutionary War broke out the following year, the Boston Tea Party was one of the most significant events that led directly to the American Revolutionary War.