“Taxation without representation!” was the cry heard throughout the American colonies when Great Britain levied taxes on tea consumed in America by British subjects under the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767. Although designed to rescue the failing East India Company, the Tea Act of 1773 further inflamed the tensions between the colonists and the British government, as it was thought to affect the profits of American colonial tea merchants.

The displeasure of the colonists reached a boiling point on December 16, 1773, when a group known as the “Sons of Liberty” disguised themselves as American Indians, boarded the decks of the American ships Dartmouth, Beaver and Eleanor, and emptied tea found within those ships into Boston Harbor. It now believed that the reasons for the disguises were to convey the association of the American Indian with the concept of freedom and not to belittle them.

The participants in these acts of protest straddled all classes of society, from the unemployed to tradesmen, teachers and physicians. Records of their approximate ages are incomplete; it is believed that these men were between the ages of 18 to 48 years. A few future signers of the Declaration of Independence were thought to have participated in the Boston Tea Party, including Samuel Adams, Paul Revere and John Hancock.

We often praise this act of protest and defiance by the American colonists, and find it justifiable in light of the times. Would we view the dumping of corporate cargo into Boston Harbor by protesting citizens with the same vigor today?