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You've probably heard of the Boston Tea Party,
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something about a bunch of angry colonists
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dressed as Native Americans
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throwing chests of tea into the water.
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But the story is far more complicated,
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filled with imperial intrigue,
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corporate crisis,
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and the grassroots origins of the American Revolution.
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The first thing you need to know about tea in the 1700's
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is that it was really, really popular.
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In England, each man, woman, and child
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consumed almost 300 cups of this stuff every year.
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And, since the English colonized America,
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Americans were crazy about tea too.
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By the 1760's, they were drinking
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over a million pounds of tea every year.
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So, when Britain wanted to increase taxes
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on tea in America,
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people were not happy,
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mostly because they had no say in tax decisions
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Remember that famous phrase,
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"No taxation without representation"?
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The American colonists had long believed
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that they were not subject to taxes imposed by legislature
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in which they lacked representation.
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In fact, rather than paying the taxes,
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they simply dodged the tax collectors.
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Since the east coast of America is hundreds of miles long
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and British enforcement was lax,
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about 3/4 of the tea Americans were drinking
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was smuggled in, usually from Holland.
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But the British insisted that Parliament
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did have the authority to tax the colonists,
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especially after Britain went deeply into debt
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fighting the French in the Seven Years' War.
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To close the budget gap,
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London looked to Americans,
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and in 1767 imposed new taxes on a variety of imports,
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including the American's beloved tea.
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America's response: no thanks!
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They boycotted the importation of tea from Britain,
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and instead, brewed their own.
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After a new bunch of British customs commissioners
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cried to London for troops to help with tax enforcement,
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things got so heated
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that the Red Coats fired on a mob in Boston,
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killing several people,
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in what was soon called the Boston Massacre.
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