Stamp Act History Project

The Tea Act actually placed no new tax on tea (the old tax was still in effect from the Townshend Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the colonies. Interestingly one of the intentions of the act was to lower the price of tea in the colonies by eliminating the merchant middleman. Despite the economic benefit to end consumers of tea, the law damaged the position of colonial merchants and founding fathers’ tea-smuggling operations. The population viewed the act as “Taxation without representation” and boycotted the tea. The Boston Tea Party protest was the culmination of colonial resistance against this law.