Prime Factors - Ranking UK Prime Ministers

11.4 - The Boston Tea Party - The Start of the American Revolution

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11.4 - The Boston Tea Party - The Start of the American Revolution

Episode Transcript

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. This week, Boston Tea Party.

Parliament: Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!

Abram: Hello and welcome back to Prime Factors. I'm Abram and I'm here with my dad reviewing all the British Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Keir Starmer. This is episode 11.4, the Boston Tea Party. Dad, Dot 4! We do up to Dot 2s, maybe Dot 3s. Dot 4, this is ridiculous.

Joe: I think, Abram, this will be our last full-length special.

Abram: Yay!

Joe: But you've been enjoying the specials, I think.

Abram: I've been enjoying the ones where we deal with other podcasters, not where it takes up a whole month's worth of you writing a script, because that takes away from our prime ministers.

Joe: All right, all right. So after this, we're going to go back to Lord North, and I think we'll be back on prime minister stories for a while. I have a little bit of a sneaky way that I can finish up the story of Boston, but I think you may discover that soon.

Abram: Mm-hmm. Don't forget that you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and at primefactorspodcast.com. Dad is very good about answering our messages on BlueSky and Threads, so reach out there if you want to get in touch with us. If you enjoy listening, please like, subscribe, comment, and review.

Joe: Great. If everything works right, we're going to do a little bit of time travel now to a little trip that Abram and I took to Boston yesterday. Cue the time travel music.

Joe: Hello. I hope we could use this audio because it's a little windy and there are a bunch of other people. There's lots of other people, like you can hear.

Abram: Yeah, crowd noise.

Joe: But where are we right now, Abram?

Abram: Near a Shake Shack.

Joe: No, but where else are we right now?

Abram: In Boston.

Joe: And what does that sign say?

Abram: See where the Boston Tea Party began.

Joe: See where the Boston Tea Party began. This, Abram, this red brick building here in downtown Boston is the Old South Meeting House, one of the most important stops on the Freedom Trail.

Abram: There it is right there.

Joe: If you can hear that. Abram is pointing out the brick lines in the ground. They show where the Freedom Trail is. Let's walk over here. So, Abram, I want you to look at this building. I want you to visualize this building, okay? Are you visualizing?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Okay, now I want you to say the following two words.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: Picture this.

Abram: Picture this.

Picture This

Joe: We open on hoofbeats as a lone rider gallops in the rain through the chilly New England streets. It's December 16th, 1773, and he's just returning from a meeting with Governor Hutchinson. He slows as he traverses the narrow winding streets of Boston and finally stops outside what is today called the Old South Meeting House.

Joe: So if you can imagine, he's riding down these streets which were a little bit smaller buildings, but this Old South that he has just arrived at, it's the same building that he arrived at.

Joe: Even outside and even in the rain, he can hear the sound of arguments inside. He pauses to wipe the rain and sweat from his forehead with a cloth as he hands the reins of his horse to an attendant. He takes a deep breath before entering the meetinghouse doors. This man is Francis Rotch, a scion of the prominent Nantucket shipping family.

Abram: I hope no one squishes him.

Joe: I mean, he might be Francis Rotch. I'm not sure. Roach, Rotch.

Abram: He's like the, the Roach Brothers. He's like a grocery store.

Joe: Great.

Abram: Mr. Grocery Store.

Joe: Ushered inside, Rotch returns to the so-called "Body of the People," an ad hoc meeting of Bostonians and men from surrounding towns, with prominent patriots near the front and ordinary townspeople packed into the pews and galleries.

Joe: Rotch isn't just any merchant. His family owns the Dartmouth, one of the tea ships currently docked in Boston Harbor. They aren't British or members of the East India Company. They are good New England stock, who happen to make their fortune by trading with London.

Joe: Rotch is taken to the center of the meeting to speak. Sam Adams places a hand at his back for support while some of the scions of Boston stand nearby. Josiah Quincy, John Hancock — these are names that become famous in part due to Rotch's words.

Joe: "I've just come from Governor Hutchinson," he says to the now silent room. "We are trapped. He has denied our request to leave, and he has threatened to seize our ships, or worse, if we attempt to leave the harbor. And yet, he has also left in place the deadline of tomorrow for us to either unload our cargo, or our ships will be seized."

Joe: A murmur spread across the room, rising to a roar as Rotch finishes his thought. "If we do not unload our cargo tonight, we lose not only the tea, but our ships. Maybe our livelihoods as well."

Abram: Oh no!

Joe: Family deserves it for trading with London! Some of the crowd shout that his family deserves it for trading with London, but others are sympathetic. But even as Sam Adams seeks to comfort the young merchant, you might observe men at the very back of the meetinghouse silently streaming out onto the street as if by prearranged signal.

Joe: Inside the meetinghouse walls, the town meeting votes a resolution that states that they really tried to resolve the matter of the tea peacefully, and whatever comes next will not be their fault.

Joe: It does not take long for what comes next. A war whoop, a Native American war cry, erupts outside the meetinghouse. Someone in the crowd cries, "The Mohawks are come! A mob! A mob!" Many run outside. John Hancock is heard to shout, "Let every man do what is right in his own eyes."

Joe: A wry observer might notice that even as the townspeople flood the streets, almost all the town leaders remain in the meeting house now. And through the commotion that follows, they had an alibi.

Joe: In the street, the so-called mob of Mohawks whoop and holler, but there is little pretense. These are white men, faces darkened by paint or soot, and wearing blankets or towels around themselves in a rude parody of Native dress. They aren't trying to fool anyone. Their dress is both symbolic and a disguise.

Joe: A mob of Bostonians accompany the disguised Mohawks from the meetinghouse down to Griffin's Wharf, picking up additional disguised accomplices along the route. And that is where we are going to go next.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: Do you want to keep the mics recording for a minute and look around the thing, or do you just want to turn it off and go to Shake Shack?

Abram: I want to go to Shake Shack.

Joe: Okay. So are we walking to the boat, right? Or you just want to walk around this?

Abram: Yeah, I'll walk to the boat. Okay, because let me guess, we're going the wrong way.

