The British East India Company and the Origins of the American Revolution

[Music] thank you good evening everyone it's been a while thank you for joining us and welcome to Anderson house my name is Andrew Allen and I'm the historical programs manager for the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati the American Revolution Institute promotes knowledge and appreciation for the achievement of American independence fulfilling the aim of the continental army officers and their French counterparts who founded the Society of the Cincinnati in 1783 to perpetuate the memory and Legacy of the American Revolution in addition to tonight's lecture the American Revolution Institute promotes nor fulfills my mission excuse me by supporting Advanced study developing exhibitions and other historical programs and tours advocating historic preservation and providing resources to classrooms Nationwide that benefit teachers students and Scholars alike since 1938 the Society of the Cincinnati has done all of this work from right here at its headquarters Anderson house a National Historic Landmark that was completed in 1905 as the winter residents of Lars and Isabel Anderson here in Washington D.C tonight's program a lecture that commemorates the 250th anniversary of the British parliament's passage of the Tea Act in 1773 and is also made possible in part by a generous gift from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati features Dr James Vaughn discussing the developments in Britain British North America and South Asia that led to the passage of the Tea Act and why a relatively mundane piece of parliamentary legislation renewed the Imperial crisis and led to the outbreak of the American Revolution James Vaughn is an instructional instructional professor in the college and affiliate faculty in the department of history at the University of Chicago whose research focuses on the British Empire and the Atlantic World during the 18th century he received his PhD in history from the University of Chicago in 2009 and is previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin Yale University and Ohio University he is the author of the politics of Empire at the Ascension of kid George III the East India Company and the crisis and transformation of Britain's Imperial State published by the Yale University press in 2019 which provides new interpretations of the origins of British rule in India and of the global transformation of the British Empire during the third quarter of the 18th century as well as the co-editor of envisioning Empire the new British world from 1763 to 1773 an anthology that examines the development of the British Empire between the Seven Years War and the American Revolution currently he is working on a book on the American Revolution in the origins of liberal democracy in the global context now before I turn things over to Dr Vaughn the usual housekeeping items are in order for our virtual attendees joining us on Zoom this evening following tonight's lecture there will be a question and answer session so please feel free to submit your questions for Dr Vaughn at any point during the presentation and you can do that by using the Q a function founded at the bottom of the screen and we will do our best to incorporate them with our live audience questions as always should you have any technical related questions or comments those can be submitted using the chat function and one of our staff members will be monitoring that and will do their best to assist you so now without further delay please join me in welcoming to Anderson house Dr James Vaughn thank you um I'd like to begin to by thanking Andrew out in particular and the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati in general for inviting me to speak here tonight it's a great honor and I'd also like to thank you for being here both in person and on Zoom I know that it's a lovely spring evening out and you have better things to do than to listen to me lecturer so I appreciate you showing up um I'm going to talk for the next hour on the topic of on T taxes and world history the British East Indian company and the origins of the American Revolution um I'm going to focus on the Tea Act but really um what's going to be the thrust of the talk is the transformation events leading up to the passage of the Tea Act uh we sort of all know that the Tea Act triggers a renewal of the Imperial crisis in anglo-american Affairs eventually leading to a total breakdown of Imperial Authority in colonial British North America and the outbreak of the American Revolution um and in that sense we tend to naturalize the Tea Act um in the sense that because we know the processes it's set and trained but if we just take it in its own moment it actually is a pretty mundane banal piece of parliamentary legislation um just to set the scene about a little over 250 years ago the British Parliament passed and King George III gave his Ascent to an act which has come known to us as the Tea Act and it was dealing with a practical problem in British Imperial Affairs the gentleman pictured here uh on the left Lord North was the Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1782 and essentially he faced a huge practical problem his government which was in power when the Tea Act was passed in May 1773 faced a huge problem which was a crisis in the British seasoning company's Affairs the British East India Company was not simply Britain's leading Corporation it was the world's leading Corporation and by this point in 1773 it had become responsible uh for maintaining an empire in northeastern India that included 20 million uh largely peasant Muslim and Hindu bengalis it had a vast Empire in northeastern India what's more it was a key player in the British public debt and the British State meaning it wasn't simply a private Corporation it was a major lender to government debt and therefore it was a major public creditor and it also played one of the most important roles on the London Stock Market so it was deeply