The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, an anti-tax protest linked to the revolutionary story celebrated by America250.
That night, colonists in Boston boarded ships and destroyed 342 chests of tea by throwing them into Boston Harbor. The protest opposed the Tea Act, which gave the British East India Company advantages in selling tea while maintaining Parliament’s tax on the product.
The demonstrators objected to taxation without colonial representation in Parliament. Many participants disguised themselves, and later accounts associated them with Mohawk identity, though the event’s participants were colonists from Boston and surrounding communities.
Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. These measures tightened imperial control and helped push the colonies toward the First Continental Congress and, eventually, armed rebellion.