8h 51min, may 10, 1773 y - Tea Act

Description:

Lord Frederick North, the British prime minister, faced a new problem. The British East India Company, which held an official monopoly on tea imports, had been hit hard by the colonial boycotts. The company was near bankruptcy and to save it, North devised the Tea Act, which granted the company the right to sell tea to the colonies free of taxes that colonial tea sellers had to pay. This meant it would cut colonial merchants out of the tea trade because the East India Company could sell its tear directly to consumers for less. North hoped the American colonists would simply buy the cheaper tea; instead, they protested violently.