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The Montpelier cliffhanger
S2E16 · American Ideology Part 2
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Standard of Truth · Season 2 · Episode 16 · 49:43

American Ideology Part 2

The Tea Act cut the price of tea in America roughly in half, and the colonists answered by dumping it in Boston Harbor.

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The question ·

If both the Saints and their Missouri persecutors believed they were upholding American ideals, what does the Boston Tea Party show about American ideology?

Richard

After a week-long cliffhanger, Richard and Gerrit finally get to the Boston Tea Party, by way of Montpelier population stats and Richard's French-Canadian ancestors. Gerrit starts in 1763, when Britain's victory in the Seven Years' War left it with huge debts and a vast territory to garrison, and walks through the Stamp Act, the Townshend duties and the cry of taxation without representation. With help from the crack research staff on Jenkins' ear, pence and a laborer's wages, he shows the Townshend tax on tea was only three pence a pound, and the 1773 Tea Act actually made tea much cheaper. The point lands on ideology: colonists resisted any illegitimate tax however small, and later both the Saints and the Missourians who drove them out claimed that same revolutionary heritage.

Who comes upRobert JenkinsKing George III
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The Montpelier cliffhanger

Richard can't believe the Boston Tea Party was a cliffhanger, then delivers the promised Montpelier, Vermont population stats.