embedded in both the public fiscal and the Private Financial life of the nation and by the early 1770s the British East Indian company had gone bankrupt and it was overwhelmed with tea sitting in its storehouses in London uh traditionally it had to sell that tea at auction to tea dealers that would then go on and and Export that tea to Europe to the Americas to elsewhere but because of the eastending companies bankruptcy or looming bankruptcy and because of the threat that posed not just to the biggest multinational corporation in the world but to the British Empire in Bengal to British Public Credit and to British private Finance it was necessary for the government to step in and find some way to prevent the company from failing the solution that the ministry of Lord North comes to is essentially to allow the company to directly export its tea from China to North America meaning the T that exists in London in warehouses will no longer be sold to tea dealers and Tea Merchants but rather the British seasoning company will be able to directly export itself its T2 Colonial North America which it hadn't been allowed to do before furthermore the government decides to remove the export Duty that is the duty that British East Indian company ships would have to pay when they depart from Britain they decide to remove that Duty although on the other end once those ships crossed the Atlantic they will in colonial American ports have to pay the duty on T the Townsend Duty on T which is the sole remaining Duty still in place from the Townsend Acts it's not clear why such legislation would trigger a profound crisis in anglo-american Affairs indeed the final crisis would render the British Atlantic World asunder in the American Revolution um now obviously first there's the matter of tea but as I've already raised the issue that is connected to the matter of taxes because not only is the British East Indian company being given uh duty free export from Britain to Colonial North America but T that ships to Colonial North America will have to pay the Townsend Duty on T which is the one remaining Duty as I've already mentioned that was put in place by the Townsend acts in 1767 and 1768. this is a form of Taxation raised by Parliament that the colonial American resistance movement claims Parliament doesn't have the right to raise so the payment of the Townsend Duty in colonial British North America raises this vexed question of Taxation does a parliament that doesn't represent in any actual sense the colonists in British North America have the right to tax them either directly or indirectly so T raises the issue of taxes but taxes is not really I would argue the issue of fundamental importance it is of course a necessary but not sufficient condition why because by the early 1770s the colonial population of British North America has experienced the most dynamic social and economic development in world history prior to the Industrial Revolution the colonists that is the free colonists the colonists beyond the slave plantations in the early 1770s have a per capita income higher than Great Britain they have greater purchasing power than the average person in Great Britain which is had been the wealthiest country in the world for much of the 18th century and they're essentially very lightly taxed very prosperous they have high degrees of political participation political inclusion why is it that some relatively minor taxes the Townsend Duty on T or indeed all of the Townsend duties would raise these issues why is it that basically an extremely lightly taxed lightly regulated extremely prosperous politically enfranchised Colonial settler population would decide to take up arms against some relatively light duties on Imports into the colonies and ultimately against one single duty this Duty on T it all makes sense to us because we know how it played out but I want to sort of consider it from a different angle which is how strange it seems that such well uh uh well-off socially and economically such prosperous such lightly taxed such lightly regulated such politically free settlers would rise up now I'm not going to try and be a kind of revisionist historian that says there's no there there I do think there were incredible vital issues at stake but I think sometimes if we merely focus on Taxation and don't strongly link it to the issue of representation and we don't have a good enough understanding of what those two things mean when we make them taxation representation we lose a sense of why the colonists thought this was a vital issue they thought literally as they said time and time again it was an issue of Freedom versus slavery that is the language that John Dickinson uses he was a moderate leader of the colonial American resistance movement that is the language that Thomas Jefferson uses he was a radical leader of the colonial American resistance movement why does every wing of the colonial American resistance movement think that standing up against a relatively light duty on T and against the East India Company being able to directly import T to Colonial North America is a matter of Freedom versus slavery it can seem a bit exaggerated to us in those tones but I think if we put it in its proper 18th century context and we understand that's what what's meant by freedom is really a new form of civil society that developed first in the British Atlantic world and that what's meant by slavery is essentially the undoing of that new form of Civil Society then we'll have a better understanding of what's at stake in this question of tea and taxes okay so that is the introduction let me now go back a long way let's go back to the first Decades of the 18th century um this is a picture of London uh as we approach the mid-18th century it is already by far the largest city in Europe it's almost double the size of Paris approaching 1 million inhabitants it's the third largest city in the world after um Tokyo and Beijing but this London pictured here and the Thames and all of its ships and its imports