The truth about the Boston Tea Party (a different perspective)

The Spectator ^ | 12/13/23 | Andrew Roberts

[Blood of Tyrants]

At 6:30 p.m. on Thursday December 16, 1773, a group of between 100 and 150 Americans raided three East India Company merchantmen moored in Boston and threw 92,000 lb of tea (worth $1.7 million in today’s terms) into the harbor. A central part of the American founding story, the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party is being commemorated this month as a key moment when patriotic Americans fought back against the greedy British and their oppressive taxation policies that forced up prices on commodities such as tea, which in turn led to the American Revolution.

But the truth is more complex, interesting and nuanced, especially regarding the motivation of the “Patriots,” as the Americans who destroyed the tea described themselves. Far from increasing the price for American consumers, the taxed East India tea was going to be sold for about half the $1 that they were then paying for a pound of tea. The only people who were going to lose out were the smuggler-barons of Boston, New York and Pennsylvania who employed the “Patriots” who attacked the vessels. As the historian Charles Arnold-Baker has pointed out, “The Boston Tea Party was essentially a private operation for the benefit of racketeers,” rather than the action of selfless citizens.

[Albion Wilde]

bump

[SunkenCiv]

Brewing up a cup of hot ********.

[ReformedBeckite]

I heard a different spin along time ago, it basically went like this the King George was shutting down the illegal Presbyterian commercial as people didn’t want to support the King George Catholic commercial, in other words the King basically said you could only buy and sell from the King’s stores, and were shutting down/busting up the Presbyterian commercial/stores and making it illegal to have their own stores. This may be true and it may be false or some where in-between, but I have a tendency to believe that there is more truth to it then not.