The American struggle for independence began with an event that at first glance seemed ordinary and somewhat curious: the destruction of a shipment of tea, which went down in history as the “Boston Tea Party.” Little did the American colonists suspect that their actions would set off a chain of events that would ultimately lead to the thirteen colonies secession from Great Britain. However, the crisis of attitude became so acute that it only took a slight push for an explosion of discontent.

England and its colonies

In the mid-18th century, after a series of successful wars, Great Britain became one of the strongest colonial empires in the world. Her possessions were located in America and Asia, Africa and Australia. Belief in one's omnipotence turned into an inability to appreciate the depth of the crisis that was brewing in the North American possessions.

The descendants of the first settlers became increasingly burdened by their dependence on Great Britain. Gradually, thoughts began to appear about changing relations with the metropolis. Initially there was no talk of gaining independence. American colonists insisted that their opinions should be taken into account when making decisions related to the administration of the colonies. This resulted in their demand for representation in parliament.

Another reason for the Americans' dissatisfaction was the presence of British soldiers on their territory. In 1756-1763, Great Britain participated in the Seven Years' War, where its main enemy was France. This was one of the first conflicts to span several continents. In addition to Europe, the war was also fought in Asia and America. As a result, France suffered defeats, and the need to protect the North American colonies from a possible French attack disappeared. But the British did not intend to withdraw their troops.

East India Company tea

Meanwhile, a decoction of tea tree leaves became one of the most popular tonic drinks. The price of tea grew steadily, and trade in it brought good profits to the metropolis. Therefore, in 1698, Parliament decided to transfer the monopoly on tea supplies to Great Britain to the East India Company. For the time being, this circumstance had little concern for the colonists, although even then there were those who were dissatisfied with this law. But in 1721, a decree was issued that directly affected the Americans: all of them could buy tea only from the mother country. The adoption of this law was due to the fact that Americans purchased tea from Holland at lower prices.

Despite having a monopoly in its hands, the East India Company was rapidly approaching bankruptcy. On the one hand, this was due to the inability to properly manage its resources, and on the other hand, it was influenced by the actions of Holland, basely setting lower prices for colonial goods. To support its main agent in the colonies, the English Parliament adopted the Tea Law in 1773. Although it was formally adopted in the interests of the colonists, it is with it that the history of the Boston Tea Party begins. The East India Company receives the right to duty-free tea trade in the colonies. However, this law caused a strong protest from the Americans. It was still connected with the lack of representation in parliament.

Middle Ages versus Parliament

English political practice has its roots in the Middle Ages, when laws were adopted that determined the development of the country for centuries to come. These include the one that prohibits the implementation of tax policies of any kind in territories whose representatives are not elected to parliament. Thus, it was not duty-free trade that caused the Boston Tea Party. It’s just that in the law of 1773, the American colonists saw an opportunity to once again recall their disadvantaged position.

The English Constitution became a weapon against English tyranny. Referring to this document, the Americans said that they would not tolerate any more changes in tax policy until their representatives received seats in parliament. But the peaceful period of struggle with the new law turned out to be short. The Boston Tea Party, caused by the intransigence of the British, was getting closer every day.

"Sons of Liberty"

Given this attitude, there were fewer and fewer supporters of a peaceful settlement of relations with the metropolis. On the contrary, American dissatisfaction with the British order became more and more radical. Back in 1765, a revolutionary organization, the Sons of Liberty, was formed in Massachusetts, created by an American political and public figure, philosopher named Samuel Adams. The immediate cause of its occurrence was another extremely unpopular law - the Stamp Duty Act. Craftsmen and traders became the social base of the organization. These people suffered double discrimination. Firstly, they, like all other colonists, were infringed upon in their rights by the mother country, and secondly, according to American law, they did not have voting rights.

Adams became the mastermind behind the events that led to the Boston Tea Party. He chose the phrase “No taxes without representation” as his motto. The organization he created became known for numerous acts of protest, including attacks on British colonial officials, arson, and more peaceful actions such as filing petitions.