and exports is simply the epicenter of a really new development in world history what do I mean by that a new development in world history well for about a thousand years for a millennia Western Europe had been ensconced in feudalism that is the European Middle Ages were organized around feudalism and at the heart of the feudal system was unfree labor that is serfdom a kind of bonded labor and a subsistence a subsistence economy organized around subsistence agriculture and so the Western Europe that understood itself as Christendom or Latin Christendom for a thousand years in the Middle Ages had a very distinct form of Social and economic economic organization that we can roughly call feudalism due to a number of changes that I don't have time to go into but by the early 16th century the whole European medieval feudal system had been sent into a profound crisis um to make a long story very very short there is something historians refer to as the general crisis of the 14th and 15th century where you get a great deal of harvest failures the Black Death the Bubonic plague sweeps throughout Europe taking out somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of the population you have the collapse of serfdom you have the collapse of unfree labor and peasants broadly get their freedom Across the Western half of Europe that is if you look of your if you look at Europe west of the Elba River by and large the direct producers The Peasants largely get their freedom then in the late 15th century you get the two great phenomenon of the age of Discovery and exploration the Portuguese round the southern tip of Africa the Cape of Good Hope and create a direct Maritime passage between Europe and Asia much more strongly linking the old world for Europeans bringing Asia Africa and Europe into much more regular commercial and Maritime contacts and then a few years later of course even more famously Christopher Columbus crosses the Atlantic and leads to the European discovery of the Americas which brings into being a whole new series of processes and events and exchanges that form what we now call the Atlantic world and so these developments the direct Maritime passage between Europe and Asia and the discovery of the Americas incredibly increases phenomenon that had already been developing in Western Europe meaning by the 15th century serfdom had collapsed in Western Europe and unfree laborers have become free laborers they become free peasants or free laborers in the towns and cities and you began to see a slow development of a more commercial economy with the discovery of the direct Maritime passage to Asia and the Americas you have a radical increase in commercialization you have a radical increase in people working less and less in subsistence Agriculture and more and more commercial agriculture you have a radical increase of the movement of free laborers away from the countryside into towns Market Villages manufacturing centers cities where they take up jobs as wage laborers you have the development of a complex division of labor this gives rise increasingly to new forms a manufacturing cooperation all of which will lead to the Industrial Revolution by the later 18th century but essentially just to wrap all of that up if you take the collapse of serfdom the collapse of feudalism the discovery of the direct Maritime passage between Europe and Asia the discovery of the Americas the breakup of Christendom with the Protestant Reformation all of these developments essentially witnessed the collapse of a feudal society and the rise of a commercial Society and at the core of commercial Society is the idea of course there are still great inequalities of wealth there are still incredible hierarchies there are still incredible caste and social stratification but now the direct producers in Western Europe the common laborers have become free they can increasingly set the course of their own existence they may still be a quite poor peasant farmer but they can decide if I want to work harder and smarter and make enough of a surplus it won't go to a feudal Lord anymore it will remain to me and I can sell it for goods and equipment and I can reinvest back in my plot of land and improve or I can go off into the town and get a job in growing manufacturing industry in glassware in metalware in the the Woolen cloth uh uh manufacturer in the new textiles the mixture of wool was silk and cotton I mean I could go on endlessly but basically we can see slowly across the 1500s the 1600s into the 1700s the Ripple effects of common everyday working people just being able increasingly to set the course of their own life by deciding how they want to spend their labor what they want to spend their day doing what they want to devote their Surplus to what they want to exchange it for who they want to associate with and this eventually by the 18th century in Western Europe gives rise to Civil Society what I simply mean by Civil Society is effectively uh that non-state world where people go out in public and they they participate in public life collectively with other people but they do so consensually the state is based on coercion you have to do this you can't do this right private life family life is within the domestic household a whole new public life comes into being in Western Europe by the early 18th century where people freely associate and exchange and work and produce goods and services in the big cities the small cities the middling sized towns even in the Villages when commercial Farmers come into the exchanges to trade their foodstuffs and raw materials there's increasing social interaction social relations social um Congress intercourse between people people are creating new Association Civic associations people are meeting at coffee houses more pamphlets and newspapers are being produced and debated and discussed this whole world of civil society is coming into being and it's coming to being nowhere more thoroughly than in the British Isles particularly in England and London is at the