THE TEA ACT

Tea Act of 1773

Tea Act of 1773

Introduction

The Parliament of Great Britain passed an act known as the Tea Act. The purpose of this act was to reduce the surplus tea held by The British East India Company. The company's warehouse in London was weak financially, and the main objective was to cut the price of the tea that was smuggled to the North American colonies. This bill was passed to save the British East India Company from bankruptcy (wikipedia.org, 2011).

The Tea Act

This bill allowed the company to pay a lower amount of tax to the British company which allowed it a de facto monopoly in the American tea trade. The payment of lower taxes to the British government allowed the East India Company to sell tea cheaply in the colonies. The effect of the tax was so huge that even when the Dutch tea entered the market it was more expensive than the East India tea though the Dutch tax was untaxed.

Protest was undertaken by many colonists because they thought that lowering of taxes is an example of taxation tyranny because the duty was applicable on the tea in the colonies and not on the tea that entered England. The intensity of this protest was so huge that the colonists demanded to send back the three tea ships to England of the East India Company. The Governor of Massachusetts refused to send the ships back; however, outraged by this decision, Samuel Adams, the Patriot leader established a Boston Tea Party of 60 members. On 16th December, 1773, the Patriots got on the British ships that carried tea and disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians. They dumped the tea into the water. The value of the tea dumped in the water at that time was £18,000 which is today's $1 million ...