Spilling the Tea: Reviving an Ancient Art for a New Generation by Hannah Everett

Author:Hannah Everett [Everett, Hannah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Degree Press
Published: 2018-06-10T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Tea in the United States

Young people created subcultures and allegiance to their generation. They began rejecting the old—which in Britain, this was tea.

—erika rappaport, british consumerism historian

The year was 1773. It was December, but the British colonists in America could hardly get into the Christmas spirit. Although happy to be living in America, a land of opportunity, the British crown was frankly pissing the colonists off. Yet another tax was being imposed on these free people. And a tax is enough to get mad about, but a tax without representation in the royal courts . . .

How. Dare. They.

The American colonists had enough. Their blood was boiling. It was time to be bolder than a cup of strong black tea.

On the night of December 16, 1773, a group of colonists disguised as American Indians stormed the Boston Harbor, where three ships full of British tea from India were waiting to be unloaded. And boy oh boy were the colonists going to help the British unload their tea—right into the Boston Harbor.

Earlier that year, the British had passed the Tea Act of 1773. This act not only taxed everyone’s beloved tea, but it required that American colonists buy British tea from India. Though cheaper than other tea (because of its lesser quality, might I add), the requirement to buy British tea limited colonists’ freedom of choice and imposed yet another tax without representation.

Contrary to popular belief, the Boston Tea Party was not a riot, according to Joanne Freeman from Yale University. “They wanted to make a point about tea to the British,” she notes. See, the colonists did not care about damaging the ships or harbor itself. That was not the point. The colonists were specifically mad about the tea tax and only sought to destroy the tea.

The Boston Tea Party will go down as one of the greatest tea parties ever. Many people see this as a symbol of American rebellion against not only the tax, but against British ideals. If the British own the cup of tea, what better way to reject their imperialistic ways than by throwing that cup of tea into the ocean that divides us?

* *

I knew this idea of Americans rejecting the British cup of tea would be worth exploring after I talked to a peer in one of my classes. We were doing an in-class activity where we had to write down all the things we liked or considered hobbies. Tea came up in several of my answers and this classmate noticed.

“You mention tea a lot. That’s kind of weird because like tea isn’t really a thing in the U.S.,” he said.

Interesting. I’d never thought about that. We talked a little bit about it and he said, “Maybe it’s because of the Boston Tea Party. Now we just hate tea because we resented everything British at that time.”

My fellow student brought up a good point, and I decided to further explore this theory. I sought out Erika Rappaport, a consumer-focused historian at University

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