The Boston Tea Party December 16 demonstrates against the new English tea orders. May 10 lightens duties on tea imported into Britain to give relief to the East India Company which has 7 years' supply in warehouses on the Thames and is being strained by storage charges. The Tea Act permits tea to be shipped at full duty to the American colonies and to be sold directly to retailers, eliminating colonial middlemen and undercutting their prices. The British ship London docks at N.Y. April 22, and the Sons of Liberty prepare to follow the example set at Boston 4 months earlier. Colonists at York, Maine, and Annapolis, Maryland, conduct tea parties like the one at Boston.
Parliament passes coercive acts to bring the colonists to heel.
The lower duties end the smuggling that has accounted for so much of the nation's tea imports and hurt the East India Company as the rewards become too small to justify the risks. Boston merchants starts a triangular trade with clothing, copper, and iron to the Columbia River to be bargained for furs. The sea captains will sell the cargoes at Canton and return round the Cape of Good Hope with Chinese porcelains, teas, and tiles. English tea consumption reaches an annual rate of 2 pounds per capita, a figure that will increase fivefold in the next century. Acting for the British government, Charles Bruce smuggles knowledgeable coolies out of China and puts them to work transplanting young tea bushes into nursery beds to begin tea plantations.