In addition to objecting to taxation without representation, Bostonians protested the Tea Act of 1773 in part because it forced them to pay a tax on top of the monopoly prices set by the East India Company. They also opposed supporting the sons of the royally appointed governor who would benefit from the tax revenue. Benjamin Carp describes the Boston Tea Party, the local actions of a determined group of New Englanders, in the context of the global story of British interests in India, North America and the Caribbean.
About the Speaker
Benjamin Carp is an associate professor of history at Brooklyn College. He is the author of Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (2010), which won the triennial Society of the Cincinnati Cox Book Prize in 2013, and Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution (2007). With Richard D. Brown, he co-edited Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791: Documents and Essays, 3rd ed. (2014).