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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Hi, Gerrit. Well, in last week's podcast, we left you with an absolute cliffhanger, like a Perry Mason, Murder She Wrote, To Be Continued, where we said we will talk about the Boston Tea Party.
Gerrit I don't know why this is comical.
Richard I don't know why it is either.
Gerrit Richard's clearly not a patriot and needs to be re-educated.
Richard So, but that wasn't enough. Gerrit threw in one additional tidbit on the declining population of Montpelier, Vermont. And assuming that none of you have the internet and could have immediately looked that up, we apologize that you waited a week for us to get to that.
Gerrit What was the results?
Richard Yeah, absolutely. So, there's a declining population. In 2019, the population of Montpelier was just under 7,500. Now, it's just under 7,200. But in the greater Montpelier area, it's as high as 8,000.
Gerrit So it's just all freeway then?
Richard Well, trees.
Gerrit It's all freeway, trees.
Richard And during the day, it balloons to 21,000. As people come in to work.
Gerrit It's going into all the government offices there. Absolutely.
Richard So that's how we're starting this podcast, is giving you some Montpelier stats. You're welcome, Gina. You already know that.
Gerrit Well, I think we needed to capture the Vermont market, especially the Montpelier market.
Richard Absolutely.
Gerrit It's bustling. Yeah, I mean, I feel like between Rachel's mom, Gina, and I don't know.
Richard That's the list.
Gerrit Yeah, that's it.
Richard When I don't blame them, we started this podcast with a to be continued on the population of Montpelier. Anyway, so we wanted to talk about, a little bit about American ideology, and especially this idea of, well, we spoke in the last podcast about this idea of religious freedom, and trying to talk about, we have this understanding of kind of these things within America, but that there's, you have in the case of Missouri, two groups, one both believing that they're whole, you know, upholding this American ideal, but they're absolutely fighting against each other. Well, at least one side is.
Gerrit Yeah, and we apparently in a tease that you thought was not very powerful, said that we would talk about the Boston Tea Party, as an example. So let's talk about it now. I'm going to be briefly going over this. I obviously, I'm not going to be able to cover everything in detail. The Boston, the American Revolution, just to kind of set everything, the first battles over in 1775, and the Declaration of Independence comes in 1776, as everybody knows. But we need to kind of go back to briefly cover this. Apparently, the problem is, you can't actually ever ask a historian to briefly cover anything.
Richard That's what I was thinking. So, Gerrit, so we're gonna briefly, we're just gonna provide some context. We're gonna briefly go back. We're gonna start with Gilgamesh in Mesopotamia, 2700 BC.
Gerrit We need to briefly go back. There was a man in Columbus who thought that he could reach the Indies by sailing west. I mean, but I do need to go back to 1763, so roughly 12 years before the violence erupts and only 10 years before the Boston Tea Party. Why do I need to do that? Well, to demonstrate this power of American ideology. So in 1763, that is the end of the Seven Years' War or what is commonly called on the American continent, the French and Indian War. This is a worldwide struggle. I mean, it really is a world war. I mean, they fight battles in India, they fight battles in the Caribbean, they fight in Europe, and they fight in multiple places in North America. And the end result of this is that the French are, I'm sorry, Richard.
Gerrit This is gonna come as a news to you, but the French lose.
Richard Yes, well, and in addition, is we're about to speak poorly of the British, I'm sure. Trigger warning to my British sister-in-law. Very sorry.
Gerrit I mean, I don't mean to, I mean, I'm just relating what the colonists said.
Richard No, it's important to the French listeners, to all of the British listeners.
Gerrit I mean, we have like 17 people in Switzerland who listen.
Richard Yeah, that is the weirdest thing.
Gerrit They couldn't care less about what we're about to talk about.
Richard Well, now, the Montpelier stuff, I'm sure they were on pins and needles.
Gerrit Well, they also like a good antique store, as well as the Nexman. I mean, they might be Swiss, but they're not made of stone. That's correct. Yeah. But the end result is, while the British and the French have fought multiple wars over their possessions in North America, the domination of the Seven Years War is complete. When the British win, they crush the French. Now, they don't do so hot very early on, and they get a new prime minister, and they essentially spend all kinds of money to outspend the French in order to win this war. And so when they win, both the colonists and many people in Britain demand that the French are completely driven from North America.
Gerrit So Richard has French-Canadian answers. When did your French-Canadian ancestors come?
Richard Is we were driven from France in 1690.
Gerrit So you were driven from France, why?
Richard Well, I mean, you've met me. I don't know. I'm sure my ancestors were very similar, similarly obnoxious. I don't know exactly why they were kicked out.
Gerrit But you have the feeling that they were kicked out, not just immigrated?
Richard I don't know. I mean.
Gerrit But again, because you've met you.
Richard Yeah, I've met me. I'm familiar with my work.
Gerrit I knew what he was when we picked him up.
Richard They were from Lyon, and they moved to outside of Montreal in about 1690.
Gerrit Do you know if they were Calvinists, is that why?
Richard I have no idea. We have no record actually as to that. I would love to actually.
Gerrit Well, so some Calvinists. So again, in order to make this podcast less important than the townships won in France during the wars of religion, in the 1500s and 1600s, eventually, of course, the Catholic Church is going to get the upper hand, and the monarchy, which is supported by the church. And the Calvinist groups are often severely persecuted, and many of them flee to North America and other places in order to escape. So maybe you're descended from religious zealots, or people who just wanted to live where it was cold here.
Richard And do some fur trapping in northern Quebec.
