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British Taxation Policies

After the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, the British Empire was in financial distress. Though the British had won the war, they had spent vast amounts of blood and treasure in the process. At the end of the war, the British Parliament sought to replenish its depleted coffers by taxing the North American colonies.^11start superscript, 1, end superscript

When the British Prime Minister, Lord North, proposed the Tea Act in May 1773, he was not even thinking of the North American colonies, but rather of the East India Company, which had assumed control over India. In exchange for the power to appoint its governors, North loaned the company £1.5 million—the equivalent of about $270 million today.^22squared North also granted the company a monopoly on the right to sell tea in the North American colonies.

Thomas Malton the Younger, London headquarters of the British East India Company, undated. Image credit: Yale Center for British Art

The Boston Tea Party

As the British authorized the shipment of thousands of pounds of tea to its colonies in North America—Boston, Charleston, New York City, and Philadelphia—colonial tea merchants protested.

In Boston, Governor Thomas Hutchinson, a pro-British Loyalist, demanded that the ships be allowed to dock and that colonial merchants pay the duties on the cargo. Boston was the center of colonial revolutionary fervor, and its radicals did not take kindly to Hutchinson’s demands. The Sons of Liberty, a secret society formed by radical colonists to protest British taxation policies after the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, spearheaded the opposition to the Tea Act.^33cubed

On December 16, 1773 at Griffin’s Wharf, a group of approximately 50 Bostonians disguised as Native Americans boarded the ships Beaver, Dartmouth, and Eleanor, and proceeded to dump 342 crates of tea into the Boston harbor. In doing so, they destroyed almost 10 thousand pounds sterling worth of tea—worth about $1.7 million today—that belonged to the British East India Company. The incident, referred to at the time by John Adams as the Destruction of the Tea, would not become known as the Boston Tea Party for another fifty years.^44start superscript, 4, end superscript

Currier & Ives print of American colonists dressed as Native Americans dumping tea into Boston Harbor.

Paul Revere carried the news of the destruction of the tea to New York, which in turn refused to allow the British ships to unload. In Philadelphia, as well, townspeople gathered to turn the British ships away from harbor. In Charleston, the ship was docked, but customs officials seized the cargo.

Radical Boston and the Intolerable Acts

After the  Boston Tea Party , the British adopted a divide-and-conquer strategy that sought to isolate troublemaking Boston from the other colonies, which leaders in Parliament believed were merely tagging along with Boston’s radicals. In the spring of 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, which were aimed solely at Boston and envisioned as punishment for its radical opposition to British policies. The Coercive Acts, which quickly became known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts, consisted of four separate legislative measures:

1. The Boston Port Bill fined Boston for the tea destroyed in the Boston Tea Party and closed the harbor until the fines were paid.

2. The Government Bill rewrote the Massachusetts colony’s charter granting broadly expanded powers to the royal governor.

3. The Administration of Justice Act authorized the governor to send indicted government officials to other colonies or to London for trial.

4. The Quartering Act, which applied to all of the North American colonies, was designed to provide shelter for the British troops, allowing them to be housed in private buildings.

Forging unity: the First Continental Congress

Instead of isolating Boston from the other North American colonies, the Intolerable Acts had the opposite result. Delegates from all of the colonies except Georgia gathered in Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress in the autumn of 1774. The purpose of the Congress was to show support for Boston and to work out a unified approach to the British. Nevertheless, divisions plagued the colonies. Though the congress agreed to implement a

In this British political cartoon, which was reprinted in the American colonies, notable members of Parliament hold down an allegorical figure of America and force tea down her throat. The London Magazine, "The able Doctor, or America Swallowing the Bitter Draught”, May 1, 1774, etching. Image credit:  Library of Congress

boycott of British imported goods, the northern and southern colonies argued fiercely over a measure to ban all exports to Britain. The southern colonies were economically dependent on revenues from their exports of raw materials such as cotton

and rice to the motherland. The delegates ultimately reached a compromise, agreeing that all exports to Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies would be banned after a year, starting in September 1775. This would give the southern colonies some time to prepare for the economic impact of the export ban.

On October 14, 1774, the First Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Colonial Rights and Grievances. The declaration denied Parliament’s right to tax the colonies and lambasted the British for stationing troops in Boston. It characterized the Intolerable Acts as an assault on colonial liberties, rejected British attempts to circumscribe representative government, and requested that the colonies prepare their militias. Despite its harsh tone, the declaration did affirm Parliament’s right to regulate trade, and did not challenge colonial loyalty to the British monarch, King George III.

Although some of the more radical delegates, particularly Samuel Adams, already believed that war was inevitable, the congress did not seek or declare independence from Britain at this time. The delegates agreed to meet again the following May if Anglo-American relations did not improve.