The purpose of this research is to examine the events and issues surrounding the Boston Tea Party. The plan of the research will be to set forth the overall chronology of issues that emerged and established the political context in which the Tea Party could take place, and then to discuss the impact of the incident on the colonies, in particular the British responses that ultimately led to the Revolutionary War.
An appropriate understanding of the importance of the Boston Tea Party cannot be obtained without an understanding of the issues and events that preceded it. The Party, which occurred in 1773, actually had its origins several years earlier, in the wake of the French and Indian War, which ended in 1763. In 1766, Parliament passed the Quartering Act, which provided for "billeting, provisioning and discipline of British forces . . . requiring colonial assemblies to provide barracks and supplies such as candles, fuel, vinegar, beer and salt for the regulars. . . Colonists saw themselves soon being required to pay all the costs of the Army in America at the 'dictate' of Parliament."1 Further to this point, the Seven Years' War was over; why the need for such a large standing army in America? This first Quartering Act was, however, obeyed in general terms, and even partly rescinded as to enforcement,2 until other Parliamentary measures pointed up colonists' feeling of oppression.
By 1767, the unpopular Stamp Act had been passed, then repealed in the face of an American boycott of covered goods. In 1767, the Townshend Acts established import duties on "glass, lead, paints, paper, and tea." The stated purpose of these duties was that of "defraying the charge of the administration of justice, and the support of civil government" in America.3 In other words, the American colonies would be obliged to pay for British administration of the territory. Tuchman says that this phrase in the bill was its undoing because wi...