Home > Teach me Tea Cha! > History > Boston Tea Party

Main content starts here.

Boston Tea Party

English colonies anger for unfairness on trade lead "Boston tea party" in Dec.1773. Teas exported by English East India Company were unreasonably expensive compare to the teas from smuggled trading. In 1776, America made a declaration of independence and became an independent country. Tea played important role of the history of America independence. The first country to brought tea to America was Holland. Dutch East India Company shipped the first shipment of teas to their former colonial country "New Amsterdam" in America. Around that time, the British was very powerful because of their strong merchant services, and thus they started to have conflict with Holland quite often. In 1651, In order to eliminate Holland from dealing the domestic trade, the British stipulated "Navigation Acts" and America-Netherlands war was started. In 1664, the British invaded New Amsterdam and renamed it to New York. America was forced to shift their source of importing tea from Holland, France, Denmark and Sweden to just from England. Tea was already widely drunk in America and large amount of tea was consumed by American people. However, East India Company posted unreasonably high price on tea, and made American consumers furious. Naturally the smuggle trade became very active, after all their tea was much cheaper. The British tried to control the smuggle trade and enforced the coast guard. Some people say the clipper ships were designed to for the smuggle teas to America. Because of the 7 years war, England was facing serious economic crisis and imposing the duties and tariffs to the colonies. In 1765, Stamp Act was provided, but used only for 3 months because of the strong opposing from the colonies. In 1773, new law " tea treaty" was established, and tax was set to 3 pence on 1 pound tea. However England was not required to pay any tax. Although the price of tea dropped greatly, and tea price became about half of the tea provided from smuggle trade, American people strongly refused to buy teas from England, and they kept buying smuggle teas. This new law was provided also for the reason to protect the English East India Company from the bankruptcy and the law provided giving them monopoly privilege. The movement among the people in America to oppose this law and unfairness became larger, and 342 cargoes of tea from England were thrown into the ocean. The British claimed damages of the loss, but colonies refused to obey their demand and did not pay for the loss. Consequently, this incident lead the American War for Independence.

(Takahiro Moritake)