The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, an event linked to the revolutionary history behind America250.
That night, a group of colonists boarded ships in Boston Harbor and threw 342 chests of East India Company tea into the water. The protest opposed the Tea Act of 1773, which gave the company advantages in selling tea in the colonies while maintaining a tax that many colonists rejected.
The action was organized in the context of colonial resistance to taxation and Parliament’s authority. Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. Those measures intensified tensions and helped lead to the First Continental Congress in 1774.
The Boston Tea Party is sometimes confused with the earlier Boston Massacre of 1770 or with later events at Lexington and Concord. It occurred more than two years before the Declaration of Independence and was a protest against imperial policy, not a declaration of independence itself.