Direct consequences of the law

In short, the Boston Tea Party was preceded by a short period of time when the Tea Law was in effect in the colonies. It turned out that the price of tea had halved. This was not to the taste of the Americans: for many of them, income from the import of tea was their means of livelihood. Therefore, not only the lower social classes were ready to protest, but also the more prosperous sections of the population. There was unrest in all major cities. Americans organized rallies, signed petitions, and distributed appeals.

However, the metropolis still did not understand the threat looming over it. Instead, the British loaded boxes of tea onto seven ships and sent them to American shores. The journey did not go well from the very beginning: four of them never reached their destination.

The ships, according to tradition, headed to Boston, which had a convenient harbor. Meanwhile, the situation in the city was heating up. Governor Thomas Hutchinson had previously shown complete submission to the actions of the colonial administration. The people had disliked him since the events of 1765, when he implemented the law introducing stamp duties. Then the angry crowd went straight to the governor's mansion and destroyed it.

His authority fell even lower when, during street skirmishes in Boston on March 5, 1770, the governor supported the actions of British soldiers who opened fire on a crowd demanding change. As a result, three people were killed and eleven more were wounded. The townspeople attacked the governor and demanded that the British soldiers be removed from the city.

In the year of the Boston Tea Party, the governor again supported the actions of the mother country. This angered the people even more, especially Adams' Sons of Liberty. The fight over tea was coming to a head.

Events at the port

In November 1773, ships loaded with tea arrived in the Boston port. Then Samuel Adams held a meeting at which he demanded that the colonial authorities and the governor send tea back to England. Hutchinson, who made significant profits from the tea trade, flatly refused. The captains of the ships, fearing an angry crowd, were going to fulfill the demands of the protesters and sail back to the metropolis, but the governor ordered no one to be released from the port.

Adams's speech pushed the crowd even closer to the boiling point. In addition to the now common calls for a boycott of all laws relating to taxation in the colonies and the issue of American representation in Parliament, he declared that if the governor did not release the ships from the port, he would personally destroy all the cargo on them. Hutchinson thought that these were just words and there would be no consequences, but this turned out to be a mistake. The Boston Tea Party occurred both due to the shortsightedness of the English authorities and the stubbornness of the governor.

December 16, 1773

The date of the Boston Tea Party has gone down in history forever, so legends are still formed around the events of that time. Soon after the incident, a version appeared that the destruction of tea was a pre-planned action, and Adams' speech was a signal for it. From here a picture of a big political game emerges. The Boston Tea Party was its beginning; the war and the signing of the Declaration of Independence were its end. But this is fundamentally wrong. Of course, the well-known oppositionist wanted to get rid of the colonial authorities by any means necessary, but he could not count on the destruction of the cargo of tea being the first step on this path. It cannot be denied that Adams’ pathetic and emotional speech had its own purpose, but at first there was nothing to indicate success in realizing such a plan. As eyewitnesses later said, the founder of the Sons of Liberty had to look for ways to detain the crowd in order to finally convey his message to them.

While the attention of the authorities was diverted by the events at the meeting, a group of a little over a hundred people disguised themselves as Indians and entered the ships. Over the course of three hours, they dumped 342 boxes of tea into the water, amounting to 45 tons. This destruction of the burden that caused all the strife is the essence of the Boston Tea Party.

Consequences

The American public greeted the news of the destruction of the British cargo with enthusiasm. But in the metropolis they were enraged by the arbitrariness of the colonists. England placed an embargo on trade with Boston and closed the port. In addition, martial law was introduced in the city.

To find a way out of this situation, representatives from all thirteen colonies came to Philadelphia in 1774. They held the first Continental Congress. Contrary to Adams' expectations, this meeting did not address hot-button issues such as representation in Parliament or the independence movement. Lawmakers tried primarily to resolve the economic consequences of the Boston Tea Party. Benjamin Franklin offered to compensate the English Prime Minister for the losses incurred, but he resolutely refused. Opportunities for resolving the conflict peacefully were rapidly exhausted. The reason for this was that in England they perfectly understood what the Boston Tea Party was connected with, but did not realize its possible consequences.

