But the truth is more complex, interesting and nuanced, especially regarding the motivation of the “Patriots,” as the Americans who destroyed the tea described themselves. Far from increasing the price for American consumers, the taxed East India tea was going to be sold for about half the $1 that they were then paying for a pound of tea. The only people who were going to lose out were the smuggler-barons of Boston, New York and Pennsylvania who employed the “Patriots” who attacked the vessels. As the historian Charles Arnold-Baker has pointed out, “The Boston Tea Party was essentially a private operation for the benefit of racketeers,” rather than the action of selfless citizens.

This is borne out by recent research into the individuals who attacked the ships, including eight who were employed by one radical Boston merchant-smuggler alone. The fear that the East India tea, once unloaded and sold, would undercut the smugglers’ prices meant that it was in their interests to destroy it before it could be landed. …

It was the British government’s response that turned the Boston Tea Party from a mere squalid act of racketeering, reminiscent of Prohibitionist hoodlums in the 1920s, into a supposedly patriotic uprising of ordinary Americans. Instead of playing down the offense, or treating it as a policing and customs matter, Lord North’s ministry in London passed the Coercive (or “Intolerable”) Acts against Massachusetts in May 1774, which caused uproar throughout the thirteen colonies. The most important of these acts closed the Port of Boston until full compensation had been paid to the East India Company.

[Fascinating, and this story makes more sense than just a tax revolt. If it were the latter, then the logical act would have been to seize the tea rather than destroy it and then sell it on the black market without the tax stamps. (We’ve seen that model over and over again, from bootlegged alcohol to cigarettes.) But the tea would have to get destroyed in order to keep the prices high for the smugglers. At any rate, go figure that the high-handed British of the era insisted on drastic overreaction to make everything worse. — Ed]