Joe: No, we can get there this way.

Abram: Okay, continue.

Joe: By the time they made it to the wharf, their numbers swelled with supporters and onlookers. As if pre-planned, the Mohawks split into three groups and boarded the ships, while the larger group of onlookers watched from the shore.

Joe: What follows, at least in the popular American conception, is quiet. There is little talking among the Mohawks, nor any more war whoops. They are, we are told, polite, and they promise the sailors unfortunate enough to be on the ships that they and their goods will not be harmed, except for their tea. In at least one ship, the captain opens the hold for them to enter unimpeded.

Joe: The Mohawks, many of whom had been dock workers or sailors, are efficient, hoisting up the tea chests from the holds, prying them open on the deck before spilling their contents over the side. The loose tea doesn't sink but makes lumpy piles in the harbor.

Joe: Despite the appearance of savagery, most accounts of the Boston Tea Party stress that it was a well-oiled machine. Within a few hours, during which they faced little opposition, the job was done. 342 chests of tea were hauled to the decks and dumped overboard.

Abram: How do they know exactly how many?

Joe: Uh, from the shipping manifests.

Abram: They threw all the tea?

Joe: Yeah, although some of the chests were apparently half chests and some of them were full chests, and so —

Abram: I also didn't know that there are people on the ships when the other — when the people dressed as natives came.

Joe: A couple. There were people, at least some. Neither the British naval ships in the harbor nor the local militia interrupted the proceedings. With Governor Hutchinson miles away, no one gave the order to do anything.

Abram: Where was he?

Joe: He was in Milton, Massachusetts.

Abram: Why?

Joe: I don't know. I mean, it was winter.

Abram: He was visiting.

Joe: I don't know. I just know he was in Milton. The Mohawks completed their work. Some supposedly even cleaned the decks afterwards — then silently marched back into the dark city with the disappearing crowd and vanished.

Joe: It was an act of vandalism. It was a political protest. It set in motion events that would quickly spiral out of everyone's control, both in Boston and in London. The Boston Tea Party struck at the heart of a symbol of the British Empire. Tea connected Britain to China, India, and the Caribbean sugar plantations.

Joe: We've seen the action-packed story. Now we're going to go back and describe how we got here, how the drink became so important in Britain and America, and how the interconnections of the British Empire ensured that a humanitarian disaster in India led to the creation of the United States.

Joe: We'll have to start, Abram, at the very beginning. But to do that, we're going to go home. Will you say, "A brief history of tea, please?" A brief history of tea, please. Without the please.

Abram: A brief history of tea. That'll do.

A Brief History of Tea

Joe: Before we get started, I have put something out on the table in front of you, Abram.

Abram: My breakfast?

Joe: No, next to your breakfast.

Abram: My water?

Joe: No, next to your water. There are three little sipping cups sitting out in front of Abram. There were supposed to be more, but something happened we don't want to say.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: While Abram has had iced tea before, usually in the Dunkin' Donuts cup, I don't think he's ever had proper hot tea.

Abram: No.

Joe: So as we go through this brief history, I will be giving several types of tea for Abram to try, including a green tea and various black teas, sugar with milk, you know, the works. It's like a tasting history.

Joe: Now, I spent the entirety of COVID trying to teach myself to take my tea with milk, assuming that by the time the pandemic was over, I would like it. And, uh, it failed. It failed.

Abram: How come you didn't tell me this?

Joe: You were young.

Abram: I was 8.

Joe: But that could just be, Abram, because the milk in the US is pasteurized differently, and maybe I would like it in Britain. I don't know. And this is a great time for any of you listening to send me hateful notes on Threads or BlueSky telling me exactly how wrong I am about taking tea with milk and that I am a terrible person.

Joe: So we're going to start in the year 2737 BCE, somewhere in southern China. And the Emperor Shennong sat on the ground enjoying a cup of boiled water. You know this story that I'm about to tell you is legendary, Abram, because Shennong, he's a little bit like a Chinese minotaur. He has the head of a bull and the body of a person.

Joe: Shennong commanded his people to drink boiled water because, while they didn't yet understand germ theory, ancient Chinese medicine knew that boiling water made it safer to drink. And they were right. Except on this miraculous day, some leaves blew into his cup of boiled water, he drank it anyway, and the first tea was born.

Joe: Obviously that isn't true, and the real history of tea is murky, depending a lot on whether you consider any dried leafy substance dipped in water as tea. And it is generally believed that drinking tea started in southern China and gradually spread outwards.

Joe: By 200 CE, China had come to see something a little bit like modern tea as a medicine and as a stimulant. A medical treatise of the time said that "to drink bitter tea constantly makes one think better." It is as if they are perfectly describing my mornings.

Joe: By 800 CE, the stimulating beverage had made it across China to Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere. The first time Europe came into contact with tea was in about the 1550s when Portugal established a trading post in Macao. But they did not think of tea, at least at the time, as an export. They just started sampling it.

Joe: And the reason that we have multiple words for tea is partially their fault. When tea was transported overland, it often took a Mandarin word for the beverage, and so it's known as "chai" in India, Persia, and elsewhere. And when it was transmitted over water, a dialect word used in the coastal regions was used instead, giving us "tea" in English, Dutch, and other languages. Portuguese, weird exception, they use "chai" because they had a closer relationship with the Chinese mainland, and etymology is crazy.

Joe: But let's start there, that the first tea that the Portuguese might have tried in the 1550s is in your leftmost cup there. No, your other left. Nope, that is a French toast stick. Nope, that is my cup. Nope, that is a USB-C cable. Abram, take a drink. This is not supposed to be the hard part, Abram. I have the green tea here.

Abram: Is it green? Let me see.

Joe: Well, it's this cup right here.

Abram: It's not green.

Joe: That would be banned in Canada.

Abram: Okay, it's called green tea.

Joe: This is not the most authentic green tea I could find, but my shipment of green tea from Amazon somehow didn't make it. So you want to take a sip of that?

Abram: Tastes bitter.

Joe: Yeah, well, they hadn't figured out adding sugar yet.

Abram: Tastes like the frogs made it.

