The Tea Act, passed by the British Parliament on May 10, 1773, was legislation designed primarily to help the financially struggling British East India Company by allowing it to sell tea directly to the American colonies without the usual middlemen in Britain. This act granted the company a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies and allowed it to export tea duty-free from Britain, although the existing Townshend tax on tea in the colonies remained in place

. The main purposes of the Tea Act were to reduce the large surplus of tea held by the East India Company, undercut the price of smuggled tea (mostly Dutch), and assert Parliament’s right to tax the colonies. By selling tea cheaper than smuggled tea but still collecting the tax, Britain hoped colonists would accept the tax and thus acknowledge Parliament’s authority to tax them

. The act did not impose any new taxes but maintained the existing tax from the 1767 Townshend Acts, which had been retained after other taxes were repealed in 1770. Colonists were outraged not only because of the tax but also because the Tea Act undercut colonial merchants and smugglers by giving the East India Company a government-sanctioned monopoly

. The Tea Act sparked widespread colonial protest, culminating in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded ships in Boston Harbor and dumped over 92,000 pounds of tea into the water as a direct act of defiance against British taxation and monopoly policies

. In summary, the Tea Act was a British attempt to save the East India Company financially and reinforce Parliament’s taxation rights, but it instead intensified colonial resistance and helped precipitate the American Revolution.