The Boston Tea Party occurred in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773, when colonists destroyed tea owned by the British East India Company.
The protest targeted the Tea Act, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea in the American colonies under favorable conditions while retaining a tax that many colonists opposed. Protesters argued that Parliament could not tax them without colonial representation.
Members of the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships and threw hundreds of chests into the harbor. They were often described as disguised as Native Americans, although the disguises did not make the participants anonymous to local observers.
Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. These measures tightened imperial control over Massachusetts and helped unite resistance across the colonies. The Boston Tea Party was a protest, not the start of the war itself; fighting began at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.