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23 set 2019 · Tells the story of the Boston Tea Party of 1773 from the arrival of the ships full of controversial taxed tea in Boston Harbor, through the explosive protest meetings at the Old South Church, to the defiant act of dumping 226 chests of fine tea into the harbor on December 16.
- WIKIPEDIA Coordinates: 42.3536°N 71.0524°W Boston Tea Party - Archive.org
Boston Tea Party The Boston Tea Party was a political and...
- WIKIPEDIA Coordinates: 42.3536°N 71.0524°W Boston Tea Party - Archive.org
The Boston Tea party marked a critical moment in the history of the American Revolution as an act of colonial defiance against British rule. In Boston harbour, on 16 December 1773, American...
DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE BOSTON TEA PARTY. Part 1: NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS. From the Boston Post-Boy, November 16, 1767: Address to the Ladies.
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- 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]
Boston Tea Party The Boston Tea Party was a political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773.4] The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from
The Boston Tea Party began on November 28, 1773, when the Dartmouth sailed into Boston Harbor, carrying 114 chests of East India Company tea. Most Bostonians agreed that the tea must not be allowed to land, since the unpopular tax would be paid the moment the tea was offloaded onto the wharf at Boston Harbor.
The Boston Tea Party. FROM THE MASSACHUSETTS GAZETTE (1773) WHILE a public meeting was being held, to protest against the tea ships, a number of brave and resolute men, dressed in the Indian manner, approached near the door of the assembly.