Events at the port of Boston set in motion the chain of events that led to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The connection between these two events did not immediately become obvious. The direct consequences of the Boston Tea Party in 1773 were limited to the abandonment of tea in favor of coffee and various herbal infusions. The martial law imposed was largely a demonstration of the strength of the British administration. Military operations on the territory of the colonies did not begin, and Adams’s speeches about independence in 1773 were no different from his speeches ten years earlier. However, over time, it became obvious that it was the events in Boston that finally united the American nation, clearly proving that the lack of resistance would inevitably lead to new unfair taxes without any attention to the immediate needs of the colonists.

And yet, historians tend to associate the final refusal of a peaceful settlement not with the destruction of valuable cargo. The situation exploded with the adoption of the Intolerable Acts. The embargo on trade with Boston was one of a series of these laws. There were also more stringent ones on the list, for example, the placement of English soldiers in the houses of the colonists or the removal of cases concerning representatives of the colonial administration from the jurisdiction of the colonies.

Boston Tea Party in culture

Legends quickly formed around the events of 1773. They told about one of the “tea party” participants, who, instead of destroying the tea, was stealing it, for which he was thrown into the water along with the boxes. The fact that in the United States they perfectly remember what year the Boston Tea Party took place is clearly evidenced by the museum ship located in the port of Boston, on which you can apply Indian makeup and throw a fake box of tea into the water.

During the celebration of the bicentenary of the destruction of tea brought from Great Britain, a rally was held in Boston, at which there were demands to launch the impeachment process of Richard Nixon. This time there was no damage to the valuable cargo, but the protesters entered a replica of one of the English ships standing in the port and burned an effigy of Nixon on it, simultaneously throwing several empty oil barrels into the water.

The memory of the destruction of 45 tons of tea lives not only in the United States. In 2000, the musical group “Boston Tea Party” was created in Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Preobrazhensky. In her work, she combines the aesthetic principles of sentimentalism and art rock.

01.10.2012 11:55

by Sergey Reminny. Coffee expert. Blog about coffee

Exactly 241 years ago, American colonists threw several tons of tea into Boston Harbor, and ended up brewing a mess that led to the so-called American Revolution. Basic facts about the Boston Tea Party are in our material.

The event known as the Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773. About 46 tons of Chinese tea belonging to the English East India Company ended up in the waters of Boston Harbor. According to some reports, it would have been enough for 18,523,000 mugs, but the losses for Britain turned out to be disproportionately large.

Why the fuss

The reason for the protest of the American colonists was a number of factors that can be described in one word - boiling. At that time, the American territories were British colonies. The colonists, in turn, were unhappy with British taxes. They believed that the parliament of the empire did not have the right to collect, since the American colonies did not have their own representative in the legislative body. In fact, the Tea Party was the beginning of the American struggle for independence.

Who organized the protest

The organizer was a group called “Sons of Liberty”. It was run by smuggler Samuel Adams. The organization represented almost all sectors of colonial society: craftsmen, artisans, business owners, traders, apprentices and laborers. Their goals were to defend their rights, express protest, and undermine British rule in the colonies.

What does tea have to do with it?

Tea was supplied to the American colonies from the beginning of the 18th century. By the time of the Boston Tea Party, the colonists were consuming more than 544 tons of tea per year. Business flourished, but Britain decided that even more money could be made by imposing a tax on the American colonies. That's what they did. The cost of tea increased, to which the colonists responded by smuggling Dutch tea, which was not subject to additional taxes. However, this violated a set of laws - the so-called Navigation Acts - which imposed restrictions on the use of foreign ships for trade between Great Britain and its colonies. Tea smuggling undermined Britain's profitable tea business, resulting in Parliament abolishing the tea tax in 1767. Everything went well, smuggling decreased, and British tea became even cheaper than Dutch tea. However, later that year, the British introduced a new tax - the so-called Townshend Revenue Act. According to the document, in addition to tea, glass, lead, oil, paint and paper were taxed. Such actions by the UK Parliament renewed the controversy over “taxation without parliamentary representation” and gave rise to numerous protests. In 1770, Parliament abolished taxes on all goods except tea. This was enough to stop the protests, but the Tea Law of 1773 made the situation worse.

