Why did they throw the tea in the Boston tea party?

Answer 1

to show the British the Americans were angry.

The colonists were protesting the Tea Act, which required the colonists to buy tea only from England (creating an English monopoly on tea). Several radical colonists dressed up as Native Americans, boarded the 3 tea ships and threw all the tea (342 chests) in the Boston Harbor. This happened in December 1773.

The long version:

After the Seven Years' War (aka the French and Indian War), Britain was nearly bankrupt. The war had been expensive- Britain had not only fought the long and nasty war all over the world, but also had largely paid for Prussia's war effort (and Prussia did most of the fighting in Europe against Britain's enemies, France, Austria and Russia). Britain also gained a massive empire, since they won control of large parts of Canada and India in the treaty concluding the war. Running this empire and setting up infrastructure and defenses cost money.

To make up for this, Parliament passed some laws which raised taxes on the British colonies in North America, notably a tax on sugar (which also affected related things like molasses and rum). Colonists didn't agree that Parliament could do that- an old concept of English law was that you have the right to elect the government if the government is going to tax you. Colonists were not actually allowed to vote in Parliamentary elections, and had no direct representatives. The government claimed while it was true that the Colonists were not allowed to vote, they were "virtually represented" by MP's who shared their beliefs. The Colonists were not satisfied with this answer, and unrest grew. The taxes were repealed but Parliament insisted (and even passed a law specifically saying so) that it had the right to govern the colonies.

Eventually Parliament passed the so-called "Townshend Acts" (named after the finance minister who came up with the idea). The Townshend Acts created new taxes on certain things that were imported from Britain, like paper and tea, rather than things that were made in the colonies. Parliament basically tried to change how the taxes were charged, thinking that the Colonists wouldn't object as strenuously to it if it wasn't charged directly on them. Nonetheless, the Colonists did object, and unrest grew again. Boycotts and protests became widespread. The government responded by sending the military to try to suppress the resistance, which rarely ends well. This case was no different- it resulted in the Boston Massacre, coincidentally on the same day that most of the Townshend Acts' taxes were repealed.

The Townshend tax on tea remained, however. Parliament kept the tax because they wanted to set the precedent that they were legally allowed to tax the Colonists- if they could successfully do it once, they could do it again in the future. Colonists continued to avoid buying the taxed tea; instead, they usually bought tea illegally smuggled from other countries, especially from the Netherlands. This meant that the official British tea-selling company had a huge surplus of tea that they couldn't sell, and the company was close to bankruptcy. The government came up with the Tea Act to try to save the company and sell the tea.

The Tea Act let the company sell the tea directly to the colonies; the tea didn't have to be brought to England first, where taxes and middlemen would cause the prices to rise. By skipping that step, the British tea, even with the Townshend tax still on it, would be cheaper than the smuggled tea. This made Colonists angry for two main reasons:

1. 1: as previously stated, they didn't believe the Townshend taxes were legal, and
2. 2: Colonial merchants who helped sell the smuggled tea stood to lose a lot of money.

The result was the Boston Tea Party. A bunch of Colonists were able to get aboard a British ship carrying tea, and threw the tea into Boston harbor. The government and people in general in Britain were appalled at the Colonists' actions. The Intolerable Acts were passed to punish the Colonists, and the final march to the Revolutionary War and independence had begun.