Joe: Well, it is green. That makes a certain amount of sense.

Abram: No, it's literally yellow.

Joe: But Abram, how can we tell this story faster? You know what I think we can do? A montage.

Abram: Montage this!

Montage This

Joe: Scenes flip by quickly like you're watching a movie in fast forward. It's 1615 and tea is all but unknown in Britain. In a wooden building in Hirado, Japan, near Nagasaki, an Englishman sits at a desk writing a letter. Through an open window you can just make out the sounds of ocean and a busy port.

Joe: The man is Richard Wickham, an East India Company trader stationed at a remote Japanese-English trading post. A factory in the jargon of the time. Using a feathered quill, he writes a letter to a colleague in Macao asking for "a pot of the best sort of chaw." It's not a trading order, it's more like a grocery list because Mr. Wickham has developed a taste for this new beverage.

Abram: And is too lazy to go to the grocery store himself.

Joe: He is probably not the first Englishman to drink tea, but his letter is the first written record we have of it. It's 1655 and tea is still rare in Britain. But we're in France now, at the Palais-Royal near Paris. There, in rooms fit for a queen, an ex-royal lies in a gold-leafed canopied bed.

Abram: Why is she ex-royal?

Joe: She is Henrietta Maria, the widow of King Charles I and the Queen Mother in exile.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: She coughs, and a French physician mixes her a cup of hot water and a few dried leaves. She drinks and soon recovers, writing after to her sister about this new Eastern medicine. Tea.

Joe: It's 1657, in a dirty cobblestone street in London. Thomas Garraway opens the door to the first tea shop in London. It's a mixed tea coffee shop using tea imported from the Portuguese and Dutch. And that's where we're going to go with our second sample. Abram, the second cup here in front of you is a black tea.

Abram: It's orange!

Joe: Well, they call it a red tea. That's the red tea. Okay, let's not be mincing our colors, but this is a type of black tea which is sometimes called red tea.

Abram: Even though this is the red tea, this is the orange tea, and this is the yellow tea. Yeah.

Joe: I have no defense for any of this. So why don't you take a sip? This is a little bit more like the tea that Thomas Garraway and Henrietta Maria would have drank.

Abram: More bitter. You think? Yeah. Tastes like leaves.

Joe: It's 1669, and an East India Company trading ship arrives in London and unloads its cargo along one of the city's many wharves. Included in the haul are casks containing about 200 pounds of Chinese tea. A small amount, but this is the first cargo of East India Company tea to arrive in England.

Joe: It's 1685, and the East India Company is bringing around 12,000 pounds of tea per year to London. Queen Catherine of Braganza, the wife of King Charles II, sits with several women attendants on a veranda at Somerset House, her personal palace in London.

Joe: They sit around a table, not laden with little sandwiches like would become common in Victorian times, but nonetheless with a Chinese tea set, including tiny porcelain cups, kind of like the ones in front of Abram, and a decorative teapot. Some attribute Queen Catherine's love of tea to her Portuguese upbringing — that's the "of Braganza" in her name, of course — but she helped to make it fashionable amongst the upper classes.

Joe: And so Abram, the third cup of tea in front of you is a little bit more similar to what she might have drank. It's a more black tea.

Abram: It's literally red.

Joe: Would you take a sip of that cup? Please don't spill the tea.

Abram: Still very bitter.

Joe: Why don't you take a drink of the correct tea? What's 2 plus 7?

Abram: 9.

Joe: Okay, Abram is drinking the correct tea now.

Abram: Weird.

Joe: What do you mean weird?

Abram: Tastes like someone put it at Bunny and David's house.

Joe: I don't know what that means.

Abram: Fire.

Joe: Oh, it tastes smoky?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Hmm. Interesting.

Abram: You should try it. Tastes smoky.

Joe: Yeah, that does taste smoky. Okay. And this is around when the British Empire made its own mark on tea. Nobles of the period found the brew too bitter, so they began mixing it with sugar imported from colonial plantations. The West meets the East in beverage form.

Joe: It's 1717 and the East India Company is bringing around 400,000 pounds of tea into London per year. Thomas Twining — and yes, for those that drink tea, it is that Twining — opens what is called the first tea shop in London. They claim that his shop was the first to sell only tea, but it could also be marketing nonsense. The important thing is that middle-class merchants now mingle with the aristocrats as tea becomes a beverage that can be enjoyed by even more people. The love of tea explodes.

Joe: So Abram, what I have in front of you is of course a Twining English Breakfast tea. That is in the first cup there on your left. Will you give that a taste? That is just plain black tea.

Abram: Better.

Joe: Okay, now try the second cup there.

Abram: Bittersweet.

Joe: Yeah, well, they added sugar. It's 1721 and Parliament, including figures we know such as Robert Walpole, Spencer Compton, and others, have just passed the Calico Act.

Abram: Who's others?

Joe: Other people in Parliament in 1721.

Abram: Other people in Parliament others?

Joe: To protect Britain's homegrown textile industry, many types of dyed fabrics are banned. The East India Company needed to fill their holds with something, and tea rapidly became the number one export from China to Britain.

Joe: It's 1731, and musicians in a rough tavern in London are singing a new song called "The Roast Beef of Old England." In it, they complain of the newfangled habits that had swept Britain and made them weak, including French food, dancing, coffee, and tea. Dun dun dun!

Joe: While tea was not French, a recent innovation was adding milk to tea. One legend says that this was done to reduce the risk of porcelain cups cracking due to heat shock, but whatever the reason, taking your tea with milk became part of the routine across Britain.

Joe: And Abram, so that's where we'll try the last of the cups in front of you. This is a very British tea with milk.

Abram: Still just water.

Joe: You keep grabbing the wrong cup. Mm-hmm. So what did you think of that?

Abram: It was pretty tasty. Not as good as the tea I get at Dunkin' Donuts. They should have really taken advice from Dunkin' Donuts when making their tea. It would have worked out better for them.

