The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, when colonists protested British taxation by destroying tea in Boston Harbor.
The protest was organized by the Sons of Liberty in response to the Tea Act, passed by the British Parliament on May 10, 1773. The law allowed the East India Company to sell tea directly in the colonies while retaining a tax that many colonists considered unconstitutional because they had no elected representatives in Parliament.
That night, several dozen men boarded three ships—the Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver—and threw roughly 340 chests of tea into the harbor. Many participants disguised themselves as Native Americans, although later retellings sometimes exaggerate or simplify the disguises and the size of the group.
Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by colonists, which restricted Massachusetts self-government and closed Boston Harbor. The crisis deepened colonial resistance, but the Revolutionary War did not begin until the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.