Tomorrow (December 16) will mark the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.
Americans will commemorate the 1773 protests in Boston, Massachusetts, with a whole host of events including re-enactments. The protest is still recalled today as a pivotal moment in the country's longstanding history.
Most memorable of all was unequivocally the moment Bostonians – who George Washington claimed "were mad", while also outwardly supporting them – dumped 342 chests of tea imported by the British East India Company into the harbour.
So no, it wasn't quite the sort of tea party fairy tales and children's stories revere.
But that raises questions about why Washington said the cause of Boston was "the cause of America".
So why did the Tea Party happen?
The precursors of events that heralded the Tea Party can be charted back to the 1760s.
At this time, Britain was overridden with debt, so parliament levied a series of taxes on American colonists to help pay for them. They believed this was fair because they racked up debt through wars they fought for their territories. The Tea tax of 1773 was the final straw, as it was also passed to ensure the East India Company had the monopoly on tea.
Americans were furious at what became seen as “taxation without representation” – meaning no representation in Parliament.
A street brawl then occurred in 1770 between British soldiers and American colonists. Sentinels were struck with oyster shells and had snowballs thrown at them.
It culminated in British soldiers firing into a crowd of colonists, resulting in five deaths and wounding six, and became known as the Boston Massacre. Colonists such as Paul Revere helped increase tensions in this early phase of the American Revolution.
Britain eventually reneged on the taxation laws, but were insistent on the tea tax, as the colonialists drank nearly £1.2 million worth of the brew. However, the East India Company soon faced boycotts and subsequently suffered a massive blow to its business, and was forced to lower prices. However, the taxation remained.
What happened at the Boston Tea Party?
Unhappy with the East India Company's monopoly and the British tax, the conservative colonial merchants formed an unlikely alliance with a group of radicals called the Sons of Liberty, a group of colonial merchants.
They held a meeting with a vote on the morning of December 16, during which colonists refused to pay taxes on tea or allow tea to be unloaded, stored, sold or used.Further chaos between Americans and Britons saw ships unable to return to the UK. That evening, members of the Sons of Liberty disguised themselves in Native American garb as they boarded docked ships and threw 342 chests of tea into the water.
One political participant in the protest, George Hewes, said: “We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water.”
A year later, a second Boston Tea Party, was underway as nearly 30 chests were dumped into the harbour. Though it barely received any notoriety, the first clearly did. In fact, a Boston Tea Party Museum can be visited in the United States today.
What happened in the aftermath?
While the rebellion and unrest was not quelled, King George III and the British parliament later passed the Coercive Acts which:
- Closed Boston Harbour until the tea lost during the protest was paid for
- Ended the Massachusetts Constitution and ended free elections of town officials
- Moved judicial authority to Britain and British judges, basically creating martial law in Massachusetts
- Required colonists to quarter British troops on demand
- Extended freedom of worship to French-Canadian Catholics under British rule, which angered the mostly Protestant colonists