Joe: And this is why Americans should not be trusted with tea, I am sure. But I kind of agree. Iced tea is awesome.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: And we'll end in 1750 watching a group of rough sailors drinking tea on the quayside. The East India Company now brings nearly 5 million pounds of tea to London annually, and smugglers bring in even more. Tea has become the national drink, with men and women from every walk of life drinking the beverage on a daily basis.

Joe: What had once been a medicine and then a habit of the aristocrats had seeped its way down the social ladder until every man and woman in Britain, Ireland, and beyond drank tea. Coffee was around, and so was hot chocolate. But tea was the British beverage, the beverage of the empire.

Joe: This is the Old State House. This is like the old State House. So this is near where the Boston Massacre took place.

Abram: Can we go to the — oh, it's Devonshire Street. They really like Devonshire around here.

Joe: Phenomenon. Yes.

Abram: So there used to be a plaque for the Boston Massacre exactly where it took place, but like, people — there are cars there, so people just kept getting run over while looking at it.

Joe: Yes, it is. It was right in the middle of the street at the time.

Abram: More people died because of that than the actual massacre.

Joe: That is correct. So I guess the Boston Massacre counts even more.

Joe: So Abram, so now this is the current location of the Boston Massacre plaque.

Abram: Used to be in there.

Joe: I think it used to be in the middle of the intersection. Yeah, my legs are sweating. It's been hot this whole time. But, and now we're just going to keep walking.

Abram: And look, it's on Devonshire Street. It is. That's nice.

Joe: And as we continue walking towards Faneuil Hall and not getting run over by a bus —

Abram: Wonder if we see any Duck Tours.

Joe: So we're at the corner of Congress and State Street, and I am fairly certain that prior to the Revolution, State Street was called King Street.

Abram: Oh, the incident on King Street.

Joe: Yes, the incident on King Street. Exactly right.

Abram: The incident on State Street now.

Joe: And I mean, the experience of walking through this part of Boston is lots of new buildings, lots of new buildings, and then, oh, look, here's some old stuff. Yeah.

Paying for the Empire

Abram: Paying for the empire. Empire.

Joe: A short time after tea had become ubiquitous across Britain, the Seven Years' War changed the face of the empire. In India, the British warred against the European powers for control of the subcontinent's trade. But after defeating the Nawab of Bengal in 1757, it was clear that Britain's ambitions were wider than controlling a few trading posts.

Joe: Less than a decade later, the East India Company acted less like a trading company and more like a colonial administrator. Britain had taken the place of the fallen Mughal Empire, with the Company now empowered to collect taxes and administrate the Bengal region, backed by the might of British sailors and soldiers.

Joe: This is not a footnote in the British story. The East India Company was now responsible for 20 million people. Nearly double the population of the British Isles and the American colonies combined. That kind of power had never been laid in the hands of a for-profit company before. It wasn't free trade. This was a for-profit monopoly armed with an army, tax powers, and imperial backing.

Joe: For all that the Seven Years' War granted Britain control of immense new territories in the Americas, India, the Pacific, and Africa — it was ruled by a company. It also left the nation in tremendous debt. The British government sought to pay down this debt however they could with new taxes and duties that would kick off the story of American independence. But in India, the situation, at least at first, was very different.

Joe: By the late 1760s, the East India Company was pulling in between £1.6 and £2.5 million per year of profit, maybe half a billion or more in today's dollars.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: India accounted for at least 2% of the entire British economy. But this success brought corruption and mismanagement. East India Company leaders who had made their fortune returned to London and siphoned the wealth of India away with them. New corrupt managers took their place in India, each hoping that they could extract enough wealth to make themselves and their families rich to move back to London and repeat the cycle.

Abram: Ooh.

Joe: Parliament was not oblivious to this, but the East India Company was powerful, and many MPs and Lords were themselves being enriched by the company. In the end, the company was coaxed to pay a £400,000 per year tax, and in return, the government would not pay too much attention to what was happening there.

Abram: Okay.

Joe: There was one important way that a for-profit company was not like an empire: the grain stockpiles. Under the Mughals, the Bengal region would stockpile rice to help cover leaner years when the harvests were less successful. The profit-seeking East India Company saw full granaries as an opportunity for profit. And that's gonna cause a problem very soon. But for now, India was taxed. Parliament looked for ways for their other colonies to help pay down the debt.

Abram: Stay tuned for what's gonna happen next.

Joe: Samuel Adams, a patriot. He organized the revolution and signed the Declaration of Independence. He's been un-coned.

Abram: Yeah, the —

Joe: The Scottish Tartan Army was here for the World Cup, and they put cones on all of our statues.

Abram: Yeah, it's honestly kind of funny. So thank you, Scottish people. We appreciate your putting cones on our statues.

The Tax Bill Comes to America

Abram: The tax bill comes to America.

Joe: America wasn't producing wealth the way India was. So taxes were the best ways to raise funds. But Britain was also politically unstable, leading to prime ministers rotating yearly and an inability to project consistent policy.

Abram: That reminds me of nowadays with the prime ministers rotating yearly.

Joe: Yeah, they seem to be having trouble again. Yeah. The 1765 Stamp Act was the first attempt to tax the colonies, and it led to riots and boycotts. Remember, Abram, we had a special about that.

Abram: We did?

Joe: We recorded it at a TV station.

Abram: Oh yeah, I was right about the thing with the boot.

Joe: That was repealed by the next Prime Minister, only for the even more strict Townshend Acts to be tried two years later, also leading to riots and boycotts, as well as the Boston Massacre. And we had a special about that too. Now we have too many specials.

Abram: Don't worry, Tetelesrankian, this doesn't apply to you. But besides that, we have too many specials.

Joe: Of all the British products that were boycotted, the most difficult to give up was tea. You could elect not to buy glass, lead, or paper, but tea could neither be given up nor replaced by local alternatives. And believe me, they tried.

Joe: Labrador Tea, a Native American drink made from a bush that grew near Boston, was the closest North American alternative, but it was acrid and bitter. I tried to figure out which bush it was so we could try it, but I couldn't work it out. Colonists also tried drying raspberry leaves, but that didn't work well either.

