Boston Tea Party

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 colonists, disguised as Mohawk Indians, boarded British ships and threw 342 chests of tea owned by the East India Company into the water. It was a protest about the tax on tea, levied without representation in the British Parliament and against the monopoly of the East India Company.

The earlier Townshend Acts placed duties on a range of imports to the colonies. These had been repealed; however, the tax on tea remained. A Tea Act was passed in the spring of 1773 to help the East India Company, which faced financial difficulties, and enabled its control of the trade in tea. To further assert its authority over the colonies, and in response to the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament passed several acts known as the Coercive Acts. To the colonists, these became known as the Intolerable Acts and paved the way for further resistance and the American Revolution.

Use the documents in this lesson to explore context for the Boston Tea Party and see what some of the documents from the British side reveal about this event and beyond.