Boston Tea Party

The American colonists had long been resentful of British taxation policies, especially the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts. These policies imposed taxes on various goods and activities in the American colonies without colonial representation in the British Parliament, leading to the famous slogan, "No taxation without representation."

British colonists in the New World had continued their tea-drinking habit from back home. For instance, George Washington regularly breakfasted on three bowls of tea. In 1773, a significant development occurred when the British government enacted the Tea Act. This legislation bestowed upon the British East India Company the exclusive privilege of selling tea in the American colonies. Furthermore, the act permitted the company to offer any surplus tea directly to the colonies at a lowered tax rate, rendering British tea more cost-effective than illicitly imported Dutch tea. The British government's objective in implementing the Tea Act was to enhance the affordability of tea for the colonists and thereby promote their preference for purchasing it from the East India Company.

This act was seen as an attempt to bail out the struggling British East India Company and strengthen British control over colonial trade and was met with widespread opposition in the American colonies. Colonists also saw the act as a violation of their right to "no taxation without representation." 

In response to the Tea Act, colonists organized boycotts of British tea and in various cities, protests were organized to prevent the unloading and sale of the British beverage. Colonial merchants, some of them smugglers, played a significant role in the protests. Because the Tea Act made legally imported tea cheaper, it threatened to put smugglers of Dutch tea out of business.

In Boston, a group known as the Sons of Liberty, led by figures like Samuel Adams and John Hancock, was particularly active in opposing the act. On the night of December 16, 1773, a group of colonists, many of them disguised as Mohawk Indians to conceal their identities, boarded three British ships—the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver—at Griffin's Wharf in Boston Harbor. They emptied 342 tea chests into the harbor, worth a substantial amount of money, into the harbor as a protest the Tea Act and British taxation. This event became known as the Boston Tea Party.

A work of art by Nathayel Corrier entitled "Tea sabotage in Boston Port".

The Boston Tea Party destroyed an equivalent of $1.7million of tea in today's money.

The Boston Tea Party inspired five hundred Boston women whom to show how strongly they feel about the immoral English tax resolved henceforth not to use any more tea but to drink coffee instead. Word about their protest spread and the popularity of tea in America waned. Contrarily, in England to show their patriotism many loyal Englishmen drunk more tea and less coffee. 

Three months after the Boston Tea Part, in an unsuccessful little-known second protest, another 30 chests were thrown overboard. 

The British government responded to the Boston Tea Party with outrage. In 1774, they passed the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, as punitive measures against Massachusetts. These acts included the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until the destroyed tea was paid for, and other measures aimed at restricting colonial self-governance.

The Boston Tea Party marked a significant escalation in tensions between the American colonies and Great Britain, ultimately leading to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775.