What are the causes of the 1773 Boston Tea Party?

The Boston Tea Party is one of those events that have been so colored by patriotic historicism that the accounts you read in history books are fairly distorted and have a lot of factual misinformation.

Believe it or not, American textbook versions are ultimately based on a book that was written by an Italian who had only very remote, secondhand knowledge of the events.

As Wallace says, the main issue was largely patriotic because the tax in itself was a fairly minor expense. Some Americans resented paying such taxes for which they had no vote in parliament. The tea tax was especially annoying because the British had a monopoly on tea imports, so there was no alternative.

As for the tea party itself, it happened because of the intransigence of the Governor of Massachusetts at the time, Thomas Hutchinson, who was a notorious Tory. In other cities in the colonies, tea ships were simply turned back. The locals prevented the tea from being landed, so, for example in Baltimore the tea ships had to return laden to England.

In Boston, this did not happen due to a legal technicality: if the ships left with the tea it would be an "export" and therefore subject to a large export tariff, which was essentially impossible to pay. In the other cities, such niceties were ignored, but Hutchinson insisted on this law being applied, so the tea ships were trapped. Hutchinson was hoping this would cause the locals to relent and let the tea get landed, but he miscalculated.

The ships being trapped caused a huge problem for the captains because every day the ships sat idle they lost money because they had to pay their crews. The captains did not own the tea. For them, they faced a big loss due to being stuck in Boston. So, what eventually happened, is that the captains of the ships with their mates (the officers) disguised themselves and dumped all the tea. By doing this, they would be allowed to leave since they were no longer "exporting" anything.

They had to disguise themselves, because if anyone recognized them, they could be imprisoned or sued back in England for destruction of property. Contrary to what you read about them being disguised as "Indians", this is not true. They just blackened their faces and wore rag tunics and floppy hats, dressed more like bums than Indians.

This was all well known to the authorities in England, and you can find accounts in the private papers of Lord North and others that show he was fully informed of the circumstances. Unfortunately, historians tend to ignore British letters so the accounts in British state archives, which are much more accurate than those in American history books, have been sort of lost to history.

No action was taken against the captains, because the British public was outraged and it was in the interest of the British government to fuel this outrage by blaming the Americans.

--- Comment on "Counterfactual" Information (answer to comments)

Nothing I have written is "counterfactual". What is counterfactual is the nonsense you think you know about the event.

You may think it strange that such a "well-known" event could have any questions about it, but in this you are mistaken because in fact it was not a well-known event. At the time NOTHING was published about it, except a few highly inflammatory editorials in London newspapers. In America the event was considered to be a "riot" and was considered shameful and noone talked about it. It was only FIFTY years later, thats right 50, FIVE OH, years later that it became the popular jingoistic event it is today. So, if you are under the impression it was "well documented" you are completely wrong.

Just to give you one ludicrous example of the misinformation in history books is the number of dumpers. It was well established that there were 17 men, and in the Italian guys book (the main source for all subsequent historians), it indeed says this, there were exactly 17 men. Nevertheless, a historian AFTER him, wrote there were "about two dozen men", then another guy in the 1860s wrote "less than 50 men", and so on and so forth, until by the twentieth century supposed "histories" wrote that "over a 100 men" were there. The wikipedia says "30 to 130", I guess coalescing the combined exaggerations of 150 years of "scholarship". What a joke.

As I wrote above, the matter is well delineated in British state papers and my account merely relates what is contained therein.

As a by-the-by I will point out that the false history on the event is a good illustration of how people will believe things and not analyze them. The idea that a random mob of Americans could just storm a British ship and loot it in 1773 would only be believed by someone with no knowledge of the way things were in those times. Just like now, docks are guarded facilities. The wharf involved was literally in the shadow of Boston castle, loaded with soldiers and cannons. Random people were not allowed onto the docks. During the dumping the Americans had to watch passively from the public street, and you can be assured that all the people on the ships were authorized to be there.