The Boston Tea Party was an act of protest that took place on December 16, 1773, during the American Revolution. Initiated by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, one of the Thirteen Colonies of British America, it escalated tensions between Great Britain and the Patriots, who opposed British policy towards its American colonies. Less than two years later, on April 19, 1775, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, also in Massachusetts, launched the eight-year American Revolutionary War, which resulted in the independence of the colonies as the United States.
The source of the protestors' anger was the passage of the Tea Act by the Parliament of Great Britain on May 10, 1773, which allowed the East India Company (EIC) to sell Chinese tea in the colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. The Sons of Liberty strongly opposed both the Tea Act and Townshend Acts, which they saw as a violation of their "rights as Englishmen" to no taxation without representation.
Disguised as American Indians, members of the Sons of Liberty boarded the merchantman Dartmouth on the night of December 16 after it had docked in Boston with a major shipment of EIC tea and threw 340 or 342 chests into Boston Harbor. The British government considered the protest an act of treason and responded with several punitive measures. Nine days later, on December 25, during the Philadelphia Tea Party, a group of Patriots forced the merchantmen Polly, which was transporting a shipment of tea, to return to England without unloading her cargo.
Parliament responded in 1774 with the Intolerable Acts, which, among other provisions, ended local self-government in Massachusetts and closed Boston's commercial port. Colonists throughout the Thirteen Colonies responded to the Intolerable Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, which sent a Petition to the King for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them, culminating in the October 1774 Continental Association.
History
The event was initially known as "The Destruction of the Tea". The moniker "Boston Tea Party" gained popularity in the early 19th century as the event took on a legendary status in American history. The ironic name succinctly captures the combination of locality (Boston), the commodity involved (tea), and the nature of the event (a political "party" or gathering, in this case as a form of protest). The Boston Tea Party arose from two challenges confronting the British Empire, the financial problems of the British East India Company and an ongoing dispute about the extent of Parliament's authority, if any, over the British American colonies without seating any elected representation. The North Ministry's attempt to resolve these issues produced a showdown, which was a source of dispute throughout the American Revolution, leading ultimately to the associated Revolutionary War and ultimately the end of British authority in the Thirteen Colonies and the emergence of the United States as a sovereign nation. The Boston Tea Party was the second American tax revolt against the British royal authority. The first, which occurred in April 1772, in Weare, New Hampshire, was the Pine Tree Riot, in which colonists protested heavy fines levied against them for harvesting trees.
Tea trade to 1767
As Europeans developed a taste for tea in the 17th century, rival trading companies were formed to import it from China. In 1698, the English Parliament granted the East India Company a monopoly on the importation of tea. When tea became popular in the British colonies, Parliament sought to eliminate foreign competition by passing an act in 1721 that required colonists to import their tea only from Great Britain. The East India Company did not export tea to the colonies; by law, the company was required to sell its tea wholesale at auctions in England. British firms bought this tea and exported it to the colonies, where they resold it to merchants in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston.
Until 1767, the East India Company paid an ad valorem tax of about 25% on tea that it imported into Great Britain. Parliament laid additional taxes on tea sold for consumption in Britain. These high taxes, combined with the fact that tea imported into the Dutch Republic was not taxed by the Dutch government, meant that Britons and British Americans could buy smuggled Dutch tea at much cheaper prices. The biggest market for illicit tea was England. By the 1760s, the East India Company was losing £400,000 per year to smugglers in Great Britain, whilst in North America Dutch merchants were regularly smuggling tea and other East India goods into Virginia, Philadelphia and New York without paying six pence tea duty import tax.
To help the East India Company compete with smuggled Dutch tea, Parliament passed the Indemnity Act in 1767, which lowered the tax on tea consumed in Great Britain and gave the East India Company a refund of the 25% duty on tea that was re-exported to the colonies. To help offset this loss of government revenue, Parliament also passed the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767, which levied new taxes, including one on tea, in the colonies.
Townshend Acts
A controversy between Great Britain and the colonies arose in the 1760s when Parliament sought, for the first time, to impose a direct tax on the colonies for the purpose of raising revenue. Some colonists, known in the colonies as American patriots, objected to the new tax program, arguing that it was a violation of the British Constitution. Britons and British Americans agreed that, according to the constitution, British subjects could not be taxed without the consent of their elected representatives. In Great Britain, this meant that taxes could only be levied by Parliament. Colonists, however, did not elect members of Parliament, and so American Whigs argued that the colonies could not be taxed by that body. According to the Whigs, colonists could only be taxed by their own colonial assemblies. Colonial protests resulted in the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, but in the 1766 Declaratory Act, Parliament continued to insist that it had the right to legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever".
When new taxes were levied in the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767, American patriots again responded with protests and boycotts. Merchants organized a non-importation agreement, and many colonists pledged to abstain from drinking British tea, with activists in New England promoting alternatives, such as domestic Labrador tea. Smuggling continued apace, especially in New York and Philadelphia, where tea smuggling had always been more extensive than in Boston. Dutied British tea continued to be imported into Boston, however, especially by Richard Clarke and the sons of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson, until pressure from Massachusetts Whigs compelled them to abide by the non-importation agreement.
