this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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Actually...
The reason they dumped tea is they were smugglers (mostly thugs paid by smugglers).
Brits had just started enforcing taxation, and requiring all shipments go thru England. It was more expensive for American smugglers, and the giant established trade companies would dominate the market.
So when the Brits seized a bunch of smuggled shipments, the smugglers destroyed as much of the legal tea as possible.
This resulted in colonists barely being able to afford it, but the smugglers could charge enough to remain in operation.
Colonists could have paid for taxed tea cheaper than they had been paying, it's just the "new money" in American didn't want to give up the market.
It was the wealthy fucking over the poor and it's embarrassing so many adults don't understand what really happened.
For bonus points, they dressed as natives in the hopes that any revenge would be against the innocent locals. Which is extra fucked up that people try to twist that into a political statement too.
Stop blindly believing what we learned in grade school public education
Source?
Just skimming the Wiki article on this and linked article on the Sons of Liberty, while they sound like shitbags, nothing mentions smuggling or trying to make money off of selling smuggled goods.
http://www.boston-tea-party.org/smuggling/organized-smuggling.html
Smuggling was rampant in the colonies, because England wanted to see them build up more than make a small amount of money that bled the colony dry. Once it was established, the corpos moved in.
Solid source. Thanks! Interesting read too.
This country has always been the rich fighting the rich to see who can fuck over the poor harder.