Why did the Boston Tea Party take place and what were its consequences?

Question

Looking for a simplified answer please.

Answer 1

Hope this is all clear, since many popular explanations (like those reflected in the first two answers) tend to be mistaken on some key points. For starters, this event was NOT the real "protest", nor was there any particular desire to destroy ANY property, including the tea. In fact, the colonists initially had NO desire or plans to destroy tea, but felt forced to it when their main plan didn't quite work.

Here's what happened.

The East India Company was in a financial pinch, and the King agreed to help them out by allowing them to sell their tea without paying the EXPORT duty, thus to be able to undercut the prices of the smuggled tea in the colonies. BUT they WOULD still collect the import. Thus the King hoped to force the colonists (who would surely buy the cheaper tea, no?) to pay the duty and acknowledge the principle that he (and Parliament) had the right to tax them.

Result -- a massive uprising of the colonists, the biggest since the Stamp Act, to BOYCOTT the tea. So when, late in 1773, the shipments of tea were sent to the major American colonial ports from Boston to Charleston, the colonists refused to let the tea to be landed. Instead, they pressured the ship owners and those merchants who were to take consignment of the tea("consignees") NOT to do so, but to sail away with the tea.

This plan worked fairly well in most of the ports. The biggest problem came in Boston, where the royal governor (Hutchinson) and the consignees (who happened to be relatives of his!) refused to back down. The governor even blocked the harbor so that the ships COULD not leave.

Now according to the law, once the ship had been there for 20 days, the DUTY on the tea HAD to be paid whether the tea had been landed or not. In fact, the tea could be seized and auctioned off to pay the taxes. The clock was about to run out on the first of the ships to arrive (the Dartmouth) at midnight of December 16. Hutchinson knew this, and seemed about to 'win'. It was at that point the Boston Sons of Liberty took charge and 'consigned' the tea to the harbor.

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The British response (in March -June 1774) was a series of punitive acts against the colonies, but MAINLY against Boston, beginning with closing the port until full payment was made, and several steps to shut down the local government, and put it all in the hands of the king . Together these were nicknamed the Intolerable Acts.


MORE INFO:

Some good overviews of the events leading up to the Tea Party, and the aftermath -- take your pick:
http://www.americanrevwar.homestead.com/files/TEAPARTY.HTM'
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/E/teaparty/bostonxx.htm
http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/smith/smith17.html
http://oror.essortment.com/bostonteaparty_rotm.htm

For a more detailed explanation, esp. of the efforts of the various colonies NOT to land the tea, see the three-page article beginning at
http://www.boston-tea-party.org/economic-causes.html

Answer 2

The simple answer is taxation without representation. The British allowed the East Indies company (owned by Brits) to sale tea in the colonies without taxation , this caused the price the colonist were charging to plummett in order to compete with the East Indies Co. A boycott against English tea was inacted and the amount sold in the colonies went from 300k lbs to 500lbs. This angered England and they decided to impose more taxes on the colonists. The colonists had no representation in front of the King so they decided to protest. IE: the Boston tea party or lets throw all their tea in the river and really piss them off!

Answer 3

The Boston Tea Party was an act of protest by the American colonists against Great Britain in which they destroyed many crates of tea bricks on ships in Boston Harbor.
the results were the Intolerable Acts, which led to American Revolution.

hope this helps, :)

Answer 4

Because most Americans are not Libertarians. Libertarians are like hippie flower power children who live in an ivory tower, come down every four years to vote for some loser who can't win and make daisy chains, and then retreat back to their ivory tower while the rest of us do the heavy lifting. Libertarians don't believe in any sort of restraint on behavior, apparently, and all they do is yammer on endlessly about how they are the party of personal freedom; and yet they deliberately refuse to join with the rest of us to fight for those liberties. Watch what they do this November: they will vote for their fringe candidate, taking away votes needed to defeat Obama, and then in January sit around and complain because Obama has taken over the internet. I have no use for self-indulgent navel contemplaters.