MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · December 16 · 1773
ON THIS DAY · 16 DECEMBER 1773
Boston Tea Party
16 Dec 1773 — Three shiploads of taxed tea go into the harbor. Parliament answers with the Coercive Acts; the colonies answer with a Congress.
THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT
Look at the map before anything moves: the Americas belong, on paper, to Europe. Blue Britain holds the Atlantic seaboard and Canada; everything grey — from New Spain through Potosí’s silver to Portuguese Brazil and the sugar islands — is a colonial possession, run for the profit of a distant crown. The engine of the whole system is at the two ◆ markers: the silver mountain of Potosí and the slave-worked sugar machine of Cap-Français, the richest colony on earth. This world calls itself stable. It is, in fact, borrowing against its own future.
From Chapter 1 — The World of 1775 of The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848 (APR 1775).
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TEACH THIS IN 5 MINUTES
- Why it happened — War debt in search of a taxpayer. Victory in 1763 left Britain with the world’s biggest empire and biggest debt, plus a new American frontier to garrison. Asking colonists to fund…
- The turn — Boston harbor, 16 December 1773. The tea itself was cheap — the Tea Act actually lowered the price. That was the point: accepting cheap taxed tea meant accepting the principle of…
- What it changed — A Continental Congress. Twelve colonies that had never cooperated on anything sent delegates to Philadelphia in 1774 — creating, before any battle, the institution that…
Then ask the room: Was the American crisis really about taxes? The sums were trivial — a few pence on tea. The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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