16/12/2023 – 6:11
On December 16, 1773, the inhabitants of the American colonies rebelled against an arbitrary decision by the English metropolis, throwing 45 tons of tea into the sea in the port of Boston. More than 250 years ago, several regions of northeastern North America were still dominated by England. Immigrants from the colonies enjoyed few rights, and the product of their work served a single objective: to enrich the metropolis. England levied taxes on the colonies on products such as tea, sugar, wine, paper and ink.
Immigrants wondered at the time whether it was legitimate to let themselves be commanded by the crown in this way, even without being represented in the English Parliament. Several of them then began to demand the abolition of taxes as long as they could not have representatives participating in government decisions.
Boycott English products
Resistance against the metropolis grew every day. In 1768, John Dickinson wrote the first patriotic song in the United States, the Liberty Song. At the time, a real boycott of English products began. American women, for example, began to weave their own cloth, no longer buying English fabrics.
Immigrants began to avoid even consuming tea and sugar from England. The trade was largely dominated by traffickers, who obviously did not charge taxes. The English government, in turn, forced to react quickly, decided in 1770 to abolish all special taxes charged to the American colonies. Only taxes on English tea remained.
The main consumer product of American society at the time, tea was appreciated not only by the elite, but by all layers of the population. Precisely for this reason, the metropolis' insistence on the tax on tea caused great irritation among immigrants in the colonies. This irritation grew even more when the English government, in May 1773, gave the East India Company permission to sell its tea production under special conditions to the colony.
Fear of monopolies
Interested in helping the company, the English metropolis allowed it to stop paying customs duties, due to the financial difficulties it found itself in. Other traders in the colonies feared that the East India Company could monopolize the market and therefore opposed, for economic reasons, the entry of this tea into the country.
While the company's ships docked in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Boston, local merchants organized resistance movements. In two cities, ships were forced to return to their original destination. Only in Boston was the governor able to get the tea landed. On the night of December 16, 1773, five thousand people gathered in the city to protest against the official decision.
The “Tea Party”
A group of 50 to 100 men, dressed as Indians, went to Boston Harbor, emptied the ships and threw around 45 tons of tea into the sea. George Hewes, one of the participants in the action, later described what happened: “In the morning, after we threw the tea into the sea, we found that there were still large quantities floating on the water. To prevent anyone from taking this tea for personal use, three small boats were sent to all the places where it could still be seen. There, the men pushed the tea with oars, until it was completely wet and, therefore, unusable.”
The event became known throughout the country under the name of the Boston Tea Party. The men who threw the tea into the sea were imitated in several other cities across the country and ended up becoming known as the first heroes of the American independence movement.
As German Hartmut Keil, a specialist in matters relating to North America, explains, “the majority of these men were manual workers, including construction workers, painters and carpenters. Some intellectuals were also present – a professor and a doctor, for example –, which proves the scope of the demonstration”.
After what happened, the English government severely punished the inhabitants of Boston, closing the city's port and giving the military the right to occupy civilian homes. However, the independence movement was not shaken by such measures. Three years after the “Boston Tea Party”, 13 colonies would found the United States of America.
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