Donations to the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) qualified charity under the United States Internal Revenue Code, fund engaging programs at both museums. Each year around the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, a re-enactment party is thrown in Boston and visitors can tour replicas of the Dartmouth, the Beaver and the Eleanor, the three ships that were docked in the Boston Harbor and loaded with the East India Company's tea. Though Parliament did not pass the Tea Act as a revenue measure, patriot leaders saw the act as a cunning way to get the Americans to pay the hated Townshend duty on tea by undercutting the price of smuggled Dutch tea. significance to the colonists of the Tea Act and the Coercive Acts Why did these particular acts see so galling to the American Colonists? The act was intended to bail out the struggling East India Company, which was very important for the British economy, and the Tea Act would raise revenue from the 13 colonies. The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive. If you study the history, you must know the Boston Tea Party. W.D. The colonists resisted the new tax, arguing that only their own elective colonial assemblies could tax them, and that “taxation without representation” was unjust and unconstitutional. The “tea partiers” were not protesting a tax hike, but a corporate tax break. “Boston Tea Party.”, The History of North America. This was in response to the colonists hurting British companies by drinking smuggled tea. But American colonists, who had no representation in Parliament, saw the Acts as an abuse of power. If Parliament expected that the lowered cost of tea would mollify the colonists into acquiescing to the Tea Act, it was gravely mistaken. It was not a new tax on tea. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British ...read more, Samuel Adams was a Founding Father of the United States and a political theorist who protested British taxation without representation, uniting the American colonies in the fight for independence during the Revolutionary War. The Tea Act 1773 (13 Geo 3 c 44) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The tax identification number is 31-1618642. After the Tea Act was passed, colonists boycotted tea. The Townshend Acts were a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. Other colonists viewed the act as a Trojan horse designed to seduce them into accepting Parliament’s right to impose taxes on them. In 1767, Charles Townshend (1725-67), Britain’s new chancellor of the Exchequer (an office that placed him in charge of collecting the government’s revenue), proposed a law known as the Townshend Revenue Act. Did you know? The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. 6 years ago. The act was not intended to raise revenue in the American colonies, and in fact imposed no new taxes. The tea act was the act of the American colonists rebelling against the British for taxation without representation on tea, it was also an act of freedom from Britain. Their resistance culminated in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, in which colonists boarded East India Company ships and dumped their loads of tea overboard. See more. Unfortunately for Townshend, the Stamp Act had aroused colonial resentment to all new taxes, whether levied on imports or on the colonists directly. The most spectacular action occurred in Boston, Massachusetts, where on December 16, 1773, a well-organized group of men dressed up as Native Americans and boarded the company ships. Tea was being sold more widely in England by 1657, in London’s existing coffee houses, but it was called Tcha, China Drink, Tay or Tee, and was generally sold as a remedy to cure all ills; from fatigue and lack of virility to overall poor health and diseases of all kinds, and it was expensive. The Act derives its name from the fact that the colonies were forced to buy authorized stamps made by Britain whenever they purchased any of those printed mater… In response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament attempted to punish Boston and isolate the colonies. In several towns, crowds of colonists gathered along the ports and forced company ships to turn away without unloading their cargo. Summer Teacher Institute for Virginia Teachers, American Revolution Museum at Yorktown: The Transformation, African Americans and the American Revolution, FOCUSED: A Century of Virginia Indian Resilience, 18th National Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists, TENACITY: Women in Jamestown and Early Virginia, Blast from the Past: Artillery in the War of Independence, AfterWARd: The Revolutionary Veterans Who Built America. British settlers in America were initially r… Angry mobs, like the Sons of Liberty, in Philadelphia and New York forced ships carrying the company’s tea to return to England without unloading. The act retained the duty on imported tea at its existing rate, but, since the company was no longer required to pay an additional tax in England, the Tea Act effectively lowered the price of the East India Company’s tea in the colonies. In 1770, Parliament repealed all of the Townshend Act duties except for the one on tea, which was retained as a symbol of Parliament’s power over the colonies. The Tea Act of 1773 triggered a reaction with far more significant consequences than either the 1765 Stamp Act or the 1767 Townshend Acts. A glut of tea and a diminished American market had left the company with tons of tea leaves rotting in its warehouses. Contrary to popular belief, the Quartering Act did not force colonists to house British soldiers in their own homes. Tea only made its way to England in large quantities in the first years of the 17th century. The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, granted the British East India Company Tea a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonies. The British sent troops to America to ...read more, The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British Parliament. Opposition developed in different colonial ports, variations of the Boston Tea Party took place in other colonies. Two great superpowers of the time – France and Great Britain, battled for the control of their colonies. Many colonial leaders feared that the colonists would buy the company’s tea if it made it to shore and submit to the payment of the tea tax. Moreover, many of them also harassed the authorized consignees of the company. