The Boston Tea Party was a 1773 protest against the Tea Act, which granted a tea monopoly to the British East India Company. Colonial protesters, led by Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty, disguised themselves as Native Americans, boarded British merchant ships in Boston Harbor, and threw crates of tea overboard. In response, British Parliament passed a series of laws known as the Intolerable Acts to punish the American colonists.
By analyzing questions, you can see patterns emerge - patterns that will help you answer more tossups. Qwiz5 is all about those patterns. In each installment of Qwiz5, we take an answer line and look at its five most common clues. Here we explore five clues that will help you answer a tossup on the Boston Tea Party.
SAMUEL ADAMS
Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty was the leader of the protests.
MOHAWK
Colonial protesters disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians in order to board the ships.
DARTMOUTH, ELEANOR, and BEAVER
The Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver were the three British merchant ships that were carrying the British East India Company’s tea. A fourth ship, the William, was bound for Boston but encountered a storm and ran aground in Cape Cod.
THOMAS HUTCHINSON
Thomas Hutchinson was Royal Governor of Massachusetts at the time of the Boston Tea Party. His handling of the protest contributed to his being recalled to London in 1774.
INTOLERABLE ACTS
The Intolerable Acts (also known as the Coercive Acts) were a series of acts passed in 1774 to punish Boston for the Tea Party. They included the Boston Port Act, the Quartering Act, and the Administration of Justice Act.
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Quizbowl is about learning, not rote memorization, so we encourage you to use this as a springboard for further reading rather than as an endpoint. Here are a few things to check out:
* The Digital Public Library has a nice collection of high resolution primary source documents related to the Tea Party.
* Boston Magazine published an interesting article on the Tea Party examining historical artifacts related to the protest.
* For a British perspective on the incident, check out this episode of the BBC Podcast, Things We Forgot to Remember.
* TedEd produced a nice animated overview of the Boston Tea Party:
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