The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, in Boston Harbor.
The protest opposed the Tea Act, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea directly in the American colonies while maintaining a tax that many colonists rejected. Protesters objected to taxation without colonial representation in Parliament.
That night, members of the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships and threw hundreds of chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The participants were disguised in various ways, later becoming popularly associated with Indigenous American imagery. The event damaged property but was designed to destroy the tea rather than attack people.
Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. These measures punished Massachusetts and intensified resistance throughout the colonies. The Boston Tea Party was not the start of the Revolutionary War; the fighting began at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The event is also sometimes confused with later tea protests in other ports, but the famous Boston action occurred on December 16, 1773.