The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, in Boston Harbor.
The protest followed Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea in the colonies under favorable conditions while preserving a tax that many colonists rejected. Protesters objected not simply to the price of tea, but to Parliament’s authority to tax colonists who had no elected representatives there.
That night, members of the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships and dumped hundreds of chests into Boston Harbor. Participants often wore disguises, including clothing intended to resemble Native American dress. Estimates commonly place the number of destroyed chests at 340 or 342.
Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. These measures intensified resistance and helped create the political crisis that led to the First Continental Congress and, later, open war. The Tea Party itself was a protest, not a battle, and it occurred nearly two years before Lexington and Concord.