Real Patriots Throwing Corporate Money into the Harbor
Progressive political commentator Thom Hartmann has something to say about the real history of the Boston Tea Party. Using a first-hand account written by one of the participants, he shows that it was not against government regulation; it was not against the size of government. It was not even really at its core about government at all, except to the extent that a government supported a huge mega-corporation that had a stranglehold on America’s economy. As Thom Hartmann says, the Boston Tea Party was “A revolt against corporate power and corporate tax cuts.”
The heavy of the piece was not specifically the British government but the East India Company, which had a monopoly and was exploiting it. The East India Company was almost a nation unto itself, with tremendous influence over the British government and guilty of tremendous corruption and violence. The original Tea Party patriots were having none of this. They were not going to be ruined by corporate greed.
Obviously, these were not a bunch of conservatives, especially not a bunch of people like today’s conservatives, who embrace corporate power and willingly place themselves into thrall of these powerful conglomerates, today’s East India Companies, like GE (which paid no taxes). The status quo defends corporations, defends the right of corporations to evade taxation, and defends the rights of corporations to exploit the average citizen. The original Tea Party patriots rose up against this idea, and threw tea to the value of a million of today’s dollars into Boston Harbor. Not government tea, mind you, but corporate tea.
This lesson from history is more important than ever today given events in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and in my own Indiana, as the Tea Party, corporate-funded shills that they are, tries to take away not only the rights and livelihood of working-class Americans but on behalf of those corporations attacks the democracy those first patriotic Americans eventually fought to give us. The lessons of history, real history, not David Barton “santorum” we’re having pushed on us, demonstrate that the modern Tea Partiers are not upholders of the Revolution but Tories, looking to turn back the clock to those days when a large corporation could run roughshod over American rights.
The East India Company may be a part of history, but corporate greed and influence is not, and other large corporations have arisen to take its place, to exert the same sort of influence over government, and to feed themselves like vampires on the health of the body politic; off us, the American people. If there are people today who embody the spirit and patriotism of those original men, it is the workers and teachers in those states now under corporate attack, average men and women who like those original patriots refuse to have their rights trampled by tax-free corporations.
Long live the Revolution!
PoliticusUSA
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Neil Sagan
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 8:10 am
great job.
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 10:54 am
A friend sent that video to me so I owe thanks to her. I thought it was nice to see a sane, accurate history lesson. A nice antidote to Beck-ian, Barton-ian revisionism
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Leslie
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 1:13 am
Very enlightening .. makes sense, just never thought it through. Thank you.
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Harry
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 2:04 am
No…the Tea Party was about taxation…from the government. The East India Company (as the name suggests) was not so much involved in North America as (wait for it) India.
This articles sites a single source of a single individual who had a (legitimate) qualm with the practices of the EIC and what the government was doing to support it. However, there are hundreds of sources pointing to all the other “taxation without representation” stuff that the government in England was doing, which contributed far more to the Boston Tea Party than any “anti-corporate” sentiment
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jefferson
Apr. 4th, 2011 at 8:34 am
Wrong. The so-called Boston Tea Party was a response to the monopoly held by the East India Trading Company when the British Government gave them tax breaks on their imports into the colonies. This was lobbied for by East India because colonial imports (mostly illegal according to the British import laws) were being sold at a lower cost and the East India warehouses were overflowing with high priced tea. The intent was to create a monopoly and drive the colonial tea houses out of business by offering cut rate deals on tea. Oh wait…are we talking about WALMART or the East India Trading Company?
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Ignia
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 8:17 am
Interesting.
While it would be amusing to believe this correction of history, there’s a few too many questions that I have to accept his word without research.
First of all, Glenn Beck has made me nervy about historical re-writes. So any new “motive” for what our forefathers did and why is, for me, automatically suspect, especially when it explicitly comes from or promotes a political or religious ideology.
Secondly, Historians as a whole, at least real historians, try to use primary sources (personal, first-hand accounts) to study history in its details for motives and facts, due to many historical events being hijacked for political propaganda of the time. Now, this works both ways as an argument for and against this gentleman’s viewpoint. Due to the American Revolution, the “No taxation without representation” clause could have been emphasized as a rally cry to the extent of drowning out the anti-corporation viewpoints of the Tea Party, and thus was historically re-written to propagandize and legitimize the Revolution. However, if this book was published, and he picked it up in a bookshop in London, then this was a fairly prevalent book. Why was this information not included in the multitude of sources available to the Modern American?
