The Boston Tea Party took place in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773, helping spark the American Revolution.
Colonists protested the Tea Act, a law that allowed the financially troubled British East India Company to sell tea in the American colonies under favorable conditions. Protesters objected to taxation without colonial representation and feared the arrangement would strengthen Britain’s control over colonial trade.
That night, men associated with the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships and threw hundreds of chests of tea into the harbor. The destruction was a deliberate political protest rather than a random riot.
Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. These measures intensified resistance and helped lead to the First Continental Congress in 1774 and, eventually, open war.