For the record, Herr King George (from Germany) was mentally ill, and unable to execute his official duties when the US declared independence from England.  A great primer on the situation then is "Amazing Grace", a film directed by Michael Apted, that very accurately chronicles the abuses of power of the 18th century British House of Lords.

 Mugro wrote: 

Mugro,
Not quite. If you go back, King George III and Great Britain's Parliament heaped one abuse upon another on the Colonies. The Colonies were increasingly subjected to treatments not felt by other British Citizens.  It was not so much a matter of rights as it was a growing case of wrongs. Well highlighted within The Declaration of Independence, the complaints, voiced often by The Colonies, are outlined.
You will also find that those rich, white men *and that has a gratuitous racial tone to it* pledged their fortunes and lives for freedom from tyranny and many lost it all, life included.
mk

 dionysius wrote: 
I bow to your far superior historical account.  Well done!

 oldviolin wrote: 
Maybe so, but I'll still be broken...

 oldviolin wrote: 
I guess I'll never sleep again. 

Servo wrote:
The British were still, as of the 1770s, disputing supremacy in India with the French (who had their base in southern India at Pondicherry). One of the (incidental) reasons the French came to the aid of the Americans was so that they could, it was hoped, kick the British out of India as well as North America. The French in fact lost much of their hegemony in Madras while we were winning our revolution. You could argue that the BEIC "controlled" tea production, but it was still with permission and under license from the Mughal at Dehli (who was cut in on the action) and NOT, note, the British crown.

(edit:) The charter the British crown gave the East India Company granted them a monopoly on the importation of tea into Britain and its colonies, not the production of it in the countries of origin, of course. Though the BEIC became the largest consumer, it was never the exclusive one, even among European states (witness the success of the Dutch East India Company in Indonesia).

 manbirdexperiment wrote: 
No. I still owe you, and as long as I owe you you'll never be broke...

 Servo wrote: 
me too. 

 steeler wrote: 
Same here.

 Proclivities wrote: 
None of us are a living testament to the actual events, we are all bound to the annals of history for our information.  And, by history, the British empire did in fact rule the tea production in India and Ceylon.  Who cultivated the crops is beside the point.  The point remains that the British viewed India and Ceylon as their "divine right" at the time leading up to, and inclusive of the American revolution.

Needless to say, citing the Netherlands as a bona fide mass supplier of tea (or anything else) to the British colonists of North America is a red herring.

 Servo wrote: 

Yes, I will.  Just not sure what it is in this instance.

I was just letting you know that my post was quoting a passage written by a friend of mine, so the intent was his, not mine. I think his intent was to poke a bit of scholarly fun while making a, er, pointed point. My intent in posting it here was to share the wit for purposes of amusement.  

I think we're good.

 steeler wrote: 
Yes, I see and respect your intent.  Will you see and respect mine?

Servo wrote:
At the time of the Boston Tea Party, India and Ceylon were by no means yet part of any British empire. There was indeed a British East India Company, which operated a few markets and towns like Calcutta, but India proper was (mostly) still the Mughal Empire, while Ceylon and parts of southern India were still ruled by native princes. Britain was still very much in competition with the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and especially the French for influence and commerce in India and the rest of Asia, but it was not yet the colonial scramble it would become in the 19th century. No Raj, yet.

 Servo wrote: 
I always thought it was weird how "domestic" products were classified as such, even if their origin is not domestic, but that is often the case.  I don't think any teas from the Indian subcontinent were cultivated by the English until the 1830's; Indonesia was after that.  But, yes, it would have been difficult to obtain any Dutch products without them being smuggled in. It's funny how something like tea could affect international history; not just The American Revolution but The Opium Wars and the colonization of Hong Kong.

 Servo wrote: 

Er, the comment I posted was that of a friend of mine and I'm pretty sure that it was tongue-in-cheek. I think his intent is clear.

By the way, he is a scholar of sort on Republican Rome.    

 Proclivities wrote: 
Actually the tea that the pre-USA British colonists in America drank would be considered a domestic product.  The Brits preferred the darker tea plants that grew in India and Ceylon, which were also colonies of the British Empire.  I don't know if there are any reliable statistics on how much of this or that was available from other nations in the British colonies.  But IIRC, the British subjects were required to consume British-made goods whenever possible.  And by 1674, the Dutch were not in control of any mainland in North America.  It would be mighty difficult to get Dutch goods for most American colonists.

 steeler wrote: 
What you propose (at first) is a non-democratic republic.  Pure republics have never worked.  That includes the "banana republics" that the US itself constructed.  BTW, Republican Rome also collapsed...

The oligarchy might have most of the money, but that money was made through the blood, sweat, toil and tears of the proletariat.  Without the proletariat, there would be no oligarchy.  The worker is the life blood of any political system.