Next, this is a secondary source, as it is a re-published “first-hand” account. Meaning, that it could have been changed from its original to fit the propaganda of the time, and thus, suspect. Was the source discredited somehow, or merely overlooked?
At any rate, I will reserve judgment, but I am leery about taking this at face value.
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 8:23 am
I disagree, Ignia; the book Thom Hartmann speaks of is a primary source as it is a work written by a participant rather than a later piece of analysis based on primary sources. The fact of its publication does not make it a secondary source any more than does any published memoir makes it a secondary source. This was how I was taught when I was working toward my history degree. I did some checking and Yale agrees: Primary Sources at Yale: What are Primary Sources?
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Ignia
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 8:28 am
Then I stand corrected, kind sir. I was certainly not a history major and I defer to your judgment.
Since he had said at the beginning that this was one of “America’s earliest history books” I automatically assumed that it was a secondary source.
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Ray Medeiros
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 10:52 am
R.T. Hewes was the original tea partier and that book is his recollection of the account.
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Sally
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 8:28 am
This is great, except the Tea Party doesn’t care about history, facts, or truth. They care about their agenda, which is now to bring down America…state by state. What happens when we are ruled by the corporate masters? I don’t think they can think that far ahead. They obviously think Palin, Bachmann, and the Governors who would be King are doing a fine job decimating the middle class and ruining public education. Stupid is as stupid does.
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Dave
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 8:39 pm
Sally- Wow! How misinformed can you be? Tea Party supporters are honest, hard working Americans who support the Constitution and the ideals of America. They are not trying to destroy it. America is slowly being destroyed by many things but the Tea Party is not one of them. Govt financial irresponsibility is the primary reason the Tea Party exist. We do not want government money disbursed to corporations like AIG, Chrysler, GM, and the many Wall Street brokerage houses that needed bailing out. We say, “Let them fail!” How does that mentality put us in bed with our “corporate masters”, as you said? We want them to fail if they are doing business badly. Bringing down America? It is the complete opposite of what the Tea Party supporters want. We want America to be stronger and greater than ever. The way to do that is to allow its citizens to be regulated less, taxed less, and governed more on a local level than a national level. Palin, Bachman, and the new crop of Republicans in the House and Senate are doing everything they can to allow Americans to realize their true potential. That can’t be done when they are told more and more what they can and can’t do. That can’t be done when they are taxed more and more and the fruits of their labor and creativity are sent to Washington. Also, calling names is the most childish thing an adult can do. Make your argument(s) but refrain from insulting. It just turns off people from listening to what you have to say. I suggest reading Norman Vincent Peale’s classic, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. It is a great book, no matter what your political affiliation.
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Dave
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 8:41 pm
Oops. That is Dale Carnegie’s book. NVP is a great author too.
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maxine
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 10:23 pm
They are Tories, whether they like the label, or not.
I am a Liberal.
Local government often means that individual civil rights are ignored. Jim Crow laws and anti-abortion laws are two kinds of the same evil.
It took the Feds to come in and make sure the locals stopped lynching people.
May I suggest reading “The Communist Manifesto”? I have little patience with communism, but Marx describes the America of today to a shameful degree.
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 7:31 am
Maxine, I agree entirely with you with regards to the Communist Manifesto. I bought a Kindle copy recently and almost wrote an article about it. Sadly, a lot of things I intend to write about never get written because Republicans do more stupid things than I can possibly keep up with.
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Josh
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Local government often means that individual civil rights are ignored… federal government prolongs and guarantees they are ignored in some cases.
Several states almost always adopt legislation before the federal government finally decides to go ahead and enforce it..
I think there are numerous examples in society today:
- Your right to smoke marijuana as a medical patient
- Gay Marriage
- Your right to use non-monopolized currency that is controlled, manipulated to the advantage of Wall Street
- Racism.. it started on the state level, took forever for the government to adopt it and enforce it.. If the states that had already made the push to make second class citizens equal citizens hadn’t happened.. who knows how long it would have taken for the government to decide to do that.