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. The high annual payment the company was required to pay the British government was a factor in the company’s financial problems. Relevance. Patriot mobs intimidated the company’s agents into resigning their commissions. The First Continental Congress, which was comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Coercive Acts, a series of measures ...read more, The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775, kicked off the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). Monetarily, this British Parliament plan made sense. Though the company’s tea was still subject to the Townshend tax, dropping the customs duty would allow the East … George Washington was another American who condemned the destruction of tea, but his harsh reaction to the Coercive Acts illustrates their tremendous theoretical significance. in India) so there was no tax collection in the colonies. The Tea Act was a follow-up to the Revenue Act, that was one of the laws in the Townshend Acts which set new import duties (taxes) on British goods including paint, paper, lead, glass and tea. The colonists had never accepted the constitutionality of the duty on tea, and the Tea Act rekindled their opposition to it. Colonial resistance intensified until, three years after Parliament passed the Tea Act, the colonies declared their independence as the United States of America. Within the Tea Act, Parliament granted the East India company a monopoly (the only business in a specific trade or product) over the American tea trade. On March 22, 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, imposing taxes on virtually all printed materials in the American colonies. On the night ...read more. Examples of those materials included newspapers, almanacs, magazines, playing cards, wills, and a host of other legal documents. Made the tea cheaper and would make colonists purchase it, but also pay the tax on it. A new act of Parliament, designed to help a struggling trading company, would next fuel the growing conflict between the American colonies and the British government. By 1773, a relative calm existed between the British government and her colonial subjects. This … Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress. He began his career in local politics in 1737 and was named speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1746. In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the first direct, internal tax that it had ever levied on the colonists. I was assigned to make and present a really short movie about the Tea Act in a U.S. history class a few years ago and I guess I wanted to save it somewhere. The British government granted the company a monopoly on the importation and sale of tea in the colonies. The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, would launch the final spark to the revolutionary movement in Boston. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. It reinforced a tea tax in the American colonies. This historical event is known as the Boston Tea Party. London: E. Newberry, 1789.Engraving. Dutch and Portuguese traders were shipping tea from China and a few other Asian countries to Europe regularly by 1610. It was regarded as "Taxation without representation" by the colonists which led eventually to the Boston Tea Party. The British government swiftly reacted to the Boston Tea Party. The act’s main purpose was not to raise revenue from the colonies but to bail out the floundering East India Company, a key actor in the British economy. To express their displeasure, the colonists organized popular and effective boycotts of the taxed goods. Tea Act, (1773), in British American colonial history, legislative maneuver by the British ministry of Lord North to make English tea marketable in America. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The American Revolution had begun. Instead of placating the colonies by repealing the Tea Act, the British government decided to punish Boston and the people of Massachusetts with a series of acts which became known as the Intolerable Acts or the Coercive Acts. Due to protests from British merchants, whose trade was seriously effected by the American colonists refusing to buy the goods, Parliament repealed all of the duties (taxes) - except the tax on tea. The Coercive Acts and American Independence. They tried to prevent the landing of the tea into the American land. The senseless destruction of private property by a group of hooligans shocked the English merchant class. Act that permitted the East India Company to ship tea from its warehouses in Britain without paying the duty. The Tea Act of 1773 was imposed on the American colonies by the British government who was heavily in debt in the decade leading up to the American Revolutionary War. They dumped all of the tea overboard. Parliament responded with a series of harsh measures intended to stifle colonial resistance to British rule; two years later the war began. He was the second cousin of John Adams and the ...read more, 1. Why was the Tea Act of 1773 so Important. The Results to the effect were through the Leaflets of us reviewed, before we then the User insights in detail view. The Intolerable Acts … Recognizing that the Stamp Act was a lost cause, Parliament repealed it in 1766. On December 16, 1773 one hundred Bostonians disguised as American Indians boarded British ships anchored in the harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea that belonged to the East India Company. Although it was a private concern, the company played an integral role in Britain’s imperial economy and served as its conduit to the riches of the East Indies. Although the victory greatly expanded the empire’s imperial holdings, it also left it with a massive national debt, and the British government looked to its North American colonies as an untapped source of revenue. The Tea Act gave the East India Company a monopoly on the sale of tea, which made it cost about half of what the colonists were spending for their contraband tea. Tea act definition, an act of the British Parliament (1773) that created a monopoly unfair to American tea merchants: the chief cause of the Boston Tea Party. 1765 Stamp Act or the 1767 Townshend Acts Akt des Widerstandes gegen britische... 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