The Boston Tea Party was an act of protest on December 16, 1773, during the American Revolution. Initiated by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, one of the Thirteen Colonies of British America, it escalated tensions between Great Britain and the Patriots, who opposed British policy towards its American colonies. Less than two years later, on April 19, 1775, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, also in Massachusetts, launched the eight-year American Revolutionary War, which resulted in the independence of the colonies as the United States.
The source of the protestors' anger was the passage of the Tea Act by the Parliament of Great Britain on May 10, 1773, which allowed the East India Company (EIC) to sell Chinese tea in the colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts.
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