Tea law

The Tea Act effectively gave the East India Company a monopoly on the sale of tea in the American colonies. By the time it was adopted, the products supplied by the company were practically unclaimed due to the rise of smuggling and lay in warehouses. The law allowed the East India Company to ship tea to the American colonies at its own expense, eliminating the middleman who purchased the product at wholesale auctions in London. Instead, the company appointed a colonial merchant who received the cargo locally and then sold it on commission. This made it possible to make the price of British tea lower than smuggled Dutch tea. However, the Tanshend duty continued to apply. American colonists believed that the Tea Act was an attempt to make American leaders colonial dependent. Now the outrage was not so much caused by high taxes, since British tea, thanks to the law of 1773, became cheaper. The question was already different. The problem of “taxation without a representative in Parliament” remained relevant, as well as the degree of power of Parliament in the colonies.

Boston Tea Party

In the early fall of 1773, seven ships carrying tea for the East India Company set sail for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. Having studied the details of the Tea Act, the Sons of Liberty began to raise awareness of it among locally appointed consignees. The goal of the opposition-minded colonists was the resignation of tea recipients. In New York, Philadelphia and Charleston this was achieved, with the result that arriving tea was either sent back to England or confiscated by customs authorities. However, in Boston, the stubborn governor of Massachusetts convinced the consignees (two of them were his sons) not to retreat.

On December 16, 1773, at 10:00 a.m., more than five thousand people, incited by the Sons of Liberty, gathered in Boston's largest public building, the Old South Meeting House. The meeting was supposed to decide the fate of the tea arriving from Great Britain and eventually planned a protest. According to various sources, from 30 to 130 people took part in the protest. They boarded three ships and dumped 342 boxes of tea into the water in three hours.

Knowing the illegality of their actions, the colonists before the action dressed up in costumes of the Mohawk Indians, applying appropriate paint on their faces. Damages from the Boston Tea Party amounted to $1.7 million by today's standards. That's how much the tea thrown overboard cost. There was simply no other damage. According to some reports, no damage was recorded on any of the ships, except for one broken lock, which was the property of the captain of the ship and was replaced the next day by representatives of the Sons of Liberty. Not a single item was lost from the ships, and everything that was moved from its place during the action was then returned back.

Consequences

In the weeks following the Boston Tea Party, the tea dumped in the water began to give off an odor, but this was not the most important consequence. Britain ordered the closure of Boston Harbor until all 342 sunken tea chests were paid for. The Boston Port Act was one of five acts passed in 1774, called the Intolerable Acts by colonists. The other four were: the Massachusetts Government Act, the Judicial Administrative Act, the Tenant Act, and the Quebec Act. The American colonists responded with new protests and convened the First Continental Congress, after which the Continental Association emerged to boycott British goods. All this further united the American colonies and, in the end, Congress declared the mutual support of the colonies, which meant their joint actions during the American Revolution, which began on April 19, 1775.

Every major historical event always has a catalyst that sets the process in motion. As a rule, the catalyst is some incident that would not otherwise cause great upheaval. However, when the cup of patience is full to the brim, just one drop is enough for a revolution.

Conflict between the “center” and the “regions”

There have been many such events in Russian history. “Salt riot”, “copper riot”... The legendary uprising on the battleship Potemkin began with an attempt by the command to feed the sailors wormy meat...

The independence of the United States of America began... with tea. Although it would be more correct to say that the events that took place in Boston on December 16, 1773 became a kind of salvo of the American “Aurora”, a signal for the beginning of the struggle of 13 North American colonies for independence from the British crown.

