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Maritime Topics On Stamps :
The 'Boston Tea Party' !
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The American Independence-Flag of 1775,
and tea chests were thrown into the water.
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The Boston Tea Party,
(Dec. 16, 1773), incident in which 342 chests of tea
belonging to the British East India Company were thrown from ships into Boston
Harbour by American patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians. The Americans were
protesting both a tax on tea (taxation without representation) and
the perceived monopoly of the East India Company.
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The Townshend Acts passed by Parliament in 1767 and imposing duties on various products
imported into the British colonies had raised such a storm of colonial protest
and noncompliance that they were repealed in 1770, saving the duty on tea, which
was retained by Parliament to demonstrate its presumed right to raise such colonial
revenue without colonial approval. The merchants of Boston circumvented the act by
continuing to receive tea smuggled in by Dutch traders.
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In 1773 Parliament passed a
Tea Act designed to aid the financially troubled East India Company by granting it
- a monopoly on all tea exported to the colonies,
- an exemption on the export tax, and
- a drawback (refund) on duties owed on certain surplus quantities of tea
in its possession.
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The tea sent to the colonies was to be carried only in East India Company ships and
sold only through its own agents, bypassing the independent colonial shippers and
merchants. The company thus could sell the tea at a less-than-usual price in either
America or Britain; it could undersell anyone else. The perception of monopoly drove
the normally conservative colonial merchants into an alliance with radicals led by
Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty.
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In such cities as New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, tea agents resigned or
canceled orders, and merchants refused consignments.
In Boston, however, the royal governor Thomas Hutchinson determined to uphold
the law and maintained that three arriving ships, the 'Dartmouth', 'Eleanor', and
'Beaver', should be allowed to deposit their cargoes and that appropriate
duties should be honoured.
On the night of Dec. 16, 1773, a group of about 60 men, encouraged by a large crowd
of Bostonians, donned blankets and Indian headdresses, marched to Griffin's wharf,
boarded the ships, and dumped the tea chests, valued at £18,000, into the water.
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In retaliation, Parliament passed the series of punitive measures known in the colonies
as the Intolerable Acts, including the Boston Port Bill, which shut off the
city's sea trade pending payment for the destroyed tea. The British government's
efforts to single out Massachusetts for punishment served only to unite the
colonies and impel the drift toward war.
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Source by Britannica.com,
page created April 2001.
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