672. TEN TEA PARTIES BY JOSEPH CUMMINS- summary

672.  TEN TEA PARTIES BY JOSEPH CUMMINS.  There were tea parties in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Chesterton, York, Annapolis, Edenton and Willmington and Greenwich.  They were not called tea parties until much later.  In fact participants were not willing to discuss involvement because they feared legal action by the East India Company whose tea had been destroyed.  At that time tea party activity was known as "action against tea".  The reason for the tea parties was actually a company, East India Company which had poorly managed its business to the point where it needed subsidizing by Parliament.  And the reason Parliament was willing to float the company was because the company was thoroughly intertwined with those in government and government itself via taxes.  The EIC did account for something like 6 percent of the total income of England.  It had its own army, ships and means of enforcement.  So England granted a huge bailout.  And to recoup this loan they needed to add a tax which American colonists were expected to pay.  It, as we know, did not turn out so well.  But what is interesting is that the colonies ,spread out along the Atlantic coast with poor roads connecting them, quickly learned to communicate with each other and were competitive as regards resistance to the tax.  It is also interesting how well organized the colonists became and how closely their sentiments were the same concerning reason for opposing the tax.  One goes: 

Resolved, that no duty or taxes can constitutionally be opposed on us but by our own consent given personally or by our own representatives.

The sentiment was similar all along the coast.  Some parties were smooth and openly destroyed tea, others involved destruction of property and acts of violence and outright intimidation .

In the last chapter author gives an interesting account of how the tea party concept has been interpreted through the ages not just here in the USA but also in Europe and Asia.  He brings it up to the present with a brief discussion of the new Tea Party movement here in the United States.  Interestingly complaints, grumbling, accusations and criticism of the present Tea Party reflects characteristics of those of 200 plus hundred years ago.