Conflicts between England and the British colonists grew over time. The metropolis treated its overseas territories rather disdainfully, believing that the task of the colonies was to ensure its enrichment, the metropolis. Hence high taxes, duties on the import of goods and other restrictions. In addition, the colonists were charged with maintaining the British army in the colonies, as well as officials sent by London.

The colonists were certainly irritated by the fact that their way of life was determined by people separated from them by an ocean and who had no idea about the real state of affairs. Nevertheless, for the time being, the conflict quietly smoldered, without turning into an acute phase.

In 1756-1763, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War, after which the external threat to its North American colonies was completely eliminated.

At the same time, there was no longer any need for British soldiers to protect the colonists. Against this background, the long-standing dissatisfaction of North Americans with the situation only grew stronger.

In the beginning there was tea...

Initially, the goal of the American colonists was not complete independence from Britain - they sought representation in the British Parliament. However, the British nobles refused to meet their demands.

One of the main problems in relations between England and the colonies was the problem of tea. Supplies of tea to the American colonies were taxed, which made the price prohibitively high. The Americans protested, but the problem was solved quite easily by smuggling cheaper Dutch tea.

By 1772, the once powerful British East India Company found itself in crisis. High taxes did not allow her to profitably sell tea in Britain, and large quantities of this product accumulated in warehouses. The American colonies were an excellent market, and the company asked the British Parliament for preferential terms for such trade.

Since the East India Company was something like a “state corporation” for Great Britain, they met it halfway. In May 1773, the so-called Tea Law was approved, which allowed the company to export tea to the colonies at its own expense for the first time. This would lower the price by removing the middleman who purchased tea at wholesale auctions in London. Instead of selling to a middleman, the company appointed a colonial merchant to receive the tea cargo; in turn, the consignees sell the tea for a commission.

Thanks to this scheme, East India Company tea became cheaper for the colonists than smuggled tea.

However, in the American colonies the new law caused not joy, but discontent. And it wasn’t all about the tea. Protests were caused by the maintenance of duties on tea imported into the colonies. In addition, the colonists campaigned under the motto “no taxes without representation,” continuing to demand seats in the British Parliament. The North Americans were also not happy with the fact that their internal issues were resolved exclusively by the British Parliament, and not by their own self-government bodies. They insisted that only those chosen by the colonists themselves had the right to set taxes.

Colonial traders played a significant role in the protests, many of whom made good money from smuggled tea. The emergence of a monopolist in the form of the East India Company threatened them with financial losses. Worse, there was a fear that London would farm out all supplies of goods to the New World to large companies, but this was already fraught with complete ruin.

Sabotage by the Sons of Liberty

The East India Company sent seven ships with tea to the colonies in the early autumn of 1773. While they were sailing, the Americans, having studied the Tea Law, came to the final conclusion that it was contrary to their interests, and began protests. Among the leaders of the protest movement were members of the Sons of Liberty organization, who advocated for the independence of the American colonies.

The protest tactics were initially purely peaceful: activists put pressure on American tea consignees, who were forced to resign. Unclaimed tea was either confiscated by customs authorities or returned on the same ship to London.

In all the colonies, the North Americans achieved their goal without entering into a violent conflict. But in the Massachusetts colony, in Boston, as they say, the scythe found a stone. Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson stated that ships with tea would be received at the port of Boston and unloaded.

When the Dartmouth ship loaded with tea appeared in the port of Boston, a mass rally began in the city, whose participants sought to send the goods to England. By law, the ship had to be unloaded and duty paid on the goods within 20 days, otherwise the goods would be confiscated by customs officials.

However, Governor Hutchinson said: the ship will not leave the port without paying duty, and will be unloaded. Meanwhile, two more ships with tea appeared there. The situation was heating up.

The confrontation lasted until December 16, when the 20 days allowed by law expired. Dartmouth was never given permission to return to England.

And then the radicals from the Sons of Liberty movement entered the picture. Dressed as Indians, the group, which included several dozen people, infiltrated the Dartmouth, effectively taking control of the ship, and within three hours sank 342 boxes of tea weighing a total of 70,000 pounds in the harbor.

