The Boston Tea Party--A Corporate Bailout Gone Wrong

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The Boston Tea Party Was a Failed British Government Bailout

 

By Curt Smothers


The Boston Tea Party was a popular uprising against a British government “bailout” gone horribly wrong. What started as resentment over tax breaks given to the British East India Company to sell its tea in the colonies quickly grew into a colony-wide protest and uprising. 

 

The so-called Boston “Tea Party” took place on the evening of December 16, 1773, when Samuel Adams led--or at least inspired, because historians differ on this point--three groups of 50 protesters through a crowd milling around in Boston harbor. Sam’s cohorts unconvincingly disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three ships, broke open the cargo of tea and dumped the tea into the harbor.


Ungrateful Colonists?

Back in London, the British government under Lord North did not foresee this problem. After all, the tax break they gave the East India Company (to keep it from going bankrupt) should have resulted in lower tea prices for the colonists. Also, no one’s taxes were raised.  What the British failed to take into consideration was the festering resentment over British “taxation without representation.” 


Giving a tax break to the East India Company (a monopoly protected by the British government), while at the same time taxing colonial middlemen and merchants, not only was unfair, but threatened to squeeze more than one merchant out of competition.


Parliament Was Tone-Deaf

But the British politicians in London went ahead anyway and blithely passed the Tea Act of 1773 doling out tax breaks to their buddies in the East India company. Colonists, chafing under the arrogance of already restrictive trade and taxation by a government across the sea, responded by boycotting tea. 


A few colonies were even able to prevent the East India Company from unloading their tea and coerced company agents to resign. The tea was sent back to England or warehoused.

Boston Port Agents Refused to Back Down

Boston was a different story. Agents at that port refused to resign, and, under the protection of the Royal Governor, got ready to bring the cargo ashore, never mind the opposition. That was when Samuel Adams’s gang struck and captured the imagination of the rest of the colonies, who staged their own demonstrations and boycotts.

 

The Demonstration Inspired Colonists and Harsh British Government Reaction

Beyond the destruction of East India Company cargo and the good time that the citizens of Boston must have had watching their Indian impersonators sling tea into the harbor, the Boston Tea Party had some rather serious implications:

 

  • The protest united American colonists in a way nothing else could. Mass protests against a common enemy linked up the colonies in preparation for the armed rebellion that would break out within two short years. 


  • The British -- again with typically arrogant miscalculation -- decided to punish the demonstrators and passed four laws that came down especially hard on Bostonians. The so-called “Coercive Acts” passed by Parliament closed Boston’s port, forced civilians to house British soldiers, allowed British officials accused of a crime to be tried outside the colonies, and placed Massachusetts under rigid British government control. 

 

The resulting British clampdown, even more than the Tea Act, caused wide resistance throughout the colonies, especially in Massachusetts -- where the battle of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775 would open the colonists struggle for freedom and independence.


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