介绍:
With these words, George Hewes, a citizen of Boston, describes his part in the Boston Tea Party, which took place on the night of 16th December 1773 in Boston, on the east coast of North America.
The party was actually an act of "rebellion"against the British. The United States had not yet come into existence: North America was a British colony and the people who lived there were subjects of the British king George III. In recent years, Americans had become increasingly dissatisfied with colonial rule. They were upset about the system of paying taxes without getting any political representation. The British continued to make Americans pay taxes on imported goods such as tea, but Americans were not represented in the British parliament. They also felt that British justice was often unfair. Many Americans began to believe that their country should become independent.
Ten years earlier, in 1763, the last of the wars between France and Britain for the control of North America had ended with victory for the British. But it had been an expensive victory. King George and his government decided that the best way to make up for their financial losses was to tax the colonies.
One of the goods taxed was tea. Americans were very fond of tea; they drank even more of it than the British. So the British thought that they would be prepared to pay a small tax on tea rather than lose the chance of drinking it.
They were wrong. When three ships carrying tea arrived in Boston on 16th December, 7,000, angry townspeople gathered in the streets. They demanded that the ships leave without payment of taxes. The message was taken to the British collector of taxes in his office at the port, who refused to give in to the rebels' demands. The crowd immediately began to organize a protest action. A few hours later, under cover of darkness, about 200 men disguised as native Americans boarded the boats and destroyed the cargo of tea they were carrying.
The British government's response to the revolt was prompt. In March 1774, it passed a series of law (Which their Americans called the "Intolerable Acts ") to punish the people responsible for the tea party. This included closing the port of Boston. The following year the American War of Independence began, which led to the Declaration of Independence and, eight years later, recognition by Britain that the United States was an independent country.
Another result of the Boston Tea Tarty is that it changed the Americans' drinking habits. Whike tea is still the favorite drink in Britain today, coffee is preferred on the other side of the Atlantic.
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