The Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts. Disguised as Mohawk Indians, the protesters boarded three British merchant ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The event was a protest against the Tea Act of 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea in the colonies without paying taxes, essentially undercutting local merchants. More broadly, it was a strike against 'taxation without representation.' The British government responded harshly with the 'Coercive Acts' (known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts), which closed Boston Harbor and stripped Massachusetts of self-government. These escalating tensions directly led to the convening of the First Continental Congress and the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord.