245 Years Ago Today

[digitS']

The Boston Tea Party!

Something new for the first time!! The Consul General of the Boston consulate for the United Kingdom will lead the reenactment! Yay! I just love it. Shows that there is more to everyone's interests that just tea!

By the way, the Boston consulate has some advice:

1. tea: Boil water
   
2. Drop your teabag
   
3. Brew to desired strength
   
4. RESIST THE URGE TO DUMP EVERYTHING IN THE NEAREST HARBOUR
   
5. Enjoy! Was that so hard?

I hope there are some folks in Boston from Halifax. Or, anywhere in Canada ...

Ya know, I had to think about that for a minute ...

Might add "... and not just because they fear 'others' may take resources from selfish people if those others believe there are few or no choices."

The American revolution was generated by that sort of situation. Tea party ... the Dutch merchants were only too happy to supply Boston with duty-free tea. Couldn't.

Many of those whose interests aligned with the British, packed up and moved to Halifax. [They are still there (uelac.org) .] Wonder what they have in their tea caddy these days ...

Steve

 

[Nyboy]

Tea back then was outrageously expensive. That was a million dollars thrown over by todays standards. Only the rich could afford it, was kept in locked boxes called tea caddys

 

[valley ranch]

Taxation with Representation ```


Tea was not expensive ~ but the tax was Great ```

 

[valley ranch]

The British did that with ships crossing ( what the Italians called Mari Nostra ```

When I was in my twenties ~ Rocca,, a contractor born in Italy ~ told me of a speech he had heard ~ given by Mussolini :

" Better One Day a Lion ~ than Hundred Years a Lamb "
and Italy went to war ```

 

[Nyboy]

Tea was very expensive

 

[Nyboy]

Tea was very expensive. In 1665 it sold for 16 to 50 shillings a pound, that at a time when the average skilled workman earned less than 20 shillings a week. Tea was touted as a delicious beverage with therapeutic properties. I

 

[valley ranch]

So, depending on which tax you're referring to (and depending on when “pound” is referring to weight as opposed to the amount of currency) the colonists were paying a tea tax of between 0.8% (3 pence per pound) and 66% (4 shillings per pound).

 

[valley ranch]

Maybe you're right ```

Boston Tea Party: Price, Not Tax, Was the Issue
Your Jan. 2 article on the resurgence of tea drinking ("Cup of Tea: Americans Drink It Up") mistakenly ascribes the Boston Tea Party of December, 1773, to colonial protests against Britain's high tax on that commodity. In fact, the tea was dumped into Boston Harbor in response to British attempts to lower the price of tea.

Six years earlier, in 1767, a financially pressed British had enacted the Townshend duties, which included a tax on tea, without colonial approval. The colonists, resenting Parliament's claim to tax them without their representation, responded by boycotting British goods. The government, under heavy pressure from British merchants, repealed the duties on all goods except tea in 1770. The tea tax was maintained as a symbol of Britain's determination, in the words of George III, to "keep up the right."

The financial problems of the East India Company in 1772 spurred the British government to solve colonial and corporate problems with one stroke. Overstocked with tea, the company's officers asked the British government to let them sell tea directly to American consumers and to exempt them from paying an English export tax. These measures would enable the company to charge less for the tea.

At the same time, the British government hoped that lower tea prices would put an end to American tea smuggling, for that was how Americans had traditionally avoided paying high tea prices. If tea could be sold more cheaply, the British reasoned, Americans would abandon smuggling and accept the small duty on tea as part of the price. The East India Company could recover its fortunes, the Treasury would gather revenues previously lost to boycott and smuggling and the authority of Parliament to tax the colonists would no longer be an issue. It was a clever plan.

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-01...-drinking-boston-tea-party-british-government

 

[valley ranch]

Who knows ~ We'll have to ask someone who was there ```

1. The “tea partiers” were not protesting a tax hike, but a corporate tax break.
The protestors who caffeinated Boston Harbor were railing against the Tea Act, which the British government enacted in the spring of 1773. Rather than inflicting new levies, however, the legislation actually reduced the total tax on tea sold in America by the East India Company and would have allowed colonists to purchase tea at half the price paid by British consumers. The Tea Act, though, did leave in place the hated three-pence-per-pound duty enacted by the Townshend Acts in 1767, and it irked colonists as another instance of taxation legislation being passed by Parliament without their input and consent. The principle of self-governance, not the burden of higher taxes, motivated political opposition to the Tea Act.

https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-boston-tea-party

 

[Nyboy]

My ex was a antique dealer of 18 century items He always had his eye out for good 18 century tea caddys. The rich would keep tea locked so servants could not sneak a cup. Some tea caddys go for rice of a new car today