The Historical Importance Of The Boston Tea Party

By Author: Ann Philip
Total Articles: 91
Comment this article

What is Boston Tea party? What made people to go for this famous act of protest? What were the aftereffects of the protest? According to historians, the Boston Tea party played a key role in the growth of the American Revolution.

Why Americans celebrated Boston Tea party? The Boston Tea Party arose from the anger against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. It took place at a place called Griffin's Wharf in Boston on the evening of December 16.

The British parliament placed the tea act to force colonists to buy tea from the East India Tea Company, rather than to increase the revenue of the government. Before this incident, a series of actions including the Stamp Act, the Townsend Act and the Boston Massacre agitated the colonists. But it was the attempt to tax tea that spurred the colonists to action and laid the base for the American Revolution.

People reacted to government’s tea tax after refusing to pay tax as per the Townsend Acts. The Townsend Acts was a revenue act and people rejected to follow the act by claiming that they had no obligation to pay taxes imposed by ...
... a parliament in which they had no representation. The government responded to this by withdrawing the taxes with the exception of a duty on tea. Through this the parliament tried to show that it has the ability and right to tax the colonies. In another move, the parliament gave the struggling East India Company a monopoly to import tea to America. It also reduced the tax to be paid for the imported tea.

As tea was an important part of colonial life, either they have to pay tax for the tea they drink or they have to keep way from it. As they preferred to take pleasure of a cup of tea, they started protesting against the law. When East India Company sent ships to Philadelphia and New York, they were not allowed to land. In Charleston, the tea loaded ships were permitted to dock, but the cargo was sent to a warehouse. That tea bags remained there for three years until was sold by colonists themselves to finance the revolution.

Three tea loaded ships arrived in Boston. When tea ships arrived in colonies except Massachusetts, protestors were able to cancel the assignment or return the ship back to England. However, in Boston governor Hutchinson was determined to hold back the tea bags. This made colonists angry. Some 7,000 agitated locals called a mass meeting. They asked the tea ships to leave the harbor without payment of any duty. However, the collector of customs refused to send back the ship without the payment of the duty. In the same evening, a group of nearly 200 people gathered in the harbor. The crowd marched to the wharf, took the tea packets and threw it into the Boston Harbor waters. The East India Company estimated a loss of nearly 9.7 thousand British pounds, which is equivalent to 19 million cups of tea, in that incident. This massive amount of tea turned the water in the harbor brown for several days.

The famous song the colonist sang those days were like this, - "Rally, Mohawks! Bring out your axes,
And tell King George we'll pay no taxes, On his foreign tea." But the worst part of the story is that the Parliament closed the Boston Harbor and said that the city had to pay for the tea that had been dumped into the harbor. They also passed the Intolerable Acts as a punishment for the Boston tea party. I learned about the Boston Tea Party and other historic events from various websites connected to Time Warner Cable Offers.

Ann is interested in learning more about America and the major historic events. As a freelancer, she writes articles about important historic events. To get more information about the major events and its importance in the history, she views documentaries on her home television and search on different websites connected with service from providers like Time Warner Cable Offers.