Which British colony was the site of the Boston Tea Party?

The British colony that hosted the Boston Tea Party was Massachusetts, specifically the Province of Massachusetts Bay. On December 16, 1773, protesters in Boston Harbor boarded ships and dumped East India Company tea into the water.

The protest grew from opposition to the Tea Act of 1773 and Parliament’s claim that it could tax American colonists who had no elected representatives in Parliament. The act actually made legal tea cheaper, but colonists objected to the East India Company’s privileged position and the principle behind the tax.

The event involved the ships Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver, and approximately 340 or 342 chests of tea were destroyed. Protesters were often described as disguising themselves as Mohawk warriors. Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New York saw related resistance to the tea shipments, but the famous Boston Tea Party took place in Massachusetts.

Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. These measures helped intensify the crisis that led to the American Revolutionary War.