Gerrit The Courier du Bois.
Richard Yes, so anyway, so they migrated over there, and then we've been slowly leaking across the northern.
Gerrit That was your, it was his long-term game plan to get into the United States.
Richard Into Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Gerrit The United States didn't exist, but that was still your game plan.
Richard Was always our plan. How could we get to late in Utah?
Gerrit We could get from Quebec to late in Utah. We will have a success. So at any rate, when did they come? What year?
Richard So 1692 to Canada.
Gerrit Okay, so the French population of Canada is not very big at the time in the French, Canadian places, but it's still several thousand people. And suddenly all of the French territory, which stretched from New Orleans in the South all the way along the Mississippi River, all the way up into what is today, Montana, all the way up to Hudson's Bay, and Quebec in Canada, all of that was French territory. Well, at the end of the Seven Years War, the British take all of it. The land that is west of the Mississippi River, if you're envisioning a map here, the land west of the Mississippi River, the French have already kind of secretly given it to Spain, who was their ally in the war. And so at the end of 1763, Britain has had their greatest imperial victory of the history of the empire, right?
Gerrit You can't have had... There are just millions of acres of land that are added. All of the interior, essentially, of what is today the United States and Canada is all taken by Britain. And they fought multiple wars with France over control of those areas. Several wars like the Queen Anne's War, the War of Jenkins' Ear, which is probably yours and my favorite war between France and England and Spain.
Richard 100%. Jenkins' Ear, you said?
Gerrit Yes, Jenkins' Ear. The idea behind it is that an English sea captain refused to doff his colors of his boat in obsescence to the... Sorry.
Richard You're doing this with a flare.
Gerrit No one can see my hand waving, but my hand is waving. In obedience to demonstrate their recognition of Spanish superiority, the English ships were supposed to kind of doff their colors when they were in Spanish America.
Richard Tip of the cap, and they're on their way.
Gerrit Tip of the cap, yep. And they refused to, and there was a conflict, and supposedly the Spanish sea captain cut off the captain Jenkins' ear. And so that's what causes the war. The war of Jenkins' ear. And then I think the ear then becomes like a trophy piece. Really, we need to look up and find out what happens to that ear. At any rate, in 1763, so the British are riding high. They have driven France completely from North America. They've also secured many of their other colonies all over the world. And you might wonder then, how is it you go from having all of the American colonies relatively united from that war and their opposition to France to 10 years later bursting at the seams and being ready to go to war with their mother country in the American Revolution?
Gerrit And it is really this war over certainly economics, but a lot of it is based upon ideology. So the problem that England has after the French are driven from North America is, the French had many alliances with Native American groups. Rather than conquering in most places, the French simply established trading posts and worked together with Native Americans to trap Furs, and that was primarily what their empire was about. So what that meant was, if there was war that a certain American Indian group made on the English colonies, that they could always use the French as a kind of an intermediary. Hey, can you talk to your people here? They're attacking us. What can we do to negotiate? And suddenly that mediating factor is gone. The British find themselves with this huge swath of territory, and the only way that they could possibly maintain it is by tripling, quadrupling, quintupling in North America.
Gerrit The only hope they have is to put so many troops in the colonies that it kept the colonies safe from these potential Native American attacks. The problem is, then as now, militaries are incredibly expensive. So how are they going to pay for all of these troops that they are now occupying North America with? In Britain, they are kind of in a financial crisis. They're in a financial crisis because they have spent... The whole reason they won the war is they spent so much money on it. Well, now they're in all kinds of debt. And to add to that debt, you have this gigantic expense of paying for all of the troops that you're keeping in North America.
Richard Okay, we've got a cracks research staff here at the Standard of Truth Podcast.
Gerrit We have spared no expense. By that I mean we have Wi-Fi in my house.
Richard We have spared all of the expense.
Gerrit Well, our operating budget is zero.
Richard It's true. So just a quick research, we discovered what happened to Robert Jenkins' ears. So I can't believe that I forgot this because as you know, I subscribe and I'm a regular reader of Florida Historical Quarterly. So it was in an older quarterly publication, 1958. And so what happened is they cut off Robert Jenkins' ear.
Gerrit Right. Well, you better doff your colors.
Richard You better doff them. And they handed it to him. And then they said, you almost called this, they said, take this to your king and tell him, if he were here, I would do the same to him.
Gerrit Well, that is...
Richard We would call those fighting words.
Gerrit Yeah, we would call those fighting words, actually.
Richard So anyway, I apologize for not remembering the 1958 Florida historical quarterly.
Gerrit Yeah, I feel like at some point we're going to have to replace you with someone who's up on their Florida historical quarterly. And I mean, it's only a natural progression at this point.
Richard And properly pronounced quick.
Gerrit Yeah, quick. Very quickly. I think, again, that's probably the French Canadian coming through. It is. That's how we say it back home. Yeah, well, it's...
Richard And by back home, I mean unincorporated Canyon County.
Gerrit Yeah, so I think, yeah, your British sister-in-law needs to recognize that while we will eventually be talking about Americans fighting the British...
Richard Right now, she's loving it.
Gerrit Right now, we're talking about the French being crushed by the British.
Richard There's nothing that she loves more than this part.
