Tea Act
Colonial taxation legislation
The Tea Act was a 1773 British law that granted the East India Company a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonies, allowing the company to sell directly to colonists while bypassing colonial merchants.
Though it actually lowered tea prices, colonists viewed it as a dangerous precedent for taxation without representation and corporate monopoly.
The act provoked fierce resistance, most famously the Boston Tea Party, and helped precipitate the American Revolution.
- Sons of LibertyRevolutionary-era resistance movement
- smugglingIllegal covert transport
- protestPublic expression of disapproval
- shipSeagoing transport vessel
- American RevolutionColonial separation from Britain
British East India Company · Samuel Adams · monopoly · colonial trade · mercantilism · Dartmouth · colonial resistance · Hutchinson · East India Company · protest movements · boycott · tax revolt · tariffs · patriots · Boston Harbor · customs duties · import duties · Continental Congress
- American RevolutionDeclaration of Independence, Continental Congress, founding fathers, Intolerable Acts, Sons of Liberty
- New England historyMassachusetts, Boston, Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Puritans
- colonial lawsNavigation Acts, Code Noir, British Raj
Tea Acthome rule
Delegated local autonomy
appeasement policy · colonial charter · self-governance · Articles of Confederation
Tea Actrepeal
Annul a statute
nullification · rescission · revocation · abrogation · annulment