Parliamentary leaders failed to understand the American colonist. They thought the American would buy the cheap, legal East India Company tea rather than the more expensive smuggled tea from Holland.
In September, 1773, the East India Company Planned to ship 500, 000 pounds of tea to their American agents in ports along the Atlantic coast. When the colonists learned about the East India Company’s plan, local tea merchants in American ports from South Carolina to Maine took steps to meet this attempt to drive them out of business. The Bolton Tea Party was the most violent of these steps. Following this act of rebellion, Governor Hutchinson called it “the boldest stroke which had been struck in America.”
Parliament responded to this act of defiance in 1774 by passing a series of acts known as the Coercive Acts. They were designed to punish Boston and to show colonists throughout America that England would not tolerate such resistance to its authority.
1.According to the passage, parliamentary leaders( ).
2.We can infer from the passage that ( ).
3.What was the Coercive Acts?
4.What did the Americans do when the East India Company planned to ship thousands of pounds of tea to America?
5.The word “smuggled” most likely means ( ).