Joe: The tea boycott movement even tried propaganda to convince people to drink less. Newspapers printed stories about the health risks inherent in tea drinking. Songs and poems decried it as a vice. So I'm going to read one of those poems to you. It is called "A Lady's Adieu to Her Tea-Table." Are you ready, Abram?

Abram: Uh-huh.

Joe: Ahem! No more shall my teapot so generous be, in filling the cups with this pernicious tea; for I'll fill it with water and drink out the same, before I'll lose liberty, that dearest name; because I am taught, and believe it is fact, that our ruin is aimed at in the late act, of imposing a duty on all foreign teas, which detestable stuff we can quit when we please.

Joe: Liberty's the goddess that I do adore, and I'll maintain her right until my last hour. Before she shall part, I will die in the cause, for I'll never be governed by tyranny's laws.

Joe: What do you think, Abram, when you need a poem to convince yourself that you can quit tea at any time, do you think you can quit?

Abram: Maybe if I could actually understand what the poem was talking about.

Joe: Really? I didn't think it was that tough. Hmm. Basically what she's saying is that because of the tea tax, to drink tea would deprive her of her liberty. And so therefore she can quit it at any time.

Joe: Despite all the efforts to wean Americans off the drink, tea drinking barely dropped in the colonies. Historian Harlow Giles Unger pegs the decline at only about 3.5%, as boycott-ignoring merchants and smugglers kept the colonies well stocked. Tea drinking was still an essential American habit.

Joe: When the Townshend Acts were repealed, most of the taxes were removed except for — which tax?

Abram: The tea tax.

Joe: Yes. Interest in maintaining a boycott waned, and even George Washington, best known on our podcast as the young militia officer that started —

Abram: George Washing Machine!

Joe: — said that the boycott was best abandoned. It was time to return to normal footing with Britain. Britain wasn't getting the tax revenue that they hoped for in the colonies, but the tea tax was working. Parliament could tax more in the future, but the new Prime Minister North was content to allow the situation in the American colonies to cool.

Abram: Beantown. People don't even like beans here. What's that bean doing next to our skyscrapers?

Joe: Apparently the reason Boston is called Beantown is because they used to eat beans here on Sundays. Every Sunday.

Abram: Ah.

Joe: Because it was a Puritan thing. And I think those Puritans, they were, you know, they were very religious, but they were not sort of culinary experts.

Abram: Yep.

The Bengal Famine

Abram: The Bengal famine.

Joe: So this next part, it's not funny.

Abram: Ah.

Joe: Remember those full granaries that the East India Company saw as a missed opportunity?

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: British corruption and mismanagement removed one of the key safety valves to prevent famine during poor growing years, which is exactly what happened in 1769. With no emergency supply, the price of rice soared nearly 30 times the usual price. It cost as much to feed a family a day as it used to cost to feed them for a month. Indian citizens suffered and many starved. Some families even sold their children into servitude to get by. And at least working children would be likely to be fed.

Joe: Sources disagree widely, and I mean widely, widely, widely over how many people died. But the numbers, no matter how you slice it, are gigantic. More people died in India in that famine than lived in the American colonies. Now, some sources say that only 6% of everyone living there died, and some say as high as 33%.

Joe: But society broke down, and in many places it was impossible to find the energy even to bury the dead. It was a sad, sad time.

Joe: The East India Company, however, remained focused on profit and offered little to help the suffering people that they supposedly governed. Instead, the British stockpiled what grain they could gather to keep the British soldiers and administrators fed at the cost of local lives. The colonizers dined while the colonized went hungry.

Joe: One East India Company officer in the region wrote home, quote, "The ruin which we have brought on an unfortunate country will recoil upon ourselves."

Joe: News reached London of the famine and people reacted with horror. Horace Walpole spoke out against the cruelties of the company, claiming they ruled through, quote, "assassination, usurpation, and extortion." These crimes were sufficient to inspire horror.

Joe: While it might have been possible for Britain to ignore the humanitarian catastrophe, they could not ignore the economic cost. The East India Company's profits were shattered by a dying populace that could not pay taxes. Trade dried up. The East India Company's stock plummeted. The Indian money that had turned the British economy was drying up.

Joe: There were runs on banks in England and Scotland. The economies of France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and more all went into recession. And something had to be done. But thankfully, Lord North, the recent Prime Minister, was an expert at the Treasury.

Joe: We buried our wharf and put a hotel there. There could be a song. We buried our wharf.

Abram: We paved our wharf and put a hotel there.

Joe: I was going along the lines of, we paved all our harbor and put up a big hotel.

Abram: No, don't. Don't do parodies. Because they don't know you're tired.

Joe: Okay. Look, it's a tour.

Abram: Yes, I'm sure they are having a much better tour than we are.

Joe: Hey, don't say that.

The Revolutionary Spirit Wanes

Abram: The revolutionary spirit wanes.

Joe: With the ending of the boycotts, life in the American colonies seemed to return to normal. The revolutionary spirit that was on the surface in 1770 had gone underground, organizing for a second chance.

Joe: John Hancock, one of the wealthy merchants at the center of both the boycotts and the smuggling, seemed almost to change sides. He was a businessman, and he needed to be on the side of whoever was in charge to ensure his profits flowed smoothly.

Joe: If they had had peerages to give out in colonial Massachusetts, Governor Hutchinson would almost certainly have given Hancock one. He was definitely as rich as a duke. But instead, Hutchinson appointed Hancock as the colonel of the governor's own provincial militia. There was briefly a scandal where the unit pushed back and said that Hutchinson didn't have the power to appoint a colonel in the militia, but they promptly voted in Hancock as a leader anyway. Anyway.

Joe: While local leaders like John Adams and John Hancock publicly seemed to moderate their views, Sam Adams remained focused on the revolution. He helped to form committees of correspondence between the colonies, and with his help, the Sons of Liberty evolved from a loosely connected group of street activists to a group that could orchestrate action across the colonies to better respond to British threats.

Joe: Sam Adams also penned the "Rights of the Colonists," a pro-liberty pamphlet that argued in favor of colonial rights without ever explicitly calling for independence.

