Boston Tea Party. 19th-century illustration of the destruction of tea in Boston Harbour on 16 December 1773, an event known as the Boston Tea Party. This was a political protest by a group of colonists in defiance of the British requirement to purchase tea from the East India Company. This was one of the events that led to the outbreak of open warfare two years later in 1775 as part of the American Revolution (1775-1783). This lithograph, by Sarony and Major, was published in New York in around October 1846.