Parliament finally responded to the protests by repealing the Townshend taxes in 1770, except for the tea duty, which Prime Minister Lord North kept to assert "the right of taxing the Americans". This partial repeal of the taxes was enough to bring an end to the non-importation movement by October 1770. From 1771 to 1773, British tea was once again imported into the colonies in significant amounts, with merchants paying the Townshend duty of three pence (equivalent to £1.32 in 2025) per pound in weight of tea. Boston was the largest colonial importer of legal tea; smugglers still dominated the market in New York and Philadelphia.
In the 1772 Gaspee affair, colonists attacked and burned a British Navy ship, which was then engaged in enforcing British customs laws off the coast of Newport, Rhode Island.
Tea Act of 1773
The Indemnity Act of 1767, which gave the East India Company a refund of the duty on tea that was re-exported to the colonies, expired in 1772. Parliament passed a new act in 1772 that reduced this refund, effectively leaving a 10% duty on re-exported tea. The act also restored the tea taxes within Britain that had been repealed in 1767, and left in place the three pence Townshend duty in the colonies, equal to £1.32 today. With this new tax burden driving up the price of British tea, sales plummeted. The company continued to import tea into Great Britain; however, it amassed a huge surplus of product that no one would buy. For these and other reasons, by late 1772, the East India Company, one of Britain's most important commercial institutions, was in a serious financial crisis. The severe famine in Bengal from 1769 to 1773 had drastically reduced the revenue of the East India Company from India, bringing the Company to the verge of bankruptcy. The Tea Act of 1773 was enacted to help the East India Company.
Eliminating some of the taxes was one obvious solution to the crisis. The East India Company initially sought to have the Townshend duties repealed, but the North ministry was unwilling because such an action might be interpreted as a retreat from Parliament's position that it had the right to tax the colonies. More importantly, the tax collected from the Townshend duties was used to pay the salaries of some colonial governors and judges. This was in fact the purpose of the Townshend tax: previously, these officials had been paid by the colonial assemblies, but Parliament now paid their salaries to keep them dependent on the British government rather than allowing them to be accountable to the colonists.
Another possible solution for reducing the growing mound of tea in the East India Company warehouses was to sell it cheaply in Europe. This possibility was investigated, but it was determined that the tea would simply be smuggled back into Great Britain, where it would undersell the taxed product. The best market for the East India Company's surplus tea, so it seemed, was the American colonies, if a way could be found to make it cheaper than the smuggled Dutch tea.
The North Ministry's solution was the Tea Act, which received the assent of King George on May 10, 1773. This act restored the East India Company's full refund on the duty for importing tea into Britain, and also permitted the company, for the first time, to export tea to the colonies on its own account. This would allow the company to reduce costs by eliminating the middlemen who bought the tea at wholesale auctions in London. Instead of selling to middlemen, the company now appointed colonial merchants to receive the tea on consignment; the consignees would in turn sell the tea for a commission. In July 1773, tea consignees were selected in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston. The Tea Act in 1773 authorized the shipment of 5,000 chests of tea (250 tons) to the American colonies. There would be a tax of £1,750 (equal to £231,000 today) to be paid by the importers when the cargo landed. The act granted the East India Company a monopoly on the sale of tea that was cheaper than smuggled tea; its hidden purpose was to force the colonists to pay a tax of 3 pennies on every pound of tea.
The Tea Act thus retained the three pence Townshend duty on tea imported to the colonies. Some members of Parliament wanted to eliminate this tax, arguing that there was no reason to provoke another colonial controversy. Former Chancellor of the Exchequer William Dowdeswell, for example, warned Lord North that the Americans would not accept the tea if the Townshend duty remained. But North did not want to give up the revenue from the Townshend tax, primarily because it was used to pay the salaries of colonial officials; maintaining the right of to tax the Americans was a secondary concern. According to historian Benjamin Labaree, "A stubborn Lord North had unwittingly hammered a nail in the coffin of the old British Empire."
Even with the Townshend duty in effect, the Tea Act would allow the East India Company to sell tea more cheaply than before, undercutting the prices offered by smugglers, but also undercutting colonial tea importers, who paid the tax and received no refund. In 1772, legally imported Bohea, the most common variety of tea, sold for about 3 shillings (3s) per pound, equal to £19.82 today. After the Tea Act, colonial consignees would be able to sell tea for 2 shillings per pound (2s), just under the smugglers' price of 2 shillings and 1 penny (2s 1d). Realizing that the payment of the Townshend duty was politically sensitive, the company hoped to conceal the tax by making arrangements to have it paid either in London once the tea was landed in the colonies or have the consignees quietly pay the duties after the tea was sold. This effort to hide the tax from the colonists was unsuccessful.
Resisting the Tea Act
In September and October 1773, seven ships carrying East India Company tea were sent to the colonies: four were bound for Boston, and one each for New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, South Carolina. The ships contained over 2,000 chests, representing nearly 600,000 pounds (270,000 kg) of tea. Americans learned the details of the Tea Act while the ships were en route, and opposition began to mount. Whigs, sometimes calling themselves Sons of Liberty, began a campaign to raise awareness and to convince or compel the consignees to resign, in the same way that stamp distributors had been forced to resign in the 1765 Stamp Act crisis.