Joe: Sam Adams — he's doing a lot — also maneuvered the colonial legislature to push through an act that said that parliamentary taxes in Massachusetts would not be honored without the legislature's consent. He enshrined "no taxation without representation" in Massachusetts law.

Joe: Sam Adams's effort to legitimize the pursuit of liberty ultimately would clear the way for legislative, legal, and business leaders of the colony to take a firm stance against the coming Tea Act. And that sets us up for a clash that Lord North did not see coming.

Joe: I like this. There's a giant sign here that says, "Protect the blue planet." You know, very environmental. Ocean for all. And yet, where is the sign located?

Abram: On land.

Joe: On land that used to be ocean.

Abram: Maybe they're trying to prove a point.

Joe: I think most people don't even know.

Prime Minister North

Abram: Prime Minister North.

Joe: So we've been discussing North in our most recent Prime Minister episodes, and if you know one thing about him other than his difficulties with America, you should know this.

Abram: He was named after a cardinal direction.

Joe: Yes. But if you know two things —

Abram: He was 37 when he became Prime Minister.

Joe: If you know three things —

Abram: What?

Joe: You should know that he's also good with money.

Abram: Oh yeah.

Joe: Lord North was faced with one of the most difficult financial crises of the era. The near collapse of the East India Company had rocked European economies and threatened to topple the British one. This was almost exactly 50 years since the South Sea Company had led to such instability that prime ministers had to be invented to solve it.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: So North was intent on keeping the nation upright. He would solve this with a one-two punch: prop up the East India Company to sell more tea at a profit and encourage the Americans to buy more tea. Money would be raised in both directions, and it would have been brilliant if it had worked.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: First, he launched investigations of the corrupt practices of the East India Company. It didn't matter if he kept the company afloat if their corrupt leaders would just keep siphoning off funds instead of investing in infrastructure. This led to something called the Regulating Act, which prevented the East India Company from sending anyone new to India and put Parliament and shareholders increasingly in charge of India's governance. Parliament would soon appoint governors, to manage India more like a colony than a for-profit enterprise.

Abram: Uh-huh.

Joe: But North also gave the East India Company perks. The most important of these was the Tea Act, which allowed the company to export tea directly without the need for London auctions and cutting out most of the middlemen that took a cut of the profit. This would permit tea to reach America less expensively while also increasing the cut that the East India Company would receive of any tea profits.

Abram: That's good.

Joe: They'd still have to pay the Townshend Act tea tax, and this was small, something like two cents per cup in modern money, but would add up because much more tea would be consumed.

Joe: In America, however, this provoked exactly the wrong response.

Abram: Why?

Joe: The East India Company was a boogeyman and not to be trusted. The colonists knew what had happened in India, just as the Londoners did. One anonymous writer in Pennsylvania stated, "Their conduct in Asia for some years past has given ample proof how little they regard the laws of nations, the rights, liberties, or lives of men."

Joe: And in America, the "rights, liberties, and lives of men" was on everyone's mind. A decision came quickly through the revolutionary channels as Sam Adams's network underwent its first major test. The colonies would fight the importation of the East India Company tea and they would do it together.

Abram: Oh, I didn't know that.

Joe: What?

Abram: They have a water shuttle that you can take to Logan Airport.

Joe: Huh.

Abram: Boston Logan. The airport of lacking a terminal.

Joe: It has five terminals.

Abram: What are you talking about? What are their letters?

Joe: A, B, C, E. I guess four.

Abram: Yeah, what happened to D?

Joe: Well, once upon a time, there was a Terminal D, and they decided to do construction, and it ended up getting merged with one of the other terminals. And they were supposed to relabel E as D so there wouldn't be a gap, but they realized it would cost millions of dollars to update all of the signs, and everyone was very used to E being the international terminal. And so they just said, "Eh, no one will notice."

Abram: Yeah, they're wrong.

Joe: Well, you noticed.

Abram: I am someone.

The Revolutionary Spirit Reborn

Abram: The revolutionary spirit reborn!

Joe: Word reached Boston in October 1773 that ships carrying East India Company tea were on their way to the colonies. The clock was ticking on a response. Of course, they did not think first of throwing tea in the harbor. Instead, they just wanted to keep the ships from landing.

Joe: The Committee of Correspondence jumped into action, with nearly every colony agreeing to push back on the arriving cargo. This was done in the colonial legislatures where possible, and in the public consciousness where not.

Joe: A newspaper in Philadelphia called on all the East India Company consignees in the colonies to resign. In Boston, the Sons of Liberty demanded a meeting with Governor Hutchinson and the local consignees in front of the Liberty Tree. But while 500 surely well-behaved colonists gathered to peacefully tell everyone who would listen what they thought of the Tea Act, none of the consignees or elected officials attended.

Joe: In a beautiful bit of irony, Hutchinson asked John Hancock, who you'll remember was leader of one of the governor's militias, to prevent such gatherings in the future. Whether Hancock refused or simply was silent on the matter is not stated, but watch this space because his militia will be important very soon.

Joe: On November 28, 1773, the first of the tea ships arrived in Boston — the Dartmouth. Now listeners to this podcast may be delighted to remember that Lord Dartmouth is Prime Minister North's stepbrother. And he has a different name. Is it William Legg?

Abram: It is William Legg. William Legg!

Joe: Yay! William Legg!

Abram: But I think the naming is a coincidence. I'm not even sure the Dartmouth was named for him in specific so much as it was named for —

Joe: William Legg. I assume there's a town called Dartmouth somewhere, right?

Abram: Yeah, in Massachusetts. Yeah, okay.

Joe: And probably also in England. In a forgotten prequel to the Boston Tea Party, the ship was met at the wharf by a group of so-called Mohawk Indians, led once again indirectly by Sam Adams, who prevented the ship from docking.

Joe: But eventually the Dartmouth did dock, as well as two more ships that arrived in the coming days. Although the ships were permitted to dock, they were not permitted to unload their cargo.

Joe: This caused a standoff. Governor Hutchinson refused to allow the ships to leave until they were unloaded and the taxes were paid. And as negotiations between the colonists, the ships, and the colonial government reached a fever pitch, a deadline was approaching. If the ships did not pay or leave by December 17th, they would be seized, thanks to a Massachusetts law that was intended to keep the wharves open for traders.

