Tea Act

The British Colonial Empire 1660-1870

     In 1773, the Tea Act gave a monopoly on tea sales to the British East India Trading Company. In other words, American colonists could buy no tea unless it came from that company. Why? Well, the British East Indian Trading Company wasn't doing so well, and the British wanted to give it some more business. The Tea Act lowered the price on this East India tea so much that it was way below tea from other suppliers. But the American colonists saw this law as yet another means of "taxation without representation" because it meant that they couldn't buy tea from anyone else (including other colonial merchants) without spending a lot more money. Their response was to refuse to unload the tea from the ships. This was the situation in Boston that led to the Boston Tea Party