Gerrit Yeah, this is the best part. At any rate, in order to raise funds to both pay for their war debt and to defend the colonies against, you know, really to prevent the colonists from fighting Native Americans because the colonists are constantly encroaching on Native American land, there are a series of tax that are passed. The first of these that kind of sets things in motion is the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act, I'm sure you've heard about it. It causes all kinds of... The idea behind it is every piece of official paper, as well as playing cards, and you had to pay a government stamp in order to have that. It was not a very onerous amount of money. It wasn't like, oh my goodness, I'm going to have to decide between, do I buy milk or do I put the stamp on my taxes?
Richard You're coming off as a real King George apologist here.
Gerrit Yeah. When I watch anything about him, I'm always like, I hope he wins this time. But it wasn't a big deal, because I think part of what we think about when we think about the American Revolution is we assume, and you hear politicians say this all the time, that the reason why the revolution took place was the English were just taxing us and taxing us and taxing us until we said, that's it. I can't take it anymore. I can't afford to pay. Which, by the way, is the reason why many revolutions happen all throughout the world. The French Revolution really is to a point where many in the French populace are not able to feed themselves with the amount of taxes that they're paying. And so if you're going to die anyway, well, might as well revolt.
Richard Well, the idea of much foreign policy sanctions is around creating a situation.
Gerrit Domestic disturbances.
Richard Where the people will take care of it themselves.
Gerrit And if the FBI is listening, end transmission. But there are people arresting Richard now for advocating regime change in other countries. Oh, you're right. Yeah. Well, they might. I'm sure that they could probably, they probably contract out.
Richard I'm sure that they do. I'll let you know.
Gerrit Yeah. Well, we'll find out soon. You won't get a phone call. The Stamp Act, there's all kinds of protests against it. The stamp collectors, they are burned in effigy, which if someone makes a pretty correct version of you and they hang it outside of your house on a pole and set it on fire and are chanting, we're going to do this to you.
Richard I'm going to call them sick.
Gerrit It's going to make you not want to collect the taxes. So they repeal the Stamp Act and then they try a different type of tax. It's important to understand back in the day in America, there's no such thing as an income tax. Income tax is very late. The idea that you're being taxed on the amount of money you make is that comes about in the progressive era in America in the early 20th century. There are all kinds of taxes, but the types of taxes are property taxes and they are import taxes, tariffs, essentially.
Richard No, you just hit something as my absolute favorite topic.
Gerrit I said the word tariff. Whenever you say the word tariff, Richard, his ears prick up, and he's like, oh, wow.
Richard Japanese rice tariffs is my favorite topic.
Gerrit Richard loves to talk about rice tariffs. It's his favorite economic disparity.
Richard It absolutely is. As a quick insight, Gerrit, what do you think? I think you actually know the answer. What do you think the average Japanese rice tariff is?
Gerrit I'm going to say 100% because I know you wanted me to be wrong.
Richard Yeah, I do. You guessed incorrectly. Currently, 778%. I know.
Gerrit In order to maintain Japanese rice production at home. So there are tariffs there. But unlike a tariff that's designed to try to foster manufacturing at home, these tariffs were designed for the purpose of raising funds. So look, tariffs have always existed. English colonists were paying for tariffs all throughout the time of their early colonial history. But they were paying for tariffs because they saw that as a way of England regulating the empire. We're going to charge you money for sugar that you import from a French island because that hurts the French. Because they can't sell their... The French are taking a beating in this episode, but we are talking about England or France in any war. But the idea behind those tariffs are not primarily to raise money, although they do raise money.
Gerrit The idea primarily is we want to help the English sugar islands by buying their sugar. So if the French try to sell it cheaper, well, we're going to undercut. The township duties were very different. They were clearly designed just to raise money. It was the government trying to... And so they put taxes on things like lead, tea, paint, glass, paper, other manufactured goods. Why specifically these goods? Well, because these were goods that were almost not at all made in the American colonies. So you can't be like, well, I guess I'll just go manufacture my own tea. Good luck growing tea in New Hampshire. I mean, you can ask Father Smith how growing ginseng goes in New England. I mean, the reality is that you're not going to be able to grow tea in any considerable amount in that climate, right?
Gerrit So they're specifically taxing things that have to be imported from the colonists. And this causes a huge reaction, just like the Stamp Act did, because the argument that the colonists are making is you don't have the authority to tax us. Why don't you have the authority? Because in England, you levy taxes through the House of Commons. Because you have representation in the parliament, that makes those taxes legitimate. The people vote on the person, and then that person levies the tax. So it's the consent of the government. Well, there are no parliamentary representatives in the American colonies in North America. Even though there are millions of colonists in North America. There's more people living in England than in North America at the time. It's not like it is today, where there's a disparity in population the other way around.
Gerrit But there is no representation from the parliament coming from the American colonies. Now, of course, it wasn't the same way it is today where it was broken up into congressional districts where this covers a certain geographical area. England is not yet to that point in their development of their parliamentary system. So there actually are in England entire giant cities that don't have a parliamentary representative for them in the commons. So they don't see the Americans not having one as big a deal. Like, well, Leeds doesn't have one. Why do you need one?
