I hope that some people come out of this realizing that the US wasn’t founded on deep idealistic principles, but mostly on greed.
What led to the Tea Party:
- British colonists in the Americas drank a lot of tea.
- Britain’s government needed money to pay war debts, and decided one way to do that was to impose taxes on items in the Americas including tea.
- Some British people saw those taxes and decided it would be a good opportunity to make some money smuggling (think Al Capone during prohibition).
- The British government eliminated all the taxes except on tea, and stopped the East India Company having to pay duties, making EIC tea cheaper than the smuggled tea.
- The smugglers, upset at being undercut, dumped East India Company tea into Boston’s Harbour.
The whole “no taxation without representation” bit was a less important concern than the government messing with their profits. In fact, I read somewhere (can’t find the reference now) that the government tried to negotiate with the smuggler rebels, but the rebels weren’t willing to meet because the “no taxation without representation” was more of a pretext than an actual reason.
The other important bit here is the reason the government needed to raise money. It had just been involved in a major war, which it had won. This is the 7-years war, a.k.a. the French and Indian wars. In those wars, they beat France, and as a result, took over most of France’s territory in North America.
Look at the pink in this colonial map of the Americas. That’s all territory gained by the British in that war.
As a result of that war, the British settlement in the Americas was going to be able to expand from 13 colonies hugging the coast to an entire new area including the entire great lakes region, what’s now Florida, the Gulf coast, the Saint Lawrence river, etc. All that was required was that Britain follow the terms of the Treaty of Paris / Royal Proclamation of 1763. In part, that war was fought on behalf of the colonists to remove the threat from the French and expand the territory of the colonies, so it makes sense that the beneficiaries of that war (the colonists) would help pay for it. But, some of the British colonists didn’t want to pay for it. So, they rebelled and took the territory for themselves, ignoring the terms of the Treaty of Paris which gave some rights to the French and Indians who were in that newly acquired territory.
TL;DR: British colonists in the Americas who rebelled were greedy, not idealistic.
The colonists were being charged a tax rate that was merely 10% of the rate being charged back in England. Taxation simply doesn’t make sense as a motive for revolution.
I agree and here is why. From the beginning, America told a lie. It wrapped itself in the language of freedom, but the bones of the thing—its economic engine, its social order, its very definition of who counted as human—were built on slavery. The Southern plantation class didn’t just benefit from that lie; they forced it into the structure of the Revolution. And we have been living with the consequences ever since.
By the 1770s, abolitionist winds were blowing through Britain. The Somerset decision in 1772 made it clear that slavery had no legal standing in English law. That terrified Southern elites. They saw the writing on the wall and understood something the rest of us are still catching up to: liberty and slavery cannot coexist. So they made a choice.
When Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he tried to condemn the slave trade. The Southern states shut that down. Their message was simple and brutal—no independence unless slavery is protected. The Revolution was supposed to be a break from tyranny, but what they built was just a new structure to preserve their own power. The hypocrisy was not an accident. It was the blueprint.
Writers of the period—some knowingly, some unwillingly—captured this fracture. Phillis Wheatley, writing in bondage, praised liberty in verse while living its total denial. Jefferson wrote about the natural rights of man even as he enslaved his own children. Crèvecœur celebrated the American farmer while stepping carefully around the blood in the soil.
This is not ancient history. The same corruption runs through our systems today. You can see it in voter suppression, in prison labor, in economic policies that preserve wealth for the few at the expense of the many. We keep pretending this country was founded on pure ideals, but the rot was there at the root. The Southern elite didn’t just defend slavery—they rewired the American idea around it. And we still haven’t torn that wiring out.
Until we do, every time we talk about freedom, there’s an asterisk.
When Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he tried to condemn the slave trade
I just love how they made a distinction between slavery and the slave trade. Jefferson might have condemned the slave trade but he had over 600 slaves throughout his life.
Capturing, buying and selling people into slavery? Bad.
Owning slaves, and having the children of those slaves be born into slavery? Fine.
This is important and one part of many reasons why America became the superpower it is today.
America horded 80% of global gold reserves by selling weapons to allies while not engaging in WW2, benefiting from their geographic isolation from Europe and Asia.
Of course, establishing independence from colonial powers was an important first step and there is some credit to be given there (even if driven by greed).
But many Americans are told that their nation is rich because they are somehow better on a deeper, fundamental level. When the reality is, like many things in life, they were able to take advantage of an oppurtunity by being in the right place at the right time (and one can argue they should have engaged in WW2 sooner, instead of sitting on the sidelines).
This is part of the reason I find Jon Stewart to be quite knowledgeable but also at times nauseating. I have nothing against patriotism but he peddles American exceptionalism as a reason why the country should be better when it’s perfectly reasonable to expect more from your country without a falsely representing its ascent.
The Post-WWII period is also responsible for a lot of the chaos today.
The US emerged from WWII with most of the worker protections from the New Deal in place. The income tax rates topped out at 90%. Unions were strong. Add to that that the US was the only major economy to come out of WWII unscathed and there was an obvious economic boom that, thanks to those New Deal policies, wasn’t hoarded by the already wealthy.
