The Boston Tea Party

740 Words3 Pages
It was on December 16, 1773, when American patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians threw 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company from ships into Boston Harbor. Most people have heard about the Boston Tea Party but not everyone understands the importance of it, and why the Tea Party is still remembered today. The events leading to the Boston Tea Party began already ten years before (1763), when the English won the French-and-Indian War. The king of Britain passed taxes on the colonies to make up for the loss of money because of the war. The British-American colonists named the acts after Charles Townshend, who sponsored them. The Suspending Act prohibited the New York Assembly from conducting any further business until it complied with the financial requirements of the Quartering Act (1765) for the expenses of British troops stationed there. The second act, often called the Townshend duties, and imposed direct revenue duties payable at colonial ports, on lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea. It was the second time in the history of the colonies that a tax had been levied solely for the purpose of raising revenue. The third act established strict and often arbitrary machinery of customs collection in the American Colonies, including additional officers, searchers, spies, coast guard vessels, search warrants, writs of assistance, and a Board of Customs Commissioners at Boston, all to be financed out of customs revenues. The fourth and most important Townshend Act, lifted commercial duties on tea, allowing it to be exported to the Colonies free of all British taxes. In 1773 Parliament passed a Tea Act designed to aid the financially troubled East Indian Company by granting it a monopoly on all tea exported to the colonies, an exemption on the export tax, and a refund on duties owed on certain surplus quantities of tea in its possession. The tea sent
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