Essay On The Boston Tea Party

Second, the company chose to give exclusive privileges to certain merchants for the sale of their tea. Third, the Tea Act revived... ... middle of paper ... ...itish government. In Boston, the site of a bloody confrontation between British redcoats and Americans citizens less than 10 years before, emotions ran high. Boston was a center of agitation and finally on the night of December 16,1773, the course of world history was changed. A revolutionary event was on the horizon.

The troops fired, killing five people in the so-called Boston Massacre. Parliament repealed the Townshend Acts but retained the tax on tea. In 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act, reducing the tax on tea in an attempt to rescue the English East India Company from bankruptcy. The colonists refused to buy English tea and would not permit British ships to unload it in Philadelphia and New York City. In Boston, in the so-called Boston Tea Party, a group of citizens dumped cargoes of tea from British ships into Boston Harbor.

The more patriotic view point differed greatly from the view that the act was wholly self serving. One of the more patriotic views of the Boston tea party was the basic mob over throwing the tyrannical British government view. It is said that when the Townshend Acts were ignorantly passed by Charles Townshend, totally ignoring the fate of the Stamp Act , they were immediately repealed, except the duty on tea. Due to the bountiful harvests in India, a large supply of tea was brought to the British East India Company. With this new surplus of tea and new parliamental backing, the company set out to undercut American tea merchants and take hold of the American tea market for them selves .

And it triggered a chain of events after. On a cold December night, a group of townspeople stormed the ships in the Boston harbor and tossed 342 chests of tea into the ocean. This event is known by the Boston tea party, it was a protest of the colonists against the Tea Act which passed by the Parliament on May 10, 1773. This act granted the British East India Company Tea a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonies. Since the tea cargos were the only thing townspeople thrown overboard and they were really careful about the other things on the ship, they are sending a clear message: they are not going to pay the tax on tea.

This was to be achieved by greatly lowering its tea tax and allowing it a domination on the American tea trade. Many colonists saw the act as another example of taxation dictatorship. In a response to the Tea Act, revolutionary colonists in Massachusetts planned the "Boston Tea Party." The colonist disguised themselves as Native Americans, snuck onto British Import Ships, and dumped all the tea into Boston Harbor. England was extremely upset by the Boston Tea Party and other deliberate acts of destruction of British property.

This led to the Boston Tea Party. The Boston Tea Party was when 3 ships full of tea had arrived from England and the townspeople were refusing to pay the tax. So the ships could not be unloaded. Then the group, Sons of Liberty boarded the ship dressed as Native Americans...

Boston Tea Party: A Fight for Freedom Imagine you are a merchant in Boston selling imported goods from England with a high tax on them, when three ships come in with 342 chests of tea without planning to pay the middleman tax. That's how it was for many merchants in Boston. The East India Tea Company went bankrupt due to the dropping rate of tea sales in America because of the increasing rate of smuggling. The government's lack of support, and the newly passed Tea Act, only kindled more resentment towards the British from the colonists. This finally resulted in approximately three groups of fifty men going aboard the three British ships and dumping the tea into the Boston Harbor.

American tea merchants, unable to compete with this new low price, were put out of business. (Jones) This Act infuriated the colonial citizens who felt it unfair to favor their British tea dealers over American ones. In retaliation, Samuel Adams led a group of 150 or so men disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three British tea ships and proceeded to dump 343 chests of British tea into the ocean. (Cornell) When Bostonians refused to pay for the destroyed property, King George III and Parliament passed the so-called “Intolerable'; Acts. One result was the closing of the port of Boston and forbid public meetings in Massachusetts.

The British East India Company already owed the British Crown £1 million and didn’t have enough time to collect all the money. They had to come up with something quick because 21 million pounds of tea is just stored in a warehouse in China. The company came up with a plan and asked permission from the government to export the tea directly from their Chinese warehouses to the American colonies instead of shipping it through Britain. The government agreed to the company’s request and passed the Tea Act of 1773. £1/80 per pound was the duty that was put on directly imported tea.

In 1770, five years after the stamp tax was repealed, a new tax appeared. This was called the Townsend Tax. The Townsend Tax was placed mostly upon things such as lead, glass, paper, and tea. This led the colonists to boycott the items that were sold by the English. Them doing this caused great problems for the merchants because the things they sold were expensive to make, and with no purchasers, they did not make any money.