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What led to the Boston Tea Party and what was the aftermath?

Moe Trulocke

Well, the Boston Tea Party is one of the most famous events in American history. It was a protest against the British government's excessive taxation and control of the American colonies. The event that led up to it was the passage of the Tea Act in 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea directly to the colonies without paying taxes to the British government. The colonists saw this as a clear attempt to cut out American tea merchants and suppliers and as a way to exploit them financially.

So on December 16th, 1773, a group of about 60 men, dressed up as Native Americans, boarded three British tea ships anchored in Boston Harbor. They dumped 342 chests of tea, worth thousands of pounds, into the water in an act of protest and rebellion against the British government. This is what we now call the Boston Tea Party.

The British government was furious about the destruction of such valuable property and decided to retaliate against the Massachusetts colonists. They passed the Coercive Acts (also known as the Intolerable Acts), which were meant to punish Boston for the Tea Party. They closed the port of Boston, restricted town hall meetings, and allowed British officials to be tried in England instead of America, among other things.

But the effect of the Tea Party was much greater than just these new laws. It galvanized the colonists in their opposition to British rule and helped to unite them in their fight for independence. It also showed the British government that the American colonists were not going to take their exploitation and control lying down. The Tea Party gave birth to the American Revolution, and it remains an iconic symbol of resistance against oppressive power to this day.