The Boston Tea Party occurred on December 16, 1773, an event that helped intensify the conflict preceding the Revolution commemorated by America250.
That night, members of the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships in Boston Harbor and destroyed 342 chests of tea by throwing them into the water. The protest opposed the Tea Act and the broader principle of taxation without colonial representation.
The Tea Act allowed the East India Company to sell tea in the colonies under favorable conditions while retaining a tax. Many colonists saw the arrangement as an attempt to make them accept Parliament’s authority to tax them.
Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. These measures punished Massachusetts and increased tensions, helping create the conditions for armed conflict at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.