The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament's Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly reducing its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. In simpler terms, the Boston Tea Party occurred as a result of “taxation without representation, but the cause is more complex than that. American settlers believed that Britain was unfairly taxing them to pay for the expenses incurred during the French and Indian War. In addition, the settlers believed that Parliament had no right to tax them because the American colonies were not represented in Parliament.
On Sunday, November 28, the Dartmouth, which carries 114 boxes of tea, arrives at Boston Harbor. A meeting, open to all Bostonians and anyone from neighboring cities who choose to attend (a group identified as the Corps), is convened at Faneuil Hall. When the crowd swells up, it is transferred to Old South Meeting House. The Corps speaks, demanding that tea be returned, and the assembly appoints a 25-man guard to protect Griffin's Wharf.
Everyone knows the Boston tea party, right? King George III of England imposed another tax on American settlers, this time on the most basic and necessary product of tea. It was the last act before the boiler of revolution began to overflow. Therefore, the company could sell the tea at a lower price than usual in the United States or Great Britain; it could sell less than to anyone else. As mentioned earlier, the tea that was thrown into the port did not belong to the crown or to England, but to a private British entity, the East India Company.
These high taxes, combined with the fact that the Dutch government did not tax tea imported into the Dutch Republic, meant that British and British Americans could smuggle Dutch tea at much cheaper prices. Therefore, it is logical to assume that the passengers on the ships disguised themselves as Native Americans to make it look like the local natives had done the pouring of tea, but that's not how it sank. The tax change was a direct blow to the local underground tea economy in the colonies and took money out of the pockets of many people. British companies bought this tea and exported it to the colonies, where they resold it to merchants in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston.
As Europeans developed a taste for tea in the 17th century, rival companies were formed to import the product from China. You're not going to explain the East India Company, British imperialism and how black markets and smuggling work to an 8-year-old boy, you're just going to tell them it was the king's tea. Due to boycotts and protests, the Townshend Revenue Act taxes on all commodities except tea were repealed in 1770. In cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, tea agents waived or canceled orders, and merchants refused shipments.
Traders organized a no-import agreement and many settlers pledged to refrain from drinking British tea, and activists in New England promoted alternatives, such as domestic Labrador tea. In 1973, on the 200th anniversary of the Tea Party, a mass gathering in Faneuil Hall called for the removal of President Richard Nixon and protested against oil companies in the current oil crisis. Three weeks later, a similar group met at Faneuil Hall in Boston and adopted the Philadelphia Resolutions.