Richard So how, I mean, how much, I mean, even with some sort of parliament, the king still has a significant amount of power to, or not?
Gerrit I mean, his power has been kind of on the wane ever since the glorious revolution and the English Revolution, which would be, you know, two completely unrelated podcasts, would not involve anyone's ear, but still, you know, the monarchial power is on the wane. It's still powerful, but the king can't do anything without money. And the only way he can get money is if parliament raises that money. So they, these taxes are endorsed by the king. Yeah, we need to raise money. Why shouldn't the colonies at least pay for their own defense? We have troops there for them. Well, they should at least pay for them, and they can pay for them through these import duties. Now, of course, the problem with these import duties is they raise the prices of things. So, you know, paint has an import tax. So now, if I'm going to paint my house, paint's already very expensive, which is why many houses aren't painted because paint's so expensive.
Gerrit Well, now it's even more expensive because I have to pay this tax on the imported paint. I want glass in my windows. Well, now I have to pay even more for them. And so the colonists really cried out and said, this is taxation without representation. You are taking money from us and rather than us consenting to it. The idea of we have the ability, as long as we're represented, then we can say, you're right, it does make sense to raise money here. It's not that colonists didn't believe in taxes. They were all parts of colonies that funded themselves through taxes. But they all had representative governments where they elected people in the House of Burgesses in Virginia, those members of the House of Burgesses voted for taxes and then you had taxes. But what England was doing by raising these import taxes was creating taxes without any representation.
Gerrit That's the reason why you get that call during the time of the American Revolution of taxation without representation. You can't tax someone who doesn't have the ability to have a say in what you're doing. That was the argument. For England, they didn't really think it was that big of an argument. To get an idea of what's going on here, let's take an examination of tea. The townshend duties are going to place a three pence a pound tax on tea. This is going to be far more boring than any township thing you've ever...
Richard Yeah, this will put us right on the brink. Townshend duties...
Gerrit The townshend duties, yeah. Townshend duties is usually how it's pronounced. But it's spelled with shend, but usually they don't say it. But just so if someone's trying to look it up, I'm mispronouncing it. People are gonna look it up.
Richard For the price of 18th century tea, we only want you to come to one place here as a standard of truth.
Gerrit If you're trying to find out, if you're wondering, you know what's really been affecting my testimony lately? How much did tea cost?
Richard Yeah, the price of tea in, well, the colonies.
Gerrit Yeah, that's what you need to know. So anyway, just here's an economic breakdown of how this works. Almost all of the tea that is supplied to the American colonies is produced in India. Well, India is not exactly right next to the American colonies. So that means that for that tea to both be produced and then shipped and sold in the American colonies, there is a ton of transport involved. There's a bunch of middlemen. I sell it to this company who then sells it to this company. By the time it gets to my little shop in Montpelier, Vermont, which will eventually be an antique shop, there have been multiple increases to the price in order for everyone along the way to make money. So tea that is produced in India has to be sold for around 28 cents a pound in order for everyone involved to make, sorry, 28 pence a pound, in order for everyone involved to make a profit.
Gerrit So 28 pence. Well, England, in order to raise money, had already established a tax on tea of tea that's being imported to England. There was an 8 pence per pound import tax on tea. Okay, so the cost of tea, when it first hit the consumers, is roughly 36 pence a pound. Okay, so that's what you'd be paying as a consumer in England if you got it at the bargain rate prices, is that there's this 8 pence a pound import tax. The Township duties placed an addition, so that had been in place for a long time. So already, Americans were paying this tax. They were paying this 8 cents a pound tax because all tea imported to England or the English colonies was paying this 8 pence a pound tax.
Richard Can you help provide a frame of reference to kind of what a pence is? Also, by the way, 1791, our crack research staff just messaged me, 113 people living in Montpelier in 1791.
Gerrit Which is roughly the same as now.
Richard It's about the same as it is now. So a pence is...
Gerrit Probably Gina's ancestors.
Richard A pence is about...
Gerrit Well, there are 240 pence in each pound. So if you're trying to figure out how many pounds did your average person make...
Richard So you've got... It's pretty...
Gerrit This is way worse than townships, by the way.
Richard No, we're going to just sink into it.
Gerrit Maybe we're really trying to grow that English economist part of our fan base.
Richard So in the 1770s-ish, 1780s-ish, that kind of a general laborer would make around 20 pounds in a year. Somebody that's a little more educated would make around a more highly sought occupation, might make 40. A French chef would make 60. So let's put... You had to throw the French chef in there. I had to throw that in there. So let's say it's about 40 pounds in a year. That's about 9,600 pence per year in income. So when we're talking about an 8 pence increase, you have average tea consumption at around 3 cups per day. And so for the average person, they would consume roughly... What is that? About 7-ish pounds of tea per year. Now, you're going to have that be higher than that because you have family that is drinking the tea, so it's more than just the particular individual. So per individual, it's about half a percent increase in price for their average tea consumption for the year.