Joe: The deadline forced both sides to dig in deeper, and that led us to those final hectic moments of negotiation between the Boston community meeting, Governor Hutchinson, and the merchant Francis Rotch. Tension was reaching a boiling point. And what do you do, Abram, when the water boils?

Abram: What?

Joe: You make tea.

Abram: Good one.

Joe: But how can you find anything interesting to say when you just have this beautiful view? I mean, look at the blue skies, look at the blue water.

Abram: To know that lobsters are immortal, it just takes too much energy to like shatter something, so they die.

Joe: I'm fairly — one of my morbid facts. I'm fairly certain that the statement they're immortal but they die is a bit of an oxymoron.

Abram: Are you calling me a moron?

Joe: No, I'm just saying. That's it! Maybe I was calling you an oxy.

Abram: I'm not a weird bison. Maybe I am.

The Boston Tea Party

Joe: Boston Tea Party. And that finally leads us right back to our opening Picture This. The Dartmouth was between a rock and a hard place. A 20-day timer started when they first moored to Griffin's Wharf. The acts of the colonists and the governor essentially trapped her. But that also meant that the colonists were on a clock, because once the ship was seized, it would be much harder to prevent the government from unloading the tea and bringing it to market.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: Of course, there had been ample time to prepare, and even as the Dartmouth's Nantucket-based owners tried a final time to negotiate with Governor Hutchinson, the so-called Mohawks were preparing.

Abram: Uh-oh.

Joe: The men that slipped out the back of the room while Rotch was speaking were likely runners delivering a signal to the disguised men nearby.

Abram: That's cool.

Joe: The fact that the Mohawks were able to board the ships at all likely came down to who was guarding them. John Hancock's militia.

Abram: Ooh.

Joe: Whether they were in on the plan from the beginning or just knew when to step aside is not clear, but they offered no resistance to the protesters as they crossed the wharf.

Joe: And whether the story is quite as peaceful as reported, I'm not so sure. The story of the Boston Tea Party has been heavily mythologized, and the friendly protesters who paid for a damaged padlock or who swept the decks clean after their heist — well, it feels to me more like a "Washington could not tell a lie" story of American myth rather than American fact.

Joe: And yet I don't find a counter-story. There's no tale of violent mobs of colonists that terrified the crews of the merchant ships, no proof of anything stolen or damaged other than the tea.

Abram: There was only one person arrested.

Joe: That's good. The whole thing was peaceful enough that there was only one arrest in Boston, despite the dozens of so-called Native Americans running roughshod over three merchant ships.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: Compared to the Boston Massacre or the Stamp Act riots, the Tea Party seems as peaceful and organized a protest as you can imagine for a bunch of white men pretending to be Native Americans robbing from the rich to give to the harbor.

Joe: The identity and number of Tea Party participants will also probably never be known for sure. Prior to recording this episode, I visited a few Tea Party markers in local cemeteries. Abram, there's one in a cemetery in our town.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: There's several at the Granary Burial Ground, which we looked at in Boston last week. But no one's name was known at the time, and not everyone came forward after. And it's also true that some people may have later claimed to be in the Tea Party so they could have bragging rights 20 years later, even if they had little to do with it.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: We can guess that at least some of the people involved in the liberty mobs of previous years were present. Either watching or participating. One of the known participants was Samuel Gore. He was the other boy that was shot during the pre-Boston Massacre riots, when Christopher Seider died.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: He was wounded, and a couple years later, he dressed up as a Mohawk Indian and threw some tea in the harbor. So I guess happy ending for him.

Abram: Huh.

Joe: What we are left with is a story that is amazing, not because we know all the details, but because we never will. It's a piece of American mythology that, at least as far as I've been able to find, doesn't require you to look away from the harsher realities.

Abram: No.

Joe: John Adams said it best the following day. It was, quote, "The most magnificent movement of all. There's a dignity, a majesty, and a sublimity in this last effort of the patriots that I greatly admire."

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: Other tea parties followed suit around the colonies, but none were as important to American independence as the Boston Tea Party. Lord North is going to get his revenge, of course, but we'll look at his response in our next episode.

Joe: The biggest problem about Fallout 4 is that Fallout 4 makes like the entire Boston area seem walkable. And it is compared to like Los Angeles or —

Abram: But it's not very walkable. Dallas. But it's not tiny. Don't we want sidewalks?

Joe: Yeah, but you see this pedestrian bridge is no longer a bridge.

Abram: What was it?

Joe: Well, it clearly was a pedestrian bridge.

Abram: But it's a pedestrian bridge no more.

Joe: Well, it's a closed bridge. And so I'm looking to see how we rejoin the Harbour Path.

Joe: Abram, I have one more thing for you to say.

Abram: What?

Joe: Will you say, "Picture this again."

Abram: Picture this again? We already did a Picture This. Why do we need a second one? I don't know.

Joe: I just figured there's a speech. I want to give a speech. It's going to let me sound very like gravitas. Let me go sound gravitas.

Abram: Okay, if you do a speech, we'll add extra reverb to it, okay? To sound grander.

Joe: Perfect. That's the deal.

Picture This… Again

Joe: The date is March 5th, 1774. It's bitter cold in Boston, four years to a day since the massacre had inflamed the city, and 79 days since the Patriots dressed as Mohawks threw tea into Boston Harbor. It's Saturday, a market day, and the cobblestone streets are filled with merchants, shoppers, laborers, apprentices, and everyone else who would come to Boston not just for market day, but to mark the anniversary.

Abram: Of what?

Joe: The Boston Massacre.

Abram: Oh. Yeah, I don't like the green tea as much.

Joe: Okay, continue.

Joe: We descend to what we now call the Old South Meeting House, a brick building in the heart of the city, the same one that Abram and I saw yesterday. This is also the same building where Francis Rotch brought news of Hutchinson's refusal to let the ships leave and where the signal went out to the so-called Mohawk protesters.

