Analytical Essay: The Boston Tea Party

In 1773, colonists in Boston protested the taxation policies of England, which they felt violated their right to “no taxation without representation.” This tea party was a factor leading to the Revolutionary War (“Boston Tea Party Facts”). In 1768, colonists consumed almost two million pounds of tea - the three million inhabitants of the American colonies were consuming on average of two to three cups everyday. The Boston Tea Party was a direct protest by colonists, members of the Sons of Liberty, against the Tea Tax that had been imposed by the British Government. The tea tax protests resulted in the smuggling of cheaper, non-British tea and boycotts of British tea through Nonimportation Agreements. The tea plant was at one time introduced

Before Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River, before the shots “heard around the world” at Lexington and Concord, came the first ironic act of American Rebellion, dumping imported tea into Boston Harbor to protest a system of parliamentary taxation that British colonists in America considered to be illegal (Bush).

This famed act of American colonial defiance served as a protest against taxation. Seeking to boost the troubled East India Company, British Parliament adjusted import duties with the passage of the Tea Act in 1773. On the night of December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea overboard. This resulted in the passage of the Punitive Coercive Acts in 1774 and pushed the two sides closer to war (“Boston Tea Party Historical Society”).

The protesters who caffeinated Boston Harbor were railing against the tea act, which the British government enacted in the spring of 1773. Rather than inflicting new leaves, however, the legislation actually reduced the total tax on tea sold in America by the East India Company and would have allowed colonists to purchase tea at half the price paid by British consumers (“Boston Tea Party

Three months after the Boston Tea Party, the Bostonians once again sent tea splashing when sixty distinguished men boarded the fortune in March 1774, forced the crew below deck and dumped tea chests into the harbor. The sequel wasn’t quite as impressions as the original, however, as only 30 chests were sent over board (“Boston Tea Party History”).

To parliament, the Boston Tea Party confirmed Massachusetts role as the core of resistance to legitimate British rule. The Coercive Acts of 1774 were intended to punish the colony in general and Boston in particular, both for the tea party and for the pattern of resistance it exemplified. Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians were armed with an assortment of axes. In a span of three hours, 340 chests of British East India Company Tea were smashed and dumped into boston harbor (“Boston Tea Party Historical