The Boston Tea Party took place in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773, as a protest against British taxation and the Tea Act.
That night, colonists associated with the Sons of Liberty boarded merchant ships and threw chests of East India Company tea into the harbor. The protest opposed Parliament’s taxation policies and the company’s special commercial privileges, especially the tea tax retained by the Tea Act.
The participants generally disguised their identities, and the exact number of people involved remains uncertain. Later accounts often portray everyone as Mohawk warriors, but historians describe the disguises as symbolic efforts to conceal the protesters’ identities.
Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. These measures closed Boston Harbor and altered Massachusetts government, helping push the colonies toward the First Continental Congress and eventually independence.