Why were the colonists upset about the tea coming from England?

Answer 1

Ideological reasons. To really understand this, you've got to know the background.

In Britain, the British East India Company held a government-sanctioned monopoly on the importation of tea. The British government required all tea to be imported to Britain and sold at auction, where it taxed the tea at 25%. The tea was then taxed again when it was sold for consumption.

British colonies were only legally allowed to buy tea that had been exported from Britain (i.e. that had already been imported, sold at auction, and taxed there). The end result was that it was much cheaper for the British colonists (and British residents also) to buy tea smuggled from the Netherlands, whose government did not charge a high tax on tea.

To enable the East India Company to compete better with the price of smuggled tea, Parliament passed the Indemnity Act which reduced the tax within Britain and also rebated the tax paid on tea sold at auction that was then exported to the colonies. To make up for this loss of revenue, the Townshend Act levied new taxes, including one on tea, in the colonies. This was less than popular in the colonies, but did reduce the price of tea in Britain itself.

The main objection the colonists had was that the British constitution provided that British subjects could only be taxed with the consent of their elected representatives. Since the colonists did not elect representatives to Parliament, they held that Parliament had no right to tax them and any taxes could only lawfully be levied with the consent of their own elected representatives (the colonial assemblies). The Townshend Act was an act of Parliament, and therefore represented "taxation without representation" as far as the colonists were concerned.

The resentment over this (and other) taxes smoldered for a few years, until the Indemnity Act expired, and the act that replaced it restored taxes on tea sold for consumption in Britain, reduced the rebate for tea that was re-exported (leaving effectively a 10% tax on such tea), and left in place the Townshend Act's tax on tea in the colonies.

British East India's tea sales plummeted, and tea began piling up in their warehouses. They complained vociferously, and finally the Tea Act restored the full rebate and allowed the company to import tea directly into the colonies instead of going through Britain first. This should, in theory, have allowed them to compete favorably with the smugglers, because even with the taxes, they could sell tea slightly more cheaply than the typical smugglers' prices.

However... despite the fact the British East India Company tried to hide the Townshend Act taxes by burying them in the price of the tea and paying them itself, the colonists still objected, even thought the Tea Act meant that British East India Company tea, taxes included, was about one pence per pound cheaper than untaxed smuggled tea from the Dutch East India Company, and the total cost for tea from India in the colonies was now less than it had ever been.

Boycotts of British East India tea were organized, and most of the colonial governors eventually just accepted this and ordered the tea returned to Britain. The Massachusetts colonial governor, though, refused to do so, and ordered the ship Dartmouth not to leave Boston without paying the duties and offloading the 342 crates of tea on board. Which is why there were 342 crates of tea in Boston Harbor the day after the Boston Tea Party.

For a change, it really was "not the money, it's the principle of the thing."