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Omaha Institute and The Great Courses Plus. Shh, careful and steady lad. We don't want to alert the customs collector. Mr. Hancock has a lot of money wrapped up in the easier tea chest.

If we lose this cargoville, we'll have our heads.

So steady and quiet now, we just have to put into that code today.

At the end of the French and Indianer seven years war in 1763, Great Britain claimed that smuggling was a big problem in its North American colonies.

Therefore, British government officials set out to solve this problem by cracking down on smuggling

during the 1760s and 1770s, a period that we now think of as part of the

American Revolution.

This British crackdown on smuggling took two forms.

First, Parliament passed measures like the Sugar Act of 1764, the Townsend duties of 1767, and the

Tea Act of 1773.

Now, although we traditionally think of the sugar and tea axis taxes, there were actually

regulatory measures that impose taxes while also lowering the prices on British-regulated

versions of these goods.

The lower prices, they were meant to encourage colonists to legally

import and purchase these goods through British merchants, instead of importing and purchasing

them illegally through Dutch and French merchants.

Secondly, in the early to mid-1760s, George Grenville, the first Lord of the Treasury,

set out to clean up the British Customs Service.

He fired corrupt agents, hired more agents, and ensured that measures such as the Sugar Act of 1764

included provisions that increase the investigation and seizure powers of customs officers.

Now, the root cause of Great Britain's desire to crack down on smuggling in North America

...