Colonists staged the Boston Tea Party in 1773, an event in the America250-era story of the road to independence.
On December 16, 1773, members and supporters of the Sons of Liberty boarded ships in Boston Harbor and destroyed tea owned by the British East India Company. They objected to Parliament's taxation policies and to the Tea Act, which allowed the company to sell tea in the colonies under favorable conditions.
The protest was dramatic but targeted: participants dumped hundreds of chests of tea into the harbor rather than taking it for personal use. British authorities responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. Those measures tightened control over Massachusetts and helped prompt wider colonial cooperation.
The Boston Tea Party did not begin the Revolutionary War immediately. Fighting began nearly a year and a half later at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The Tea Party is important because it connected a dispute over taxation and trade to the larger constitutional question of Parliament's authority over the colonies.