East Indian Company Dbq

In the early 1600’s Queen Elizabeth granted the East Indian Company (EIC) its first charter. The EIC was the company that was to handle all the trading of goods in the East Indies (Carp, 7-8). The Company did so well that it helped with Europe’s economy, and “helped to support the government through payment of customs duties” (Carp, 8). Anyone who had any part to do with the EIC would accumulate a great amount of wealth. The EIC acquired most of its wealth through the trading of, “spices, silk, cotton, opium, gold, silver, and tea across enormous distances, paying out generous dividends to its shareholders” (Carp, 8). This was the reason for mostly everyone who had a part in the EIC would accumulate a great amount of wealth. Everything was

going well for the EIC until it took a turn for the worst in the fall of 1769 when there was a draught in Bengal (Carp, 11). The drought not only dried up their paddy but it also dried up a big amount of their income through taxes since none of the citizens had money.
In the 1700’s, “tea became the drink of respectable British and colonial households everywhere” (Carp, 55).

Families held teatime as a peaceful household occasion; sometimes small number of guest would be invited. Tea became a ritual of etiquette behaviors for all family members. To partake in teatime meant that your family had great wealth and virtue (Carp, 56). While the middle class in America, “of tradesmen, professionals, and landowners couldn’t resist the chance to partake in the elite pastime” (Carp 56). The colonist wanted to be just like their fellow friends and family in Britain. They wanted to have all the same luxuries as them including teatime. While they might now have taken it as serious as them, with the tea ceremonies they still wanted to be able to have the opportunity to enjoy drinking tea. Men and women both drink plenty amounts of tea. Men found it arousing that, “woman’s pure, white hands—unsullied by dirt or sweat and busy pouring tea” (Carp, 62). The men found this so arousing since they were the ones doing the hard manual work, and when they saw the women pouring tea it meant for an ends day of hard work and also seeing them pour tea caused them

pleasure.
The Townshend’s Revenue Act that was passed in the late 1767 required that, “American tea drinkers pay a new threepenny-per-pound tax” (Carp, 71). Richard Clark “wrote to his British wholesaler, the retail price of imported Company tea was sure to rise—and that helped no one, expect for smugglers seeking to undercut EIC prices” (Carp, 71). This turned out to be very true; many illegal tea traders started making deals with the Dutch so they could avoid the new taxes (Carp, 71). It was very hard to stop the illegal trading of tea since so much of it was going on. Thomas Hutchinson complained that, “customs officials hadn’t successfully seized a single chest” of tea (Carp, 72). One colonist observed that in the northern colonies the estimated “illegal trade was worth about £160,000 a year” (Carp, 73). Since this number was so high it did help lower the number of imports made during the boycott. Many radicals like the sons of liberty tried to start protest arguing that, “Parliament had no right to tax a high-demand good like tea just to raise revenue from the colonists” (Carp 72). Thomas Hutchinson guessed in August 1771 “that around 83 percent of the tea Bostonians drank was smuggled, and estimated that the percentage in New York and Philadelphia was even high at 90 percent” (Carp, 77).
The EIC problems were caused because of the Bengali Famine and when their stock started to drop they started loosing money.

The EIC had massive amounts of tea and the colonist in America loved tea. So the EIC directors began to lobbyist their ideas on how they could solve their problem. The thinking of the British Government and the EIC directors were to lower taxes on tea. Since the colonist loved drinking tea and they were buying from illegal sellers they figured this way they could make more money buy lowering their prices to make them lower than the illegal sellers. Even though the Tea Act lowered the price of tea, many people felt like the Tea Act was just a “seductive trick designed to get Americans to accept an offensive law” (Carp, 80). The Tea Act made many people upset and it got a lot of people involved in

politics.
A group of Bostonians who called themselves the Sons of Liberty were very upset over the Tea Act and wanted the town not to buy any tea or any thing of British goods. This upset the women because teatime was their life. This was their social time where they could unwind from the day and then gossip. Sarah Hews had such a hard time with giving up tea, that when her husband came home from participating in the Boston Tea Party, she said, “Well George, did you bring me home a lot of it?” (Carp, 163). It was just as hard as the Men as it was for Women because they gave up what they did at the pub in their free time. Working class men and youth Bostonians were the ones who were dumping the tea. Working class men being the ones who worked on the boats and knew where the tea was being stored. They also were the ones who knew how to work the lifts to be able to lift the heavy chests of tea over the sides of the boats. The youths were involved because they were young and were also able to lift heavy things, and then they were the ones who would run and let other citizens know what was going on and keep everyone informed.
Work Cited
Carp, Benjamin L. Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party & the Making of America. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2010. Print.