THIS DAY IN HISTORY – British parliament passes unpopular Tea Act – 1773

Via History.com

What was the main reason that Great Britain passed the Tea Act of 1773?

Tea Act - Students | Britannica Kids | Homework Help

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This is a picture of the Boston Tea Party. The... | Sutori

On April 27, 1773, the British Parliament passes the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Because all legal tea entered the colonies through England, allowing the East India Company to pay lower taxes in Britain also allowed it to sell tea more cheaply in the colonies. Even untaxed Dutch tea, which entered the colonies illegally through smuggling, was more expensive the East India tea, after the act took effect.

British Prime Minister, Frederick, Lord North, who initiated the legislation, thought it impossible that the colonists would protest cheap tea; he was wrong. Many colonists viewed the act as yet another example of taxation tyranny, precisely because it left an earlier duty on tea entering the colonies in place, while removing the duty on tea entering England.

When three tea ships carrying East India Company tea, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to send back the cargo, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the so-called Boston Tea Party with about 60 members of the radically anti-British Sons of Liberty. On December 16, 1773, the Patriots boarded the British ships disguised as Mohawk Indians and dumped the tea chests, valued then at £18,000 (nearly $1 million in today’s money), into the water.

Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, known to colonists as the Intolerable Acts, the following year. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to what they saw as British oppression.

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2 Comments
James
James
April 27, 2022 7:25 am

Huh ,image what the founders of the US would have done about the taxes we have stolen from us by our own govt. today?

Worse yet,imagine the amount they drink daily in the next life seeing what has become of the country!

In May we have perhaps totally open borders,a WHO meeting(not the great British rockers)that would have the WHO/UN manage pandemics in countries with loss of sovereignty for those countries(time to collect light blue colanders?).

I say perhaps a covid tea party,dump all the non vax vaxes in the ocean but realize harmful to environment(I like otters/fish and all the other little ocean creatures),so…….,perhaps dump vaxes in swimming pools and drown those who would force vaxes on us.

comment image

Tacticool cat is ready!

Bullwinkle
Bullwinkle
April 27, 2022 3:04 pm

If i remember correctly, the Tea tax and the Stamp tax were repealed before mid April 1775.