revolutions rarely happen overnight and
the American Revolution was no exception
it was a slow burn of frustration and
anger that built up month after month
year after year one of the crucial
moments in the saga was the Tea Party
brought on by the passage of the Tea Act
in 1773 here are five important points
to fully understand the scope of the Tea
Act and why it was so important to the
birth of our nation in the 1770s one of
the most valuable commodities in the
Western world was tea tea was new was
exotic exactly the kind of thing that's
easy to sell but maybe not that easy
because by 1773
decreased sales left the British East
India Company with a surplus of over 17
million pounds of tea just sitting and
rotting in warehouses in England the
country's biggest and most important
company was in serious trouble the
British East India Company needed a
bailout and they looked to the North
American colonies for a solution
normally British tea merchants sold tea
to American traders in London at a
markup who would then sell the tea to
colonists the British government thought
why are we using American merchants to
sell our tea when we can just ship it
there ourselves so they cut out the
middleman by passing the Tea Act of 1773
which allowed the British East India
Company to ship and sell their tea
directly to the colonies at a lower cost
the idea being that a British monopoly
on tea sales in America would ease the
company's financial burden now it's
important to understand that the Tea Act
was part of a larger effort by the
British crown to squeeze as much money
from the colonies as possible the Brits
were heavily in debt from the French and
Indian War and the colonies became their
own private ATM of sorts a few years
earlier Parliament passed the Townsend
acts which taxed items that colonists
relied on led glass paper paint and of
course tea the backlash was so severe
that the British repealed all the
Townsend acts except for one the Tea Tax
colonial tea merchants were furious not
only had the Tea Act taken away their
source of income but they would still be
taxed through the roof to buy their own
tea colonists had to take matters into
the
December 16 1773 Americans fought back
by boycotting British tea entirely
allowing imports to sit on the docks and
spoil colonial governor Thomas
Hutchinson ordered that American
colonists buy the tea but they had other
plans that night a group of about 60
Bostonians called his Sons of Liberty
wearing Mohawk headdresses and warpaint
boarded three British East India Company
trading ships and dumped 342 chests of
tea into the Boston Harbor the Boston
Tea Party was celebrated across the
colonies as a symbol of defiance against
the tyrannical British rule
the British doubled down in response
passing what became known as the
Intolerable Acts a series of laws
designed to punish colonial America for
their resistance
they closed Boston Harbor imposed
martial law in Massachusetts and allowed
British troops to shack up in colonists
homes whenever it was necessary for the
colonists the Intolerable Acts would be
the straw that broke the camel's back
while the Tea Act was not extremely
potent on its own it was part of a
series of events that snowball towards
the revolution in the 13 colonies the
phrase no taxation without
representation wasn't just a slogan it
was the result of years of unfair
treatment by the British crown the Tea
Act serving as a prime example
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