The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773.
That night, members of the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships in Boston Harbor and destroyed a large shipment by throwing tea chests into the water. They were protesting British taxation and Parliament’s Tea Act, which gave the East India Company a powerful advantage in selling tea to the colonies.
The event followed a long dispute over the principle summarized as “no taxation without representation.” Colonial protestors objected that Parliament imposed taxes on them even though the colonies had no elected representatives in that body. The destruction of the tea was dramatic, but the protestors generally took care not to steal private goods or damage the ships themselves.
Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. Those measures intensified resistance and helped push the colonies toward open war. The Battles of Lexington and Concord followed in April 1775, less than two years after the tea protest.