The Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, helped escalate colonial resistance before the American Revolution.
Members of the Sons of Liberty boarded ships in Boston Harbor and destroyed a large shipment of tea belonging to the British East India Company. The protest opposed Parliament's Tea Act and the broader constitutional dispute over taxation and political representation. Participants threw roughly 340 chests of tea into the harbor, though historical sources sometimes give slightly different counts.
The Tea Act actually made legally imported company tea cheaper in the colonies. Protesters objected chiefly to the East India Company's privileged position and to Parliament's claim that it could tax colonists who had no elected representatives in Parliament. The event was initially described as the destruction of the tea; the name Boston Tea Party became common later.
Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. These measures included closing Boston's port and changing Massachusetts's government. The backlash helped encourage the First Continental Congress in 1774 and deepened the crisis that led to war.