Today is the 240th anniversary of the act of civil disobedience against taxation, corporatism, and colonialism known as the Boston Tea Party. The economics of the situation that precipitated the event were quite complex, however, and about more than a simple tax increase on tea. As noted here by Edmond Bradley, a monopoly over the tea trade had been granted to favored corporate interests by the British Crown, which made the price of tea artificially high to begin with. Charles Adams explains how a British corporate welfare scheme to undercut smuggled Dutch tea is what led to the Tea Party:
The Boston Tea Party was a turning point in colonial reaction to British rule. By 1773 the tax issue was becoming obscure. Both parties were moving toward war.
Recently American postage stamps have depicted the Boston Tea Party as a glorious act of defying British colonialism. Most people believe it was a protest against British taxes on tea, but this is not true. American tea merchants had been boycotting British tea for five years. Smuggled Dutch tea was used throughout the colonies. In response, the British government decided to remove the duties on East Indies tea when it arrived in Britain so it could be sold in America at a price cheaper than smuggled Dutch tea. In addition, a monopoly on this cheap tea was given to loyal British merchants in the colonies. American tea smugglers would be put out of business. The Crown’s plan was based on the assumption that American consumers would not boycott low-priced English tea, but would purchase it rather than the higher-priced, smuggled Dutch product. The implication of this to American merchants was frightening. If a monopoly could be granted for tea, it could be granted for other products as well. Economic sanctions of this kind could destroy American merchants. In protest, Bostonian merchants disguised themselves as Indians, boarded merchant ships loaded with tea, and threw the tea into the harbor.
Lew Rockwell explains how, fundamentally, the Boston Tea Party was about free trade and against taxes and special privileges:
The Declaration of Independence accuses the King of “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world” and “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent”-with the second directly following the first. It is impossible to understand the meaning of this without understanding that the Boston Tea Party was a protest against the use of trade by the state to benefit some at the expense of others. Our agenda today ought to be exactly that of the Sons of Liberty in Boston: the right to economic enterprise should be unimpeded by taxes or special privileges. This is all that true free traders, in the tradition of the American revolutionaries, have ever demanded.
