The Boston Tea Party is an important part of America’s history. The establishment of independence from Britain did not happen overnight. A series of events led to the American Revolution. A turning point in history occurred that December morning in 1773 when the colonists decided it was time to stand up against the injustices that the mother country of Great Britain had burdened them with. They began to fight back.
The Boston Tea Party was by no means an act of lost tempers and hotheads. While there was a lot of anger and resentment, history shows that the colonists had held many organized meetings to discuss the events that were unfolding in their cities. They had definite leaders, one of which was John Hancock. Hancock and the other colonists wanted to do something about the new taxes that Parliament was burdening them with.
The Boston Tea Party was not the first act of harmless rebellion. John Hancock was also seized for smuggling tea to the colonists so that they would not have to pay Parliament’s taxes. The Boston Tea Party was an important display of the fact that colonists were well aware of Parliament’s attempts to use the colonists’ tax money to repay British war debts and that the colonists would not stand for this unfair treatment. During the raid of the three ships where all the tea was thrown into the harbor, the masked men doing the deed were careful not to damage anything except for the tea. They were sending a message, not committing a thoughtless act of destruction or vandalism. They would not pay taxes on their tea, plain and simple.
The Boston Tea Party is also important because of both the British and American responses to the actions that followed the tea party. The British were furious with the actions of the colonists and needed to impose a “punishment”? for their rebellion. This came in the form of the Intolerable Acts. The colonists saw these acts for exactly what they were: an attempt by Parliament to gain complete control over the colonists.
The colonists were becoming more and more independent, and confidence rose that they could do just fine independent of Great Britain. The culminations of these events led to the breakout of the Revolutionary War just short of two years after the Boston Tea Party. It was during America’s Revolutionary War that the Second Continental Congress met, wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence. This document has been called the most important document in all of America’s history and some scholars suggest that the Declaration of Independence is the most important and influential historical document in the whole world.
The Boston Tea Party may not have yielded immediate results, but it fueled the fire of patriotism in the Americans. The Boston Tea Party gave the colonists the motivation to stand up for their rights and to ultimately risk their lives by going to war for their independence. The Boston Tea Party is also important for its inspiration, not only to Americans but to other rebels against injustice around the world. Even Mahatma Gandhi is known to have referred to the “famous Boston Tea Party.”?
The importance of the Boston Tea Party is undeniable. The colonists may not have had reason to go to war had it not been for the Parliament’s taxes. It was the resulting war that ultimately gave us all the freedoms that we cherish today. The Boston Tea Party was the beginning of a revolution where Americans would come out victorious and independent of British rule.