The federal government is always the last to adopt things, but when they do they enforce it everywhere. Some things are in the jurisdiction of the federal government to modify. Racism clearly falls under a constitutional violation if you consider any person a citizen.
I think if you intended to wait solely on the federal government to handle things, through all 50 states… things will never happen.
Hell, I get frustrated enough in that you get no choices for presidency.. you’d really be fucked if you tried to centralize power any more heavily than it already is. It takes forever to get ANYTHING done… and you get to choose between two piles of crap.
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Ray Medeiros
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 10:34 pm
Dave, when I see the tea party protesting TEACHERS and celebrating CEO compensation on Wall Street, they have become the problem. The problem is the “tea party of 2008″ was hi-jacked!
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Josh
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 1:44 pm
I don’t think any of them celebrate CEO Compensation.. they celebrate your right to pay yourself from profits that your company makes as part of a free society… While condemning the assholes who voted for bailouts, which basically lead to CEO’s giving themselves bonuses at the taxpayers expense.
I think interventionists couldn’t handle this, that they were fooled into thinking if they just give these assholes more money.. the economy would stop bleeding.. but they fell for the fear mongering. Now instead of admitting that they might have supported the wrong side, they just want to come in their legislatively and decide what somebody who runs a business wants to pay themselves.
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Scipio
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 11:13 pm
Disagreements with other people here aside, what are your thoughts on the Boston Tea Party really being a protest a corporate tax cut from a mulit national corporation that corrupted the British crown?
As one who is on the side of the tea party, you have to find this fascinating.
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Leslie
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 1:10 am
re Tea Party folk “support the Constitution and the ideals of America” except the equality and freedom and pursuit of happiness for those who lifestyle differs from theirs, and some are not too fond of “separation of church and state” (at least not their particular version of church) either.
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D.J.
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 2:23 am
Wow, my friend. It is sad to see how grossly you have been misled by a blatantly pro-corporate anti-real-person movement. I will agree that you, and many “Tea Bagger” supporters, want the things that you say you want. And yet, the blatant reality of what your recently-elected officials want is 180º to the contrary.
Like liberals who were deceived into supporting a right-winger like Obama… you’ve been had!
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 7:33 am
That’s the spin, Dave. Where is the fact? Show me the justification for imposing a Christian theocracy on the American people? Show me where the original tea partiers in Boston had any fundamentalist Christian agenda at all. I didn’t have space to go into that question but it’s as legitimate as the points I made above in the article. So please, less spin, more fact. Show me how these people you name are going to enable to people to reach their full potential.
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Sarah Jones
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 8:37 am
Love this! Thanks Hraf;-)
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 12:20 pm
YW Sarah!
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Ray Medeiros
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 10:13 am
Did you steal this from me? I have been posting this on different websites and FB sites for a day! …lol…I love this!!!
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 12:19 pm
No Ray! lol An old Pagan friend of mine sent me the link on FB figuring I could make use of it. I did :)
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 11:02 am
A real tea party would be standing up for Americans. Its obvious they have hijacked the tea party name for a dissimilar purpose.
At the old tea party, it was Americans fighting against the taxes they paid to the rich
Our tea party fights to make sure we pay taxes(enrichment) to the rich.
Awesome vid
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Reynardine
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 11:17 am
Actually, the word is corvee: what a serf paid to his overlord in obligatory free labor in order not to have an administrative freeze imposed on his biological processes.
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Bayman
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 11:12 am
And they were particularly against monopolies! This new puppet movement is controlled by monopolists (Koch, Murdoch, etc). Thanks for the article.
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 7:24 am
You’re welcome, Bayman.
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Rmuse
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Perfect Hraf! It’s about time we’re getting the truth…to our side. The teabags will never get it, but this was spot on. I remember a history professor who expounded on this very issue. I won’t divulge the number of decades ago I sat through this lecture, but it is well documented. Leave it to your investigative mind to write and explain it. We’re damn fortunate to benefit from your work. Fantastic man…really brilliant.