That was the environment in which a (white, male) factory worker was able to own a house and support a large family with a stay-at-home wife. This is the world MAGA wants to return to. But, even if they got the labour protections that were a key element of that world (which of course the people they’re electing are dead-set against) that worker’s paradise isn’t coming back without another disastrous world war in which the US gets to sit on the sidelines then reap the benefits when the war is over. Basically, their idea of that era is a fantasy, and it’s never coming back, even if they actually voted for the side that wants to make incremental steps in that direction, rather than the one that wants to hoard even more wealth for the rich.
As someone who grew up in Canada, I’m also not going to give them any kudos for independence from the colonial powers. They did it out of greed and it gave them an opportunity to renege on deals made with the French colonists and Native American groups. I’m not going to claim that the English or French governments were good to, or fair with the natives. But, they did form alliances with them and sign treaties. Some of the treaties were even honoured, at least for a while. Rather than an outright genocide to kill them off, or march them across the continent, the approach taken by the British in what’s now Canada was to try to forcibly “civilize” them. Thanks to racism, they thought that the natives were savages, and needed to be civilized, and they did all kinds of paternalistic things to destroy “savage” cultures and make the natives into fine, upstanding people who wore civilized clothing, spoke English, worshipped the correct god, had jobs, etc.
The American process was more “kill them off and take their land”. If the British had remained in charge, there probably would have been no Trail of Tears etc. Basically, they split off from the colonial power because the colonial power wasn’t brutal or racist enough for their tastes.
It wasn’t even that they wanted to pay higher taxes. The Stamp and Tea Acts actually LOWERED the taxes. But it was incredibly easy to get around paying the taxes previously. So what Parliament did was say, “guys, you have to actually start paying the taxes, but we’ll make them lower as a compromise.”
That’s why the American elites revolted.
it might just be incredibly more complicated than that.
It might have been, but it really wasn’t.
America then: No taxation without representation
America now: Puerto rico gets taxed. No representation.
Same with the residents of DC
At the time of the revolution, the taxation rate in the 13 colonies was 10% what was being paid by people in England. The whole thing was a lie.
Y’all really should consider reading this.
https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-story-of-the-boston-tea-party-in-myth-and-reality/
It’s way more complicated than the reductionist 5th grade level story taught in US schools that everyone settles on being reality. Right up there with George Washington’s cherry tree story (didn’t happen) or the pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock (no, they didn’t land there).
The Boston Tea Party was about money, and about people with money being upset that other people with money were undercutting their profits, so they destroyed some really expensive goods in a way that disastrously hurt their own local business owners and not the people they claimed to be trying to hurt.
I’m sure parallels could be made between one of the US’s founding stories being about rich people manipulating the populace into war and today, where rich people are still manipulating people into fighting each other or whomever else.
it actually does hint that perhaps the path to overthrowing Trumpism is to radicalize the merchant class (aka petit bourgeoisie) against his agendas and force direct action. it’s not so far fetched. for instance, Patriotic Millionaires. <- links to a short article about their plan to reduce inequality by taxing wealth
the rich are not a monolith. they each have their own special interests. there are many outside Trump’s inner circle who depends on certain aspects of the economy being stable and profitable. maybe some of those angry multi-millionaites will switch loyalties now they see how bad Elonazi is for their bottom line?
Didn’t want to not pay tariffs. The Tea they destroyed was tariff-free, which hurt the organisers who were smuggling tea and charging a huge mark-up to customers. The revolutionary leadership were furious when they heard their cause was being hijacked by a gang of crooks, and they put the ringleaders on trial for it.
The Tea they destroyed was tariff-free, which hurt the organisers who were smuggling tea and charging a huge mark-up to customers
This is a critical bit that gets overlooked in the US framing of events. The taxed tea was actually cheaper than what local businessmen were charging! We didn’t have a grass-roots revolution for the benefit of “we the people”. It was organized and funded by the local elites, who were throwing a fit that larger overseas elites were telling them what to do.
Americans didn’t, the American elites did. Americans just died in yet another war started by the aristocracy.
To get out from under The British Empire, which is pretty understandable during the time period.
Not very understandable. Britain had become a new and particularly liberal democracy by this point. The colonists were paying much less tax than their cousins back home, and “The Empire” didn’t really get started until after the Americans had revolted anyway.
All of this is bullshit.
What made them “particularly liberal”? They were exporting their “prisoners” to the American colonies. They were still colonizing other territories, extending their reach. They were still selling African slaves via slave trade through The East India Trading Company. The Empire was in full swing by the 1600s, through the 1700s, well into the 1800s where they started to lose steam through the century.
It was almost the only place in the world with a free press in the 18th century, and even enjoyed a healthy satire industry. Religious freedom was effectively the rule, and there was no lese majesty law that was effectively enforced.
The Empire didn’t “lose steam” in the 19th century. That was where it went into overdrive with rapid expansion, the biggest addition being India in the 1850s. It was only in the 1920s when it peaked.
Pretty sure it was the whole no taxation without representation thing that spurred that revolt
When the executive is acting outside of their authority and ignoring the legislative and judicial branches, do we really have a representative democracy anymore?
You’re being a bit hyperbolic there.
