What 1773 protest saw colonists throw East India Company tea into Boston Harbor?

The Boston Tea Party was the 1773 protest in which colonists threw East India Company tea into Boston Harbor.

The protest took place on December 16, 1773, after Parliament passed the Tea Act. That law allowed the East India Company to sell tea directly to the colonies while retaining a tax that many colonists regarded as an assertion of Parliament’s power to tax them without representation.

Members of the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships and destroyed much of the cargo by dumping it into the harbor. Accounts commonly cite 340 or 342 chests, with the exact number varying among sources. The protest was organized in Boston, then the capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

The Boston Tea Party was not the Boston Massacre, which occurred in 1770 and involved soldiers firing on a crowd. Britain responded to the tea protest with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists, increasing tensions before the war began.