Tea+Act

=The Tea Act=



The Tea Act was put into effect after the Townshend Acts were repealed. This act, passed by Parliament in May 1773 was intended to help the East India Company which was not doing very well financially and needed to unload on nearly eighteen million pounds of tea. It wassent to the colonies and meant to be sold at a "bargain price". This ofcourse was not benificial to local merchants. It also seemed to be an attempt of the british monarchy to, again, trink the colonists into accepting the other taxes being enforced. The colonists were not easily fooled. They knew it was merely a ploy to keep them loyal to Britain. Similiarly to the colonists reaction to the Townshend Acts they took matters into their own hands. A group of people from Boston dressed in indian attire, headresses and all, charged the Boston Harbor and dumped the entire shipment of tea overboard. This act by the colonist infuriated the British Parliament.

The Tea Act further showed how Britain was trying desperately to keep control over the colonists in their new world. They even thought themselves sneaky to make the tea prices cheaper, but their underlying motive was not for the interest or well being of the colonist, but merely their own economical gain. After the Boston Tea Party, as it came to be called, English Parliament passed the Coercive Acts setting the stage for war. (__The American Experience__)

Pre-Revolutionary Control Historical Context