In opposition to the Stamp Act and the Townsend Acts, the American colonists decided to boycott tea from the British East India Company. This allowed merchants such as John Hancock to smuggle tea from Holland without paying taxes.

The Crown then decided, in 1773, to do away with any tax on tea and the British East India Company was able to sell tea again to the colonies at a competitive price - underpricing most of the local merchants in the process.

Of course, this removal of the Tea Tax did not benefit the local merchants, so they decided to protest. They threatened the British consignees (those receiving the British tea) through vandalism, and they organized protests when the British East India Company ships started coming into the harbor. After some weeks of a standoff, the owners of the ships agreed to sail back to Great Britain, but the mayor of Boston did not let them. So on December 16, 1773, Bostonians dressed as Narragansett Indians boarded the ships and threw around 45 tons of tea into the harbor.

The fact that this was all done in opposition to a tax removal (and the subsequent loss to local merchants), means that the Boston Tea Party was not in opposition to “Taxation without Representation”, but was actually the United States’ first instance of Anti-Free Trade protectionism.