The news of the attack in Boston excited both London and the North American colonies. In London, the destruction of the property of the East India Company, and, in fact, the British crown, was considered a riot. Governor Hutchinson was demanded to immediately detain and punish the Sons of Liberty. The British government, in retaliation for the sabotage, declared the port of Boston closed and tightened laws in Massachusetts, further restricting the rights of the colonists.

However, in the colonies themselves, the majority welcomed the action in Boston. Dissatisfaction with the metropolis reached its peak, and the colonists were ready for an open struggle for independence. In this situation, someone had to strike a match. The Sons of Liberty struck in Boston.

Controversial "tea party"

In support of the Bostonians, a campaign began in the colonies to abandon tea, which was replaced by herbal infusions or coffee.

After the drowning of tea in Boston, the situation grew like a snowball. The English authorities, in response to the support of Massachusetts by other colonies, dissolved all local government bodies, transferring power to English officials, and in Boston even to the military administration.

But this caused even greater radicalization of sentiment in the colonies. The confrontation became increasingly aggravated, and in 1775 it escalated into an open armed conflict, during which the Declaration of Independence of the United States was proclaimed on July 4, 1776. The Eight Years' War ended with the defeat of Great Britain and the signing of the Peace of Paris in 1783, according to which the former metropolis recognized the independence of the United States.

It is curious that the event that launched the process of the American Revolution was not highlighted by historians for another half century. And only then did scientists include this episode in US history under the name “Boston Tea Party” - a term that appeared among American colonists almost immediately after those events.

The reason is that the Boston Tea Party does not quite fit into the fundamental principles of American society, such as respect for laws and the institution of private property. For example, the famous American politician and one of the founders of the United States Benjamin Franklin believed that the colonists should have paid the owners of the goods for all the drowned tea.

However, over time, the Boston Tea Party became an integral part of the history of the United States.

Every major historical event has its own catalyst. In Russian history, this was the salvo of the Aurora; for the Americans, the occasion was the famous “Boston Tea Party,” when colonists threw hundreds of boxes of British tea into the water as a sign of protest against British pressure on the colonies.

It's all about the tea

The confrontation between the colonies and the British government began long before the well-known events. The colonists were not happy that there were no representatives in Parliament, but the colonies continued to be subject to more and more taxes. According to the Constitution, British subjects were not required to pay taxes without the consent of their elected representative. That is, only Parliament could levy taxes, but the colonists did not elect members of Parliament, so they considered tax oppression illegal. But in Great Britain they thought differently and continued to oppress the colonists.

British ships in Boston. (wikipedia.org)

The reason for everything was one of the pillars of English culture today - tea. By the end of the 17th century, the British East India Company practically received the right to a monopoly on tea imports from the English Parliament. Soon the American colonies banned the import of tea not from Great Britain. However, the East India Company itself did not export tea to the colonies; it sold it at auctions, and the companies bought the tea and transported it to America. But Parliament constantly introduced taxes on such a profitable product: in addition to the tax that the company itself paid, a tax was also introduced on the sale of tea in Britain. The price of tea increased, which contributed to the flourishing sale of smuggled Dutch tea, which was much cheaper. To combat this, Parliament lowered the tax on tea consumed in Great Britain, but introduced the Townshend Duty on the colonies, including 3 pence per pound on tea.

Poster. (wikipedia.org)

The Townshend Act strained relations between the colonies and Britain, again raising questions about the legality of taxes. The colonists insisted that they could only be taxed by their colonial legislatures; Parliament asserted that it could make laws for the colonies "for all occasions." The new duties were met with protests and boycotts. Colonial traders entered into agreements not to import British tea, and the smuggling trade grew. As a result, Parliament made concessions and abolished the Townshend taxes, except for the duty on tea, which Prime Minister Lord North insisted on. This was enough to calm the traders, but not for long.

East India Company. Save!