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 7:26 am
Thank you, Muse. I read once about some of this as well but I could not find any citation for the sources. It was more from the American merchant perspective, as though the American businessmen were manipulating the situation for their gain (which I suppose is somewhat true since they were going to be the biggest losers if the East India Company won) so I never went any further with it. I was delighted to see Mr. Hartmann expound on the point!
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Ray Medeiros
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 2:01 pm
//And bringing it up to today we are experiencing the same exact thing: We have one of the largest companies in the world (GE) in bed with our uber-corrupt president and hence they pay ZERO tax.//
So the President created the tax loophole that allowed GE to pay nothing, really? That is a ridiculous assumption.
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 7:29 am
Poor reasoning is par for the course, Ray. The President is guilty is the beginning of their argument – they start with that as a premises, and then it in turn provides proof that the president is indeed guilty. It’s all very circular but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for people who hear what they want to hear.
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Ray Medeiros
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Read Rusticus, the original pamphleteer, Beware the East India Company!!!
How can you “revise” a first hand writing? You are trying to refute one of the ONLY first hand accounts of the Boston Tea Party ever written.
the you go to the old,”You’re stupid” name calling, it really shows your ineptitude to confront facts
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Ray Medeiros
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 2:08 pm
Let’s also bring up, what was the perception of the colonists? I don’t care really what the actual law was…but more along the lines of what the perspective of the colonists were.
According to this FIRST hand account it seems they were aggressive toward a corporation!
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 2:21 pm
am sorry, but mitch had to leave suddenly
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 7:24 am
He will be missed
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Ray Medeiros
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Perhaps Thomas Jefferson was misguided when he petitioned to have “freedom from corporate monopolies” in the Bill of Rights….
Yeah, their focus was ONLY on the king right? HA not in a long shot, Mitch
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Kirby L. Wallace
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 3:14 pm
Oh, and by way of example, go read the wiki on “Boston Tea Party”.
You will see that there was a whole heck of a lot more to this story than “corporate agnst”. it was, as has always been known, a rebellion against taxation without representation.
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Ray Medeiros
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 5:43 pm
Wiki, oh yeah, that can be manipulated…sorry NEXT!
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Mark Bell
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 4:40 am
Can be. But as of tonight, it hasn’t been. It presents the orthodox description, with references. I wonder what Howard Zinn would say of this?
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 7:23 am
Wikipedia is unreliable. You can’t cite Wikipedia as a source when you’re in most colleges and universities for a good reason. I’ve fought battles there for accuracy myself. I’ve corrected and edited articles only to have them put back in there original state despite a complete lack of evidence for that original position and an abundance of evidence for the correction I made. I even had someone higher up the line arbitrarily undo my correction for no reason. I objected, explained and had it restored, but it goes to show the difficulty in getting any balanced or properly annotated view presented there.
The minute somebody sends me a Wikipedia link as proof, I go to the library. Wikipedia has some use as a starting point if any actual sources are cited; don’t think for a minute that every article is fair and balanced, let alone exhaustive.
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BrentLane
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 6:03 pm
Whatever contrasts he wishes to draw between the historical Tea Party and the modern political movement, Hartmann has his history dead wrong. However, despite both his misstatements of historical fact and incorrect assumptions of causality, there IS a startling paradox between that time and our own. Then, as now, the REAL danger was, and is, from vested interests within our own nation (not outside, as Mr. Hartmann would have us believe), and from the gullibility of the populace to lies perpetrated by those same interests.
Previous to the incident at Boston, all East India Co. tea was, by law, first landed in the Port of London, where it was levied a substantial tax; after the tax was paid, some of the tea was reloaded and shipped to the New World. At the time the average American drank more than twice as much tea as the average Englishman, so taxes for colony-bound tea raised a substantial sum for the Crown. Most of the money so raised was used to equip and supply the Royal Navy, as England was then at war with France.