Gerrit Right. So per person. People are certainly spending money on tea, but the taxes are not so onerous that people are not drinking tea anymore. Right. So Americans are paying that tax because there's already been a law established for a long time that when tea is imported into England, there's that eight pence a pound tax on it that gets passed right on to the consumers. Right. So now tea costs more. But the towns and duties, they placed an additional tax on tea that was coming to the United States from England because the goal was to raise extra money from the colonies. So while the colonists hadn't protested the fact that there was a tax on tea at all, they very much protested the fact that there was a tax on tea that was coming to them personally because the tea obviously would already be a little bit more expensive because of transit travel and things like that.
Gerrit The additional amount of that tax is three more pence per pound. So the amount is actually stunningly small, given the total price that people are already paying. But what it means is your average American is paying around 39 pence a pound for tea because of the towns and duties. It's not an enormous amount. People are still able to do it, but it causes all kinds of boycotts. It causes all kinds of frustrations. And these frustrations, again, we're fast forwarding through most of history here, and most of the history we've given you has been either false or found on Google. And there's a protest outside of the Customs Office in Boston in 1770. The Customs House was where those import duties were collected.
Gerrit I mean, look, the English government wasn't just saying, like, don't worry, we're sure you're good for it. I guess you'll give it to us after you sell it. No, like all people who are purchasing things that have import taxes, you pay the tax to the government upfront. And then you pass that tax on to your consumer. And the government doesn't really care whether or not you end up selling it or not. I mean, they've already got their tax. So taxes are a real upfront problem for businesses. But they protest around the Boston Customs House because it's there that this tax is being collected, this unfair tax, this tax that is illegitimate. In fact, what becomes very, very vogue is to highlight the fact that even though you are a good British citizen, that you're drinking smuggled tea, tea that comes from the Dutch Islands where tea is being, again, I'm going to throw Dutch.
Gerrit If you can say French chef, I can say Dutch Islands. And they're smuggling in that tea, which is cheaper. Now, there's obviously middlemen and things like that, but because there are no taxes, that smuggled tea ends up being cheaper. So if I don't want, if I want to be ideologically pure, though also breaking the law as a British colonist, I can eschew the English tea because you know what? I'm not paying that three pence a pound tax that is an unfair tax that I was not represented for. Taxation without representation. So therefore, I will, I will, I'll get rid of it, right? Well, the problem arises when the English government responds to the Boston Massacre.
Gerrit The Boston Massacre, there are five colonists killed, there are six that are wounded. The English government has for the first time essentially fired on these, these people protesting these taxes. And the people in that, that, that fire the guns are put on trial in the colonies. And England very much wants to deescalate things at this point. So they actually repeal all of the taxes on lead and glass and paper and paint. But they don't want to repeal all the taxes. The reason why they don't want to repeal all the taxes is they don't want to send a message that these temper tantrum colonists in America have the ability to just protest and get what they want. No, we have a right. I mean, they keep saying, oh, you can't tax us without our representation. Well, if we get rid of all the taxes, then we're kind of admitting that they're right. So we have to leave at least any tax there as a symbol.
Gerrit And so they leave the tax on tea in place. It's still there after the Boston Massacre. Things are, you know, kind of, there's a small period of detente where things seem to be lessening of tensions there. And then something happens, which often happens in history. The actions of the government to try to do one thing actually had repercussions that you wouldn't be able to foresee. In 1773, England passes the Tea Act. Now you might be thinking, Oh no, didn't they learn from the Boston Massacre, the Tea Act? Oh my goodness, why would they try to raise taxes on tea again? They already have a tax on tea. The Tea Act actually does something completely different. The East India Company, which is this semi-private corporation, which has conquered most of India and that has its own armies and fights its own wars, but is essentially the original too big to fail corporation.
Gerrit It's in some serious financial straits in its business dealings, and so the parliament comes to its rescue. Much like the government came to help GM and Chrysler, because those are such massive corporations with their manufacturing jobs, some people said, we can't let GM fail as a company. We need domestic car production, so we have to support them with loans or whatever. That's what the arguments were. Well, the problem for the East India Company is while they have so much expenditure, they are in debt and they spend so much money to maintain their little empire there in India, the only real assets they have is a bunch of tea, all kinds of tea, get tea everywhere, right?
Gerrit Well, if you put all that tea on the market all at once, well, then it's going to really drive down the prices of tea. So how can we make it so that more people are willing to buy this tea to get money to the British East India Company? Well, that's what the Tea Act does. The Tea Act drops the 8 pence per pound import duty to England. So you're no longer paying that 8 pence a pound. It drops the price of tea considerably because you're no longer paying that import tax. But it maintains that 3 pence a pound import tax on tea going to America. Now, because a huge portion of the taxes, essentially, you know, three quarters of the taxes have been dropped from tea, and they're flooding the market with that tea. The prices of tea in America and in England plummets.
