Boston Tea Party

435 Words2 Pages
A lot of people think the events surrounding the historical incident known as the “Boston Tea Party” was the actual start of the American Revolution. However, I learned from this Podcast, called “How the Boston Tea Party Works”, that while it was a major event it did not start the war. English parliament had started to enforce taxes on the Colonists. A major tax was the Stamp Act in 1765. The Stamp Act required that all paper products had to have an English stamp on them. The stamping was viewed as repressive by the Colonists and some people that issued the stamps resigned their jobs. The phrase “No taxation without representation” was said to have started around this time. The Colonists felt like college students who had been out of the house and were now being told everything little thing to do by their parents. The Colonists thought if they complained loudly enough that Parliament would get rid of the taxes. But any taxes Parliament repealed were soon reinstated with other taxes or duties. England was trying to raise money to pay for the French-Indian war and was heavily taxing the Colonists. Things got really bad when the British taxed the favorite drink of the Colonist’s, tea. Tea was really popular at that time, kind of like coffee is today. Colonists consumed 1.2 pounds of tea per year. All the tea in the colonies came from the British East India Company. Boston, Massachusetts was the hot-seat of protest. In 1772 the Tea Act, which lowered tea prices, allowed the tea to be sold directly from shops. In 1773, there were British ships bringing tea into Boston Harbor. 116 colonists boarded the British ships and dumped 90,000 pounds of tea into the harbor. It was estimated that this was equal to a million dollars worth of tea. There was so much tea dumped into the harbor that it turned brown. Someone at the time called it the “world’s largest tea pot”. But
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