Tea Act

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The so-called Tea Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain (13 Geo III c. 44), passed in 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea to the British colonies in North America without the usual colonial tax, thereby allowing them to undercut the prices of the colonial merchants and smugglers. This was primarily intended to aid the finances of the East India Company, which were close to collapse due to famine in India and economic weakness in European markets. The British government intended to give the East India Company an effective monopoly on tea imports to the Thirteen Colonies.

The Tea Act didn't add any more taxes to tea; however, it backfired anyway. Because many Americans earned their living from smuggling, they disliked the commercial advantages granted by the government to the Company. This act led to widespread boycotts of tea throughout the colonies, and, eventually, to the Boston Tea Party where American colonists, believed to be the Sons of Liberty, dressed up like Indians and threw 342 crates of tea from the East India Company ships Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver into the Boston Harbor, thereby ruining the tea cargo. This act, and the retaliatory measures taken by the British government afterwards, united the colonies even more in their frustrations against Britain, and was one of the many causes of the American Revolution.

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