Gerrit You're flooding the market with it, first of all, and it's now no longer being taxed the way that it once was, all in a bid to try to raise revenue to save the company. So those things surrounding it all will make tea go from being around 39 pence a pound in America to being around 20 pence per pound in America. The price of tea is essentially cut in half. You would think that American colonists would be overjoyed with this, right? I remember when I was teaching this at the University of Colorado because it was a school where my students enjoyed the adult beverage. I would say, you know, what would happen if the government passed a law that cut the price of alcohol in America in half tomorrow, right? How many people would be out in the streets protesting it?
Gerrit But since we have a primarily Latter-day Saint audience or a very angry and confused non-Latter-day Saint audience, let me give another example of gas prices. Let's say that tomorrow there was an executive order given, not passed through Congress, but an executive order that slashed the cost of gasoline in the United States by half. You went from paying $4.50 a gallon to $2 a gallon. How many people would be angry about that? And before you answer, is your car's tank on empty? Find out, first of all, think about it, would you be angry? I'm sure there would be people who would say, well, this isn't right. You should be doing this through Congress and not through executive order. But that person would still be filling up their tank at $2 a gallon, right? The reality is what people usually want when you're talking about consumers is they just want it to be cheaper.
Gerrit But the American colonists saw the Tea Act as essentially an attempt to trick them into buying the now ridiculously cheap English tea. Before the Tea Act, an American colonist could just at least their shopkeeper would tell them, no, no, this is Dutch tea. You're not paying that tax. Don't worry, it's Dutch tea. It's, you know, 28 cents a pound, whatever. But now the colonies are being flooded with this incredibly cheap tea, but still has that illegitimate three pence per pound tax on it. So this is what leads to that Boston, what leads to the Boston Tea Party. What leads to it is Americans, you know, American patriots saying, if the tea on those ships is unloaded, if it makes its way into market, well then how will we ever track it? I mean, you know, tea looks like tea.
Gerrit In fact, to demonstrate this, I would often with my students hand out tea that was from what is today Indonesia, which was the Dutch East Indies at the time, and tea that's from India, which was where the English were getting their tea from, and ask my students if they can tell the difference. Even the most prolific tea drinkers are essentially guessing. They can't tell that because tea is tea is tea is tea. It's not like flavored tea or whatever. It's just regular black tea. So once that stuff's offloaded, you don't have the ability to trace it anymore. You don't know where it's going to be. So that's the reason why the protest culminates in going to the ships themselves and dumping this very expensive commodity, right, into the harbor. Because that was the only way you could prevent the tax, the illegitimate tax, from being paid. Once it's landed, once it passes through the customs house, the tax is already paid.
Gerrit And that means if you can't tell the difference, you might be paying an illegitimate tax. So you often hear people talking about the Boston Tea Party as, you know what, Americans got so fed up with these taxes. The taxes were just so high that they revolted. Instead, what's really going on is that the British government has taken actions to dramatically drop the actual cost of tea to every American. But it wasn't about the cost of tea. It was about the ideology beneath it. Even if it's an insignificant tax, even if it's a tax that is so small, even if my actual standard of living is now going to go up or I'm just going to drink more tea and be more wired on caffeine than I even was before, the reality is if I allow any illegitimate tax to exist, then what's to stop the government from coming back next year and saying, oh yeah, now the tax on tea is 7 pence?
Gerrit Actually, now it's 20. Actually, now it's an entire shilling. Now it's an entire pound. The argument from the colonists was any illegitimate tax is something that has to be resisted and they make this decision to resist it violently. Now, obviously not every colonist saw it this way. Some colonists were just very happy that they got some really cheap tea. But it's an examination. And the reason why we examined it is from the beginning, one of the things that foments the American Revolution is certainly there's economic considerations, but ideology plays this very powerful role. The idea of what it means to be a free person and what rights the government has and doesn't have. Latter-day Saint believers are going to claim the same heritage to revolutionary ideas that Missourians are who are going to be exterminating them.
Gerrit Both are going to view this event in the past as something that demonstrates true liberty against oppression. But for one of those groups, they're going to be in the minority, and for the other of those groups, they're going to be in the majority. So in the future, as we're going to talk about the settlement in Missouri and the violence that takes place there, one of the backgrounds that we have to always keep in mind is that these are all Americans, all reaching back to the same ideological arguments of what is allowed. What does the Boston Tea Party teach Americans? Well, and the American Revolution itself, that there are times that violent destruction of property is justified in order to secure wider aims. What does the idea of the Revolution supposedly teach all Americans?
Gerrit On the other hand, that individual rights and property rights are more important than anything else. These kind of are in conflict, and Latter-day Saints are going to find themselves in the midst of that conflict with a whole added layer, a whole added layer of religious conflict, where it's not just that I'm not happy you're living here. I'm not happy you're living here. You're voting and I don't want you to vote. And also, by the way, you happen to believe in the wrong kind of Jesus with your gold Bible delusions. So as we move forward into that topic, we wanted to kind of lay the groundwork of some of these ideological motivations of Americans from the time period.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