This begs the question as to what you would do to the proletariat, to yourself.  Are you ready to "return" to slave labor?  This would be mighty tough to most Americans, who have for generations become accustomed to a very soft life style.  Even if you were not put into chains, your ability to travel would vanish.  Just as the 20th century "Communist" had to take extreme measures to keep their most valuable resource from fleeing the country, so would a 21st century US new-republic.  Your home would be confiscated by the government, partly to take as much wealth as possible, and mostly to remove all of the things that might distract you from labor.  No RP for you!

Do you really want that?!?!?

 fuh2 wrote:
This passage seems somewhat opinionated without a citation (as is often the case with Wikipedia).  Were the Dutch-imported (and smuggled) teas really inferior to the East India Tea varieties?  It's possible that they were, but the Dutch were importing tea long before the English were; they introduced tea to America at the New Amsterdam colony.  The colonists wanted the smuggled tea because it cost less and it allowed them to boycott a British-imported product.  At any rate - all tea was foreign to the UK or the colonies - at that time it was brought in from China and/or what was then called "The Orient".

 fuh2 wrote:
Bloody colonials- first you don't want our tea and now you don't want our death panels.  Can't make you happy whatever we do.

 Mugro wrote: 
Basically, the Revolution was started by colonist Tea smugglers who threw a huge British Transnational Corporation's tea into the harbor because the King's Tea Act allowed the East India Co. to sell its superior tea in America DUTY FREE essentially putting the tea smugglers and tea shops out of business. 

Then it escalated to the American Revolution.

Something akin to what is happpening now with our transnational companies offshoring everything and the low import tariffs compared to our export tariffs.
 


From Wikipedia:

The Tea Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain (13 Geo III c. 44, long title An act to allow a drawback of the duties of customs on the exportation of tea to any of his Majesty's colonies or plantations in America; to increase the deposit on bohea tea to be sold at the East India Company's sales; and to empower the commissioners of the treasury to grant licences to the East India Company to export tea duty-free.), passed on May 10, 1773.

Previously, the East India Company had been required to sell its tea exclusively in London on which it paid a duty which averaged two shillings and six pence per pound.^<1> Among other consequences, this had created a profitable opportunity for smugglers to import and distribute tax-free tea throughout the American colonies.

By 1772 the Company was close to collapse due in part to contractual payments to the British government of 400,000 pounds per year, together with war and famine in India, and economic weakness in European markets. Benjamin Franklin ^<1> was one of several people who had suggested things would be greatly improved if the Company were allowed to export its tea directly to the colonies without paying the taxes it was paying in London:

"to export such tea to any of the British colonies or plantations in America, or to foreign parts, discharged from the payment of any customs or duties whatsoever", and instead only required to pay the Townshend import duty of three pence a pound.^<1>

Overnight, the American smugglers were effectively put out of business.

Before the Act, smugglers imported 900,000 pounds of cheap foreign tea a year. The quality of the smuggled tea did not match the quality of the dutiable East Indian Tea of which the Americans bought 562,000 pounds per year.^<2> Some colonists claimed the tea-tax had been removed because the British wanted to dissuade them from boycotting British goods - which may have been partially true. However, some colonists went further, and prounounced the tea "unfavorable". Although the British tea was more appealing in taste, some Patriots encouraged the consumption of smuggled tea. All this however did little to damage the British tea trade.

Before the Boston Tea Party occurred, the colonies did not agree with the decision to impose the Tea Act. In New York and Philadelphia, they sent the British ships with the tea on board back to Britain. In Charleston, the colonists left the tea on the docks to rot. The Royal Governor, in Boston was determined to the leave the ships in port, even though the colonists refused to take the tea off the boat. The colonies did this to demonstrate their anger towards the Tea Act.^<3>

The smugglers meanwhile were still smarting from the loss of their illicit income. Eventually, this led to the Boston Tea Party where American colonists, believed by some to be the Sons of Liberty, by others to be self-interested smugglers, dressed up as Mohawk Natives and threw 342 crates of tea from the East India Company ships Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver into Boston Harbor.

In Britain, even those politicians considered friends of the colonies were appalled by the Boston Tea Party. The action united all parties in Britain against the anti-British smugglers/patriots. After the Boston tea party, Britain decided to close down the Boston Harbor until the tea was further paid for, as provided in the Boston Port Act, first of the so-called Intolerable Acts,or Coercive Acts as they were called by the British, passed by Parliament in response to the Boston Tea Party. All this united many colonists even more in their frustrations against Britain, and was one of the many causes of the American Revolution.

 


The Boston Tea Party was a direct action protest by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and has often been referenced in other political protests.

The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Protestors had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, embattled Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain. He apparently did not expect that the protestors would choose to destroy the tea rather than concede the authority of a legislature in which they were not directly represented.

The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, closed Boston's commerce until the British East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. Colonists in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.