In 1772, Parliament restored the tax on tea sold in Britain, and the colonial duty remained. The price of tea jumped again and led to the fact that the East India Company simply could not sell it; warehouses were bursting with unsold goods. The company itself advocated the abolition of the Townshend Duty, but Lord North was categorically against it. Taxes collected in this way went to pay the salaries of colonial governors and judges. Previously, their work was paid for by colonial taxes, but now they were essentially paid by Parliament, which made them dependent and controlled by the British authorities. The Prime Minister believed that it was better that they would be accountable to the colonists.

We started looking for markets. It was decided that selling tea cheaply to Europe was not profitable, as it would be smuggled back to Britain. Therefore, the American colonies were chosen for sale. In 1773, the Tea Act was passed, according to which full payment of duties to the East India Company for importing tea into Great Britain was returned, and for the first time the company could export tea independently, refusing to sell it at auctions. The company would appoint a colonial merchant to receive the shipment, which the consignee would then sell for a commission.

In the fall of 1773, seven ships carrying tea were sent to the colonies: four to Boston, the rest to New York, Philadelphia and Charleston. The ships were carrying more than 2,000 chests of tea, weighing approximately 600,000 pounds. The Americans studied the Tea Law and discontent began to grow in the colonies. The Sons of Liberty advocated for the consignees to resign.

In fact, the price of tea did fall, but this was not the case at all. Once again, the dispute over the extent of Parliament's power in the colonies intensified. Some considered the dependence of officials on the Townshend duties as an encroachment on colonial rights. In addition, traders played a significant role in the protest movement. Many of them were smugglers, and cheaper British tea threatened their business. Also under threat of ruin were tea importers who were not appointed by the East India Company. Essentially, the Tea Law gave the company a monopoly on the tea trade, and traders feared that the monopoly might be extended to other goods.

Protests began in the colonies. In Charleston, consignees were forced to resign by early December, and the tea was confiscated by customs officials. In Philadelphia and New York, the consignees also left, and the ships returned with their cargo to England without money. Only Boston failed to eliminate consignees. The local governor, Hutchinson, convinced his sons, who were the consignees, not to retreat.

Sons of freedom. Destruction of tea

At the end of November, the Dartmouth ship arrived in Boston. Sons of Liberty leader Samuel Adams organized a massive rally attended by thousands of people. The protesters demanded that the ship be sent to England without paying import duties, as had previously been done in Philadelphia. In addition, the colonists appointed people to look after the ship to prevent them from unloading. The governor refused to issue permission to return the ship. Soon two more ships arrived with tea - the Eleanor and the Beaver. The fourth ship was wrecked on its way to the colonies. On December 16, the last day of Dartmouth's unloading deadline, about 7,000 people again gathered for a rally. Governor Hutchinson again prevented ships from sailing without paying tolls. According to the law, the ship had to be unloaded and duties paid after 20 days, otherwise the cargo would be confiscated by customs. According to legend, at the meeting Samuel Adams gave the signal for the start of the Tea Party.

People dressed up as Mohawk Indians and painted their faces as a disguise. This was symbolic, as the colonists wanted to emphasize their belonging to America and the fact that they were primarily defenders of the interests of the colonies in North America.

Boston Tea Party. (wikipedia.org)

In the evening, a group of 30-130 Sons of Liberty snuck onto the ships and in three hours dropped 342 boxes of tea weighing about 70,000 pounds into the water. The news shocked Britain. London demanded that Hutchinson find and punish the Sons of Liberty. In addition, he was accused that, due to his stubbornness, the goods were damaged; if he had agreed to return the ships to England, losses could have been avoided. The British government closed the port of Boston and introduced new laws against the colonists, which only made their situation worse. The colonists were inspired by the courage of the Bostonians and, as a sign of solidarity, began to give up tea, replacing it with herbal infusions and coffee.

The Boston Tea Party became one of the symbols of the struggle against the British colonial administration and the catalyst for the American War of Independence. It strengthened the will of the people of the 13 British colonies to fight for freedom from the oppression of the British crown.