The Boston Tea Party was the 1773 protest in which colonists dumped tea into Boston Harbor, helping spark the American Revolution. On the night of December 16, participants boarded ships and destroyed hundreds of chests of East India Company tea.
The protest opposed the Tea Act, which allowed the company to sell tea under favorable conditions while retaining a tax that many colonists viewed as taxation without representation. The participants acted in disguise, and contemporary accounts differ about their exact number and identities. They took care not to steal or damage other cargo.
Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by colonists, tightening control over Massachusetts. The backlash helped lead to the First Continental Congress in 1774 and eventually armed conflict at Lexington and Concord in 1775. The event’s name is sometimes confused with the Boston Massacre, but the two protests occurred three years apart.