160 The Politics of Tea

Ben Franklin's World

Liz Covart

History, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2017

⏱️ 91 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How did early Americans go from hosting social tea parties to hosting protests like the Boston Tea Party? Tea played a central role in the economic, cultural, and political lives of early Americans. As such, tea came to serve as a powerful symbol of both early American culture and of the American Revolution. In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series, Jane Merritt, Jennifer Anderson, and David Shields take us on an exploration of the politics of tea during the era of the American Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/160 Sponsor Links Omohundro Institute William and Mary Quarterly-Journal of the Early Republic joint issue on the American Revolution $10 promotion The Great Courses Plus (1 Free Month) Complementary Blog Posts John Fea, "The Greenwich Tea Burning: The Political and Religious Roots of Local Revolutionary Resistance" Complementary Episodes Episode 043: Matthew Osborn, Rum Maniacs: Alcoholic Insanity in the Early American Republic Episode 106: Jane Kamensky, The World of John Singleton Copley Episode 111: Jonathan Eacott, India in the Making of Britain and America, 1700-1830 Episode 112: Mary Beth Norton, The Tea Crisis of 1773 Episode 135: Julie Holcomb, Moral Commerce: The Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labor Economy Episode 156: The Power of the Press in the American Revolution Helpful Show Links Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Join the Ben Franklin's World Community Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for Ben Franklin's world and the Doing History to the Revolution series comes from the
0:04.8	Omaha Institute and The Great Courses Plus. The bah bahpah bah bah bah bah dah bah dah bah dahhahhahhah kahhah kahh kahh kahh kahhahhahhah Throughout the 18th century, T played a central role in the economic, cultural and political lives of early Americans.
0:41.0	And as a result of its centrality, T developed a complicated
0:44.9	economic and political history. In fact, because of its complicated economic and
0:49.2	political history, T came to play a sizable role in the escalating tensions between Great Britain and her 13
0:55.3	British North American colonies during the 1760s and 1770s.
1:00.3	Now you may recall that in episode 112, the very first episode in the Doing History to the Revolution series,
1:06.2	we had a conversation with Mary Beth Norton, the Mary Dunlin Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University,
1:12.0	who shared with us the story of the 7th T ship.
1:15.5	And during our conversation, Mary Beth shared with us the important role that T played in
1:19.9	colonial British American culture.
1:22.4	All the contemporary observers said that Americans drank prodigious, that was a word that I picked up from the documents, prodigious amounts of tea, and that all parts of American society at the time did just
1:35.0	a amount of tea and that all parts of American society at the time were addicted to tea.
1:36.0	There's even a wonderful account of a foreign traveler on the frontier
1:40.0	seeing Mohawk Indians drinking tea. So everybody seems to have drunk a lot of tea, but there's also a real cultural and social meaning to tea in the 18th century in North America.
1:53.0	It's valued for its role in women socializing.
1:57.5	I mean, the standard belief at the time
1:59.8	was that men socialized in taverns over ale and women socialized over tea in their homes.
2:06.3	And so there's a massive amount of literature about the cultural significance of tea parties.
2:12.4	As early as the 1720s people in newspapers are
2:16.6	parodying women in Tea Parties supervising, having tea very genteelie with their friends, with women, and some men, and socializing and gossiping.
2:28.0	There's a whole parody of women gossipers, and there's a lot of complaints about women gossiping over tea and
	...

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