"The Boston Tea Party", convinced the colonists that their freedom was in jeopardy

Essay by Anonymous UserUniversity, Bachelor'sA-, November 1996

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In the fall of 1773 seven shipping vessels crossed the North Atlantic Ocean to several ports on the American Coastline. Beneath the stormed beaten decks were six-hundred thousand pounds of tea. Delivering to the ports of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, the famous East India Company of London was assigned to transport the large amount of tea. Because of the controversy over the Townshend duties, the colonists refused the tea to be landed on shore. In New York and Philadelphia, the shipping vessels were ordered to turn back toward the Atlantic Ocean. In Charleston the tea was immediately seized by custom officials. But on the chilly evening of December 16, 1773 three-hundred-and-forty chests of tea was dumped into the harbor of Boston by antagonistic patriots, this rebellion was known as the Boston Tea Party. Significant in the coming of the American Revolution, the Boston Tea Party convinced the colonists that their freedom was in jeopardy.

American independence came by revolution, rather than evolution.

Only familiar to the natives in China, tea was to be introduced around the world. In the 1660's, the beverage was not known to countrymen. Englishmen, a century after, soon became addicted to the exotic brew. The birth of tea began in China. The Chinese discovered the leaves of their native tea bush, also referred to as Camellia Sinensis, where it was cured and brewed into a tasty refreshing beverage. The rise of tea drinking had widespread effects to the economy of England. The East India Company grew rich from the control of importation, the National Treasury collected an ever increasing profit from strict custom duties The potters of Staffordshire, the West Indies' sugar planters, retailers and proprietors of tea and coffee shops profited from the public's thirst for tea. In the middle of the eighteenth...