Shortly before the incident at Boston, the tax system was changed. Under pressure from the Company, the Crown agreed it should be allowed to ship Indian tea directly to the colonies, without first landing in London. In return for not having to pay the heavy London tax, American tea importers would instead pay a much smaller tax at the wharf, before offloading their cargo. Even with the wharfside tax, the new arrangement would have allowed American consumers substantial economic relief, because with the elimination of the heavier London tax, and the savings from not having to unload, warehouse and transfer the cargo in London, American tea prices would have fallen more than 60%,
But American tea importers objected to the new plan. Why? Because they had invested heavily in ongoing operations to smuggle cheap, untaxed tea from Holland. The money they had spent in setting up those operations would be wasted. Secondly, they would lose the monopoly they had acquired, because many small merchants with more limited resources could have contracted to receive cheaper tea directly from India. Finally – and this was the clincher – the large American tea merchants would lose the obscene profits they were making by jacking up cheap, smuggled Dutch tea to retail prices equivalent to those charged for expensive, taxed English tea.
So the tea oligopoly wrapped itself in the flag and circulated a bunch of lies about “unfair taxation” and “government greed”. They excited a bunch of gullible people into forming what was essentially an unreasoning mob, and persuaded it to work against its own economic and political interests. The mob was incited into breaking the law, doing violence, and destroying the monopoly’s competition, all in the name of “patriotism” and “freedom from tyranny”.
Had the people ignored the mercantilist’s lies, the tea monopoly would have been broken within a few months. Prices would have been cut by two thirds. And the small amount of taxes that WAS collected by the Crown would have gone directly towards supplying more ships to protect the colonies against the substantial French New World fleet. (Remember, there was a war going on, and the danger of a French blockade or attack on a colonial port were ever-present. )
Instead, the Tea Party foolishly listened to the corporatist lies of their own countrymen. Consequently, they continued to be bled dry by American (not English) corporate interests. The grotesquely wealthy merchants were able to get even wealthier by manipulating an excitable but ignorant and easily fooled populace; monopolies and subsidies were allowed to flourish under the guise of “national economic interest”; political chaos and paralysis reigned for a dozen years, and the military defence of the nation was strangled from lack of funds.
NOW do you get the REAL parallel between the Old Tea Party and the New Tea Party??
Mr. Hartmann? Ms. Palin? Mess’rs. Trump? Beck? Limbaugh? O’Reilly? Hannity?
… Anyone ????
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 8:13 pm
And yet Hartmans info comes from the only actual record from the only actual person to write about the tea party itself. Go figure
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BrentLane
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 10:56 pm
While I would think that a firsthand account of specific actions (times, dates, who did what) might be reasonably accurate, relying on a contemporary account of the true causes and motivations of an historical conflict can be tricky. This is especially true if there is only a single account available, with no counterbalance. It’s usually hard to see the forest when your face is full of pine needles.
I doubt whether a teenage British soldier, shipped off to the Continent in the early days of the Napoleonic Wars, could offer us much enlightenment about the subtleties of royal intrigue, the nuances of diplomatic positioning and the scope of the national betrayals that led to the conflict. He’d merely report that Napoleon was a bad ‘un what needed fixing with a good piece of Sheffield steel.
Likewise, the daily journal of a Marine grunt involved in Desert Storm wouldn’t help much in explaining how three devious and powerful people could pull the wool over the eyes of a third of a billion people, and bankrupt a nation in the process.
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Joseph Salt (囖儛 瑟腌 aka "Low Sea")
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 9:57 pm
Brent Lane: I am going to take a page from my Wikipedia editing days and suggest that you have an interesting bit of “Original Research” there, well worth looking more closely … BUT … do you have any (reliable or otherwise) published sources to support your views on this historic event’s genesis ?
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BrentLane
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 11:37 pm
Take a quick look through Tuchman’s “March of Folly”.
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Chrissy
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 10:48 pm
The “Tea Party” has certainly sold people a patriotic bill of goods. Corporate America uses the Palins & Becks & Limbaughs to rally the pawns in their endgame. Much like the previous American propagandists…
http://www.boston-tea-party.org/british-view-new.html
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 7:18 am
Thank you, Chrissy. Not many people – particularly conservatives these days – bother to think about there being another perspective to a story.
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Ray Medeiros
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 7:44 pm
Thom Hartmann read from a FIRST HAND ACCOUNT, he is telling you the PERCEPTION of the colonists.
The colonists new they were getting screwed by the Corporation,hence the reason for the Tea Party
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Anna
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 9:06 pm
would be cool if he could find a publisher who would republish this book.
