The British Tea Act
The British parliament had passed an act on May 10 1773 , known as the Tea Act . Its primary purpose was to lessen the excess tea supplies held by the East India Company . Their warehouse in London was financially weak and therefore , cutting the price of the tea that was being sold to North America would help generate more sales and therefore save the Company from getting bankrupt . Another reason of doing this was to make tea legally cheap so that it was not smuggled into America . Moreover , if the Americans started to purchase the tea , they would be implicitly agreeing to the taxation terms of the British parliament .
The history and particulars of The Tea Act are given here forth . This act allowed the East India Company to pay less tax to the government of Britain therefore allowing it to sell the tea cheap to the US colonies . The British tea became so cheap that when Dutch tea came into the market , it was more expensive even though it was not taxed . According to the act the Company was allowed to sell tea directly to North America duty free . The colonies harassed the Company ’ s authorized consignees while in many areas they had successfully prevented the tea from landing on American grounds . The particulars included :
� License was granted to the Company to export tea directly to the American Colonies . � It was no longer obligated to sell tea in the London Tea Auction . � The tax on exports of tea to North America will be refunded .
As a result , the American colonies waged a protest against the British government because the tea that was entering England was cheap and untaxed . This taxation tyranny led to such an intensive protest , that the colonies actually announced to send back three ships to England that had come from the East India Company . The governor of Massachusetts was reluctant of doing so and stopped the action .
As a reaction of this , the American patriot leader announced for a 60 men event , called the Boston Tea Party . The event was not an actual tea party , but it was a plan to get back at the British . On 16 December 1773 , the patriots dressed as Native Americans got on British Ships and dumped their cargo of tea into the sea . The total tea that was thrown , valued 18,000 British Pounds at that time .