Hello and welcome to a history of the United States. Episode 137, the Boston Tea Party. In the early

1770s in London, the most pressing issue of the day was not America, but India. Britain's

mercantilist system was starting to enter terminal decline, and this was showing itself,

in particular, with the East India Company, which was burdened with an annual payment of £400,000.

Then there were administrative costs in India, which were rising, smugglers were cutting into the tea trade,

it was being badly managed, and then there was a great famine in Bengal.

In short, its share price collapsed, and there was a financial panic.

By September 1772, it had debts of £1.3 million and was nearing bankruptcy.

The government had to do something.

And it did. The Tea Act.

The Tea Act lifted mercantilistic restrictions on the company's export of tea to the Americas, so that it could

compete with the smugglers. The smuggled tea was selling at two shillings seven pence per pound,

so they would introduce East Indian tea at two shillings. This would force down the price of the smuggled tea in turn. The company was to

act as its own retailer. Over 1773, 74, it was expected that the company would collect

£31 million of tea, but would only be able to sell 13 million pounds, leaving it stuck with

18 million pounds. The company was required to keep 10 million pounds stockpiled in case of a

national emergency, which, as I'm drinking tea at the time of writing, feels exceptionally wrisish.

Therefore, the company had 8 million pounds of tea to dump into the American market. Lord North's intentions were for the

Tea Act, which was signed into law on the 10th of May 1773 to save the East India Company and with it imperial finances. No Americans or colonial merchants

were consulted, which you would have thought the British would have learnt to do by now.

North made an assumption that the Americans would be happy to have cheaper tea, and gave the matter

no more thought. But we know better. We know that the tax on tea had become a matter of principle

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