Boston Tea Party Essay

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Boston Tea Party Throughout the course of history there have been many events up to the independence of America. Some of them were small, where others were much more significant. One of the more important events was the Boston tea party. When the Boston tea party comes to mind, many people think of the ship and the tea and patriotism in the 18th century. Let’s talk about what actually is the Boston tea party. The Boston Tea Party was significant act of civil disobedience that worried the Americans about the issue of taxation, but it helped spark the Revolutionary War. The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773 and it created the issue of taxation causing the Tea Act to appear. I chose the Boston Tea Party because it is an odd …show more content…

Because the company appointed only certain American merchants as agents to distribute their tea, other merchants resented not being able to partake in the profits. When the company realized, that the colonists were drinking cheap tea, smuggled tea, the parliament gave them the monopoly to export tea without paying duties. Smugglers feared the loss of the valuable trade of Dutch tea. Popular politicians objected to the Tea Act on principle. They resisted “taxation without representation”—Britain taxing the colonists without giving them representation in government. Then in 1773 the British Parliament passed the Tea Act. This act was designed to help the nearly bankrupt East India Company by eliminating any tax on tea the company exported to America. The company’s tea, although still subject to the Townshend tax, was now cheaper than the smuggled Dutch tea most Americans drank. However, if the colonists bought it, they would be accepting the British tax. Throughout the colonies, people opposed the Tea Act. In most places, they either stored the tea or sent it back, but not in Boston. Led by Samuel Adams, the citizens of Boston would not permit the unloading of three British ships that arrived in Boston in November 1773 with 342 chests of tea. The royal governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, would not let the tea ships return to England until the colonists had paid the duty. On the evening of December 16, 1773, a group of Bostonians, many of them disguised as Native Americans, boarded the vessels and dumped the tea into Boston

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