The Tea Act helped trigger the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773.
Passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on May 10, 1773, the Tea Act allowed the East India Company to sell tea directly in the American colonies. The arrangement could make East India Company tea cheaper than competing tea, but colonists objected to the continuing tax and to Parliament imposing measures without colonial representation.
Members of the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships in Boston Harbor and threw the cargo into the water. The event was not a general attack on all British goods, and it was not caused by the Stamp Act, which dated from 1765. Britain responded with the punitive Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists, increasing tensions that led toward the 1775 fighting.