Joe: As the hour approaches, a coach as luxurious as the best coaches in London pulls up to the door. The livery on the door marks the coach as belonging to John Hancock. A servant opens the door, and he steps out into the cold Boston air, his scarlet suit with gold trim and ruffled sleeves marking him as being essentially local nobility.

Joe: He is among the wealthiest men in the colonies. He practically is royalty.

Joe: Mr. Hancock's servants clear a path for him, from a side door to the pulpit. It's difficult. Every pew, every aisle, every corner, every spot in the gallery is filled with people, all here to hear him speak. Hancock pushes his way to the center of the room and looks out at the faces waiting with anticipation, and he clears his throat.

Joe: "Ahem. Men, brethren, fathers, and fellow countrymen," John Hancock begins as the room quiets and all strain to hear the well-dressed figure speak.

Joe: "I have always, from my earliest youth, rejoiced in the felicity of my fellow-men, and have ever considered it as the indispensable duty of every member of society to promote the prosperity of every individual, but more especially of the community to which he belongs."

Joe: "Some boast of being friends to government. I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice. But I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny."

Joe: "Is the present system which the British administration has adopted for the government of the colonies a righteous government, or is it tyranny?"

Joe: "They have declared that they have ever had full power to make laws to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever. They have exercised this pretended right by imposing a tax upon us without our consent, and lest we should show some reluctance at parting with our property, her fleets and armies are sent to enforce their mad pretensions."

Joe: "The town of Boston, ever faithful to the British crown, has been invested by a British fleet. The troops of George III have crossed the wide Atlantic not to engage an enemy, but to assist a band of traitors in trampling on the rights and liberties of his most loyal subjects in America."

Joe: "The troops, upon their first arrival, took possession of our Senate House, and they pointed their cannons at our Judgment Hall."

Joe: "But let not the miscreant host vainly imagine that we feared their arms. No! Them we despised; we dread nothing but slavery."

Joe: Hancock continues, his words rising in intonation like a sermon. He speaks of the injustice that followed the acquittals of the Massacre soldiers, the loss of morality of a city under siege by common soldiers, and of how those soldiers became Boston's oppressors. But he argues we need not fear.

Joe: "We fear not death. That gloomy night, the pale-faced moon and the affrighted stars that hurried through the sky can witness that we fear not death."

Joe: "When a country is invaded, the militia is ready to appear in its defense. They fight for their houses, for their lands, for their wives, for their children, for all who claim the tenderest names and are held dearest in their hearts. They fight for their liberty and for themselves and for their God."

Joe: "I have the most animating confidence that the present noble struggle for liberty will terminate gloriously for America."

Joe: "Let us joyfully leave our concerns in the hands of Him who raiseth up and pulleth down the empires and kingdoms of the world as He pleases. Yet we will rejoice in the Lord; we will joy in the God of our salvation."

Joe: John Hancock ends to applause and tears. He had spoken of liberty and of tyranny and of bravery and fear and militia and empire. He had not called for independence, but he had done something almost as dangerous. He told a room full of loyal British subjects that if their government became tyranny, resistance was not treason, it was duty. And that is where we are going to leave it for tonight. Abram, what did you think?

Abram: The Picture This was fun to record, but I apologize for lack of jokes.

Joe: Next time we return to London to show the story from the British side as Lord North responds to the Boston Tea Party and everything that happens after. I cannot wait.

Abram: Thank you for listening to Prime Factors. I'm Abram and I've been here with my dad. Don't forget that you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and at primefactorspodcast.com. If you enjoy listening, please like, subscribe, comment, and review.

Joe: All I have to say is, say goodnight, Abram.

Abram: Good morning.

Abram: Why would one that got shipwrecked in Cape Cod be in Boston?

Joe: Well, it was on its way to Boston to deliver tea, as well as other things, but it got shipwrecked and so it didn't make it all the way. So that's why during the Boston Tea Party, they threw tea overboard from three ships, because God had pretty much thrown it overboard from the fourth.

Abram: Look, they're throwing over tea.

Joe: Yep.

Joe: You can have a real-life throwing tea over the side of a ship experience.

Abram: I did field trips for this in 3rd grade.

Joe: But then they make you, like, scoop it back up. It's a little floaty.

Abram: They don't want to litter.

Joe: Uh-huh.

Abram: Is the episode done now?

Joe: It is.

Abram: That's nice. Bibliography.

Joe: I hope you enjoyed our detour into early revolutionary history. Our next mainline episode will be Lord North Part 3, and we'll try to wrap up the entire wartime period of his premiership in one episode. I may still do something special but smaller to close out the Boston story as well, but that will not be a full episode. I am itching to get to Shelburne and Portland and to try to figure out how we'll manage his split premiership. Plus, our summer vacation Prime Minister is coming.

Joe: Our key sources this time are *American Tempest: How the Boston Tea Party Sparked a Revolution* by Harlow Giles Unger, published in 2011. This was the main text that I used for the spine of the episode, and it had a lot of great information about India and elsewhere.

Joe: *Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America* by Benjamin L. Carp, also published in 2011.

Joe: The truth is that there's so much written about this era of American history, and I only had an hour to tell a story. To try to tell this from a British perspective, or at least an empire-aware one, I focused a lot more on the East India Company and the Bengal famine than most American retellings, and I hope you enjoyed it. That also meant that I had to cut out so many fantastic details, so if I missed your favorite part of the story, please let me know what it is. We're on Threads, we're on BlueSky.

Joe: I for one am sad that I had to trim out the Hutchinson letters. Benjamin Franklin discovered a conspiracy to deprive Massachusetts citizens of their rights in a secret trove of old letters. It's amazing, but it didn't fit.

Joe: I also used several sources on the history of tea, including *Tea: A Global History* by Helen Saberi, published in 2010.

Joe: As usual, I also had a number of smaller and online sources. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as Abram enjoys Dunkin' Donuts iced tea. Sadly, I don't think we made him a hot tea drinker. See you next time. What's wrong?

Abram: I got blisters on my fingers.

Joe: Have you been playing guitar too much and you have a blister?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Congratulations, Abram, that's like a rite of passage. Abram is very happy about his blister.

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