The Boston Tea Party was the December 16, 1773, protest in which colonists destroyed tea in Boston Harbor.
That night, people opposing the Tea Act boarded three ships: Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver. They threw 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company into the harbor. The protest challenged Parliament's taxation policies and the company's special trading privileges.
The event was not simply a dispute about the price of tea. Many colonists objected to taxation imposed without elected representation and feared that the Tea Act would strengthen Parliament's authority over the colonies. Participants avoided damaging other cargo and disguised themselves in ways later associated with the protest.
Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. Those measures helped prompt the First Continental Congress in 1774. The Boston Tea Party is distinct from the Boston Massacre of 1770 and from the Edenton Tea Party, a women's protest in North Carolina in 1774.