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Wrenn
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 10:23 pm
If you want to read the full text of George Robert Twelve Hewes’s memoir, it has been scanned into the Internet Archives.
http://www.archive.org/details/traitsteapartyb00thatgoog
Enjoy.
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Wrenn
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 10:24 pm
And here: THIS seems to be the actual book Thom reading from.
http://www.archive.org/details/retrospectofbost00hawk
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 2nd, 2011 at 11:09 pm
Thank you
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Mark Bell
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 1:12 am
That’s pretty cute! It certainly is not an orthodox historical interpretation, although the part about the East India Corporation is founded on truth. Orthodox history holds that the incident was a protest against taxation without representation. Other cities refused the tea altogether, but the Sons of Liberty in Boston took it a step farther, as we know so well.
But the author makes his position fully clear when he says “the Tea Party, corporate-funded shills that they are…” While there is, as with any movement, corporate money sloshing around, there is a very substantial unease among lots of people which coalesced in what is today called the Tea Party. Fight it if you wish, donate to other political entities as appropriate, but I don’t think it is wise of the Left to simply dismiss it. “Astroturf” it ain’t.
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 10:11 am
I suppose the tea Party convention in Florida, which could have been held in a Dennys restaurant dining area, and the totally sparse marches of recent back you up.
People may want what you think the Tea Party wants and thats fine. Your masters the Koch brothers just want you along for the ride
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Mark Bell
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 4:36 am
And oh yeah – East India corporate greed? After the tax was adjusted, their tea came in at two schillings. This is *cheaper* than the smugglers’ tea at two shillings one pence. They had something of a glut after the domestic British tax cut tea consumption in that country.
That company plays the heavy in another tale: Pirates of the Caribbean. They do have cool costumes though.
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Alvin
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 11:56 am
Epic FAIL trying to re-write history liberals. You forgot to scrub what TORRIES were from our minds.
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 12:08 pm
The Tory ethics can be summed up with the phrase ‘God, King and Country’, which translated here in the US means ‘Guns, Palin, chew and Country’
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Alan K Hunt
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Nice try, but no, the “Sons of Liberty” weren’t a bunch of Barrys, Harrys and Nancys.
To paraphrase a great previous comment:
The Tea Party really was about taxation, i.e., government taxation. The East India Company (as the name suggests) was not so much involved in North America as (wait for it) India. This articles sites a single source of a single individual who had a (legitimate) qualm with the practices of the EIC and what the government was doing to support it. However, there are hundreds of sources pointing to the “taxation without representation” that the government in England was doing, which contributed far more to the Boston Tea Party than any “anti-corporate” sentiment.
There are plenty of good sources out there to provide a fair history, but here’s a synopsis:
On December 16th, 1773, “radicals” from Boston, members of a secret organization of American Patriots called the Sons of Liberty, boarded three East India Company ships and threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. — This iconic event, in protest of oppressive British taxation and tyrannical rule, became known as the Boston Tea Party. — Resistance to the Crown had been mounting over enforcement of the 1764 Sugar Act, 1765 Stamp Act and 1767 Townshend Act, which led to the Boston Massacre and gave rise to the slogan, “No taxation without representation.” — The 1773 Tea Act and resulting Tea Party protest galvanized the Colonial movement opposing British parliamentary acts, which violated the natural, charter and constitutional rights of the colonists.
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G. Dale
Apr. 3rd, 2011 at 9:02 pm
I would like to offer this back-up from Drutman & Cray, The People’s Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy, which i obtained through Public Citizen:
“[in Colonial America...][some] British corporations, such as the powerful British East India Company, saw the colonies as markets for their goods.
This exploitive relationship between the colonists and the British corporations would ultimately prove unsustainable. British companies were granted exclusive “monopoly” rights to see commodities to colonists, which meant high prices and dissatisfied colonists. Things came to a boil with the Tea Act of 1773, which was designed to prop up the fortunes of the East India Company by raising the taxes on non-East India tea and expanding the company’s exclusive access to American markets. Local businessmen responded by dumping 90,000 pound of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor, helping to catalyze a revolution in which the fight for economic independence from British corporations and political independence from the British crown were thoroughly intertwined [this doesn't allow italics, but please take careful note of the last sentence and how these authors see that fight! Sound like today??]. (p. 17)
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Europea
Apr. 4th, 2011 at 6:50 am
On a greater scale, was not the core of the originial Tea Pary an opposition against arbitrary rule? Whether or not it be government, semi-public corporations or today’s Big-Corp, which are often intertwined with Big Gov.
