The Boston Tea Party took place in 1773.
On December 16, 1773, colonists in Boston boarded ships and threw tea owned by the British East India Company into Boston Harbor. The protest opposed the Tea Act, which gave the company favorable trading treatment while retaining a tax on tea imported into the colonies.
The event was organized by opponents of parliamentary taxation and represented a dramatic escalation in resistance. Participants destroyed tea rather than allowing it to be unloaded and sold under the disputed arrangements. The protest was not a general attack on all trade; it focused on the political meaning of the tea monopoly and taxation without colonial representation.
Britain responded with punitive measures that colonists called the Intolerable Acts. These laws helped encourage intercolonial cooperation and contributed directly to the First Continental Congress in 1774. The Boston Tea Party therefore became an important step between earlier protests and the organized revolutionary movement.