On 2010-02-23, at 11:51 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
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> On Tue, 23 Feb 2010, Shane Mage wrote:
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>>> Okay Shane, I'll bite. How was the protest agains the Tea Act a protest against a tax cut?
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>> The East India Company had a legal monopoly over the importation of tea into British Colonies. The profits were large. The King wanted more of them, so he put a tax on the importation of tea into New England. This raised the price of tea so much that the colonists got angry. But not for long, because enterprising New Englander patriots began to smuggle tea in at a price much lower than the taxed price. Soon, all the tea drunk in New England was smuggled tea. The patriots were very happy. But the East India Company wasn't, and told the King as much. The king was crazy, but not so crazy as not to know who he couldn't say no to. So the King repealed the tea tax. That made the patriots very unhappy. So they organized a boycott of English tea, and informed their less patriotic neighbors that the drinking of unsmuggled tea would be dangerous to their health--by dressing up as the feared savages and vandalizing a commercial ship carrying tea.
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> I'll be damned. After checking a bit with google, I have to agree this is basically true. (And the parts that are simplified are mercifully so; why are tax details always so painfully boring?) I'm glad I asked. I learned something. Thanks.
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Me too. It's been a long time since I read Zinn's People's History. Did he or other historians of the US have this interpretation as well?