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Apparently, the problem is, you can't actually ever ask a historian to briefly cover anything.

GerritBanter

We're gonna start with Gilgamesh in Mesopotamia, 2700 BC.

RichardBanter

Yeah, I've met me. I'm familiar with my work.

RichardBanter

We have spared no expense. By that I mean we have Wi-Fi in my house.

GerritBanter

You're coming off as a real King George apologist here.

RichardBanter

So you can't be like, well, I guess I'll just go manufacture my own tea. Good luck growing tea in New Hampshire.

GerritBanter

If you're trying to find out, if you're wondering, you know what's really been affecting my testimony lately? How much did tea cost?

GerritBanter

But it wasn't about the cost of tea. It was about the ideology beneath it.

GerritInsight

Latter-day Saint believers are going to claim the same heritage to revolutionary ideas that Missourians are who are going to be exterminating them.

GerritInsight

You're voting and I don't want you to vote. And also, by the way, you happen to believe in the wrong kind of Jesus with your gold Bible delusions.

GerritInsight

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
The colonists revolted because British taxes had become crushing.
The Boston Tea Party protested a new tax that raised the price of tea.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

The Boston Tea Party wasn't about expensive tea; the Tea Act made tea cheaper. It was about refusing to accept any tax passed without representation.

Ideology can move people more than money: colonists dumped half-price tea rather than concede a three-pence tax.

The American Revolution taught both that destroying property could be justified for a higher cause and that individual and property rights were sacred, and those ideas would collide in Missouri.

The Saints and the Missourians who drove them out both claimed the same revolutionary heritage of liberty against oppression.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
CliffhangersThe Boston Tea Party as a Perry Mason, Murder She Wrote-style to-be-continued, which Gerrit says only an unpatriotic Richard finds funny (0:39, 1:00).
We're huge in... MontpelierMontpelier stats for Gina, the greater Montpelier area that's "all freeway, trees," and 113 residents in 1791, about the same as now (1:26, 1:43, 30:38).
The French LeDucsDriven from France around 1690, "I've met me," and slowly leaking across the border toward Layton, Utah (6:39, 7:07, 8:16).
Trigger warning for the British sister-in-lawRichard warns her before they speak poorly of the British; for now she's loving the French getting crushed (5:09, 16:40).
Our 17 Swiss listenersThey couldn't care less, but they might like a good Montpelier antique store (5:28, 5:39).
The crack research staffSpared no expense, meaning Wi-Fi at Gerrit's house; Richard "forgot" the 1958 Florida Historical Quarterly (14:34, 14:39, 15:57).
Japanese rice tariffsSay "tariff" and Richard's ears prick up: 778 percent (20:25, 20:58).
TownshipsThe Townshend duties and pence math push them toward and past the townships line (27:12, 27:55, 31:13).
Idaho"Back home" means unincorporated Canyon County (16:29).
If the FBI is listeningGerrit ends transmission when Richard talks sanctions and regime change (18:55).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
The War of Jenkins' Ear and the 1958 Florida Historical Quarterly account of the severed ear (9:55, 15:03).
Compare the Stamp Act, the Townshend duties and the Tea Act, and who each was meant to help (16:47, 37:52).
French Calvinists in the wars of religion and New France, and whether Richard's ancestors were among them (7:27).
How the Boston Tea Party's ideas show up in Missouri in the 1830s, which the series heads to next (47:24).
SOT Litner · S2E16.