Boston Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party was one of several events leading up to the American Revolutionary War. Ten years before the Boston Tea Party, the English won the French Indian War where conflicts began and continued till the year of 1773, when the Boston Tea Party occurred. American patriots had used a disguise to board three ships at the Boston Harbor. On the ships were 342 cargos of tea that belonged to the British East India Company. The Americans dumped 10,000 pounds of tea into the ocean. This is all how the Boston Tea Party came about, but what really made the Americans mad enough to just dump thousands of pounds of tea into the ocean?

It all started when the King of Britain was upset about all the money lost during the French Indian War, and so he passed taxes on the colonies to make the money up. However, before he could tax the colonies, he had to come up with Acts such as, the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act. The Sugar Act put a tax of three cents on sugar that was bought by the American Colonists. The Stamp Act taxed every piece of printer paper used, ship’s papers, documents, licenses, and newspapers. The colonists then had protests against those Acts, which made the British Parliament cancel the taxes. Then the government decided to put taxes on lead, paint, paper, and tea, which became the Townshend Act.

Once the Townshend Act was passed, people held meetings to try and get others not to buy English stuff anymore. Still, after all that happened, the Parliament decided to drop all taxes except for one, tea taxes. The colonists still refused to pay taxes even though it only cost them pennies a year, so they drank smuggled tea in from the Netherlands. Since they drank the cheap stuff, they did not care what the Parliament did with the taxes, whether they raised them or lowered them. Once the East India Tea Company found out what they were drinking, the Parliament gave them the opportunity to ship tea without having to pay duties. They did this so that the tea...