And this is, my friends and foes alike, the foundation of liberalism in itself.
Thus a true tea-bag ought to be a liberal first and foremost. Republican and patriot as he may be, he is still a liberal and will oppose socialism as well as a status quo van guarded by conservatives – if it fails to defend his or her civil liberties. The conservatives of the 18th century would clearly have been the monarchistic loyalists, which bear striking resemblance to the Tea Party Movement of today. A total paradox.
And, was not the cry for individual rights, guarded by republicanism through the constitution, also an cry for independence and not only local autonomy? An independence, which the Patriots (liberals) realized could not be implemented without a republic and a federal government. consequently they realized that local government had to have some checks and balances.
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 4th, 2011 at 7:02 am
You would think that at the very least a tea party member who so avidly supports the constitution would support the American public instead of siding with the GOP on everything against the people. I guess thats one reason why they have such a negative polling today
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Europea
Apr. 4th, 2011 at 7:25 am
Maybe so. On the other hand from my Northern European horizon I would identify several other factors to their initial success. Their negative polling is perhaps not such a big surprise. One is the culture of politics in America – where a pompous and ranting rhetoric is one of the premises for “democrats” and “independents” as well, while an anti-ideological stance is another premise – all of this has its pros and cons of course.
primarily I would look at their successful discursive formation as a great “social grass root movement” which inevitably (?) led to a later social mobilization, if yet not as great as their rhetoric would suggest. The success story of a grass root movement led to a grass root movement, at least in some of Americas states. Is it surprising that we saw this in the Holy Land of The Red Necks? In the rural parts of the Mid-West? In abandoned mining Townships?
Is it unique for America? Well, populist political movements have been prosperous here in Europe as well.
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 4th, 2011 at 7:43 am
unfortunately, the rank-and-file members of the tea party thought that they were a grassroots movement until it was discovered that they were created in rich people’s boardrooms. there is no doubt that many of the rank-and-file members believe in the things they were told to believe such as the fact they are patriots. Which definitely turned out not to be the case. they are basically now Republicans. in fact this morning on the news it was discovered that at least 15 of the elected tea party members have been taking in government subsidies by the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past years. Totally fraudulent people
I have to believe that real grass roots movements have been and are successful around the world primarily in Democratic nations such as yours and ours. Any nation that lets its people speak freely can support grassroots movements and I do not think that it is unique to the United States
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Europea
Apr. 4th, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Well, the grassroots movements have been successful in Europe and America, indeed. Have been, that is. The left is on retreat or on vacation, or totally confused, e.g let us attack liberal rights in the name of “multiculturalism” [insert trendy postmodern buzzword here], let us attack the foundation of our nations, such as the national state, our common cultural heritage, our Christian humanistic ethic which led to the deceleration of human rights (the early humanists of Europe were protestant radicals prior to and unlike Luther and Calvin).
Let us instead “fight” poverty by going on a “mind-opening” journey to India like the spoiled backpackers we truly are, let us compare Talibans with our lazy middle-class husbands whom dare not pick up the laundry in the name of radical feminist cultural relativism, and let us pick up the White Mans burden again. And the list goes on….
All of this creates a political vacuum which the extremists more than easily can fill with whatever they pick from the populist “smorgasbord” – as we say in Sweden.
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Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 4th, 2011 at 3:29 pm
well there again the extremists are trying, but their numbers are low. They obviously own some people in the U.S. Congress, but everything that they’ve tried to do so far can be easily undone
we have a chain of restaurants named smorgasbord up in Michigan. Pretty good food
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Justen
Apr. 14th, 2011 at 9:51 am
It’s always funny when one half or other of the fascist duopoly tries to spin history into a support of their modern political nuances. That any group that supports warfare pretends to be anti-government or any group that supports fascist economics pretends to be anti-corporate is almost shamefully hypocritical. Bunch of statist bootlickers!
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