epicenter of it it's driving London's incredible growth in the 18th century now um effectively uh Britain overseas what could be called an Empire of Liberty what do I mean by that Empire of Liberty I don't mean that there is an incredible violence and oppression in their empire by the early 18th century British men and women understand themselves to have an Empire Liberty overseas because they believe it to be distinct from the empires of old the empires of Conquest the Babylonian Empire the Persian Empire the Roman Empire or more contemporaneously the Spanish Empire where essentially you send out Legions to conquer well-settled agricultural civilizations and you rule over them directly so the view of most British men and women is that the Empire they've created overseas by the early Decades of the 18th century is not an Empire of Conquest when you send out vast armies to conquer foreign populations rule over them like the Persians did or the Romans did or the Spanish did but rather it's an Empire devoted to two things Commerce that is Seabourn trade with the peoples of the world and of course you will use coercion the Royal Navy to maintain your ships and your goods and it is also an Empire of colonial settlement meaning you will either take land that is not occupied or you will expropriate you will dispossess the indigenous people and send your own settlers there to create governments to create new societies new governments with Plantation agriculture that produces things staple products not available back in Britain so the view here is not I don't mean to suggest just simply to endorse their view they have an Empire of Liberty but I'm trying to get at the rational kernel of it they do not think they've conquered other peoples in the sense of course they're dispossessing indigenous peoples that's how they're acquiring land in North America of course Britain comes the leader of the West African slave trade that involves incredible coercion but in their self-understanding they unlike ancient Persia unlike ancient Rome unlike Spain have not gone out with armies conquered large civilizations and subjected them to their rule rather they're basically using coercion either to trade with other societies or to set up colonial Plantation settlements with their own immigrants okay and that's why they've come to understand themselves to have an Empire of Liberty and essentially by the middle of the 18th century by the 1750s there are two Arenas in that Empire of Liberty the minor arena is the British Asian world the British Asian world is dominated by the British East India Company a monopoly joint stock Mercantile Corporation with the board of directors and shareholders headquartered in leadenhall street in London that Plies a trade around the southern tip of Africa around the Cape of Good Hope all over the Asian world to many different Asian ports and many different Asian Waters and by the mid-18th century the British East India company has become the biggest multinational corporation in the world and one of the most important elements in the British public debt and in the London Stock Market and the British East India Company does not go out to Asia and conquer it tried to in the late 17th century it tried to have an argument with the navaba Bengal and it failed spectacularly why because in South Asia in India its main area of operation there's a very powerful polity the Mogul Empire that can easily defeat any European that tries to interfere in the Affairs of the Mughal Empire and as a result the British Eastern company largely focuses on Seabourn trade with Coastal settlements that they establish this is a picture of uh Madras or what is today known as Chennai um on the uh the eastern coast of India the Southeastern coast of India and essentially that's a picture of the fort Fort St George that the British seasoning company erects within it is its Mercantile Factory meaning it's Clarks it's Merchants responsible for buying goods from Indian producers Weavers Spinners manufacturers Etc and then bringing them into the town and waiting for these various ships to arrive from Europe and loading them up and going back so by and large British Imperial activity in the Asian world in the mid-18th century is a monopoly joint stock Corporation conducting a Seabourn Maritime trade along Coastal Asia at places like Madras pictured here the other and by far the major arena of British Imperial activity by the mid-18th century um is the British Atlantic world okay the British Atlantic world was forged by the mixture of indigenous societies West Africans who are brought over through uh coerced immigration transatlantic slavery and Western European immigrants forging a new Atlantic World throughout the 16th 17th 18th century and Great Britain has become the leading player in that World by the mid 18th century um pictured here I'm sorry if you can't see the I'm sorry if you can't see the dot but um this is obviously Eastern Seaboard Colonial North America the dark green is highly settled areas with very well developed commercial agriculture whether those are Family Farms or slave plantations or or larger Estates um towns and cities you have Savannah you have Charleston you have uh obviously places like Philadelphia Boston New York and Newport um etc etc but not those places you also have a system of towns internally connecting them to the Western frontier and then obviously you see how they're pushing out Westward right the very light green is the farthest push West now I want to stress something about British Atlantic world that is extremely important which is to say because there's no direct Conquest of a pre-existing civilization such as the Spanish conquered Aztec Mexico or Inca Peru um because rather you're either going where there isn't much indigenous settlement or you're expropriating lands from indigenous people you essentially have no pre-existing social and economic background that you're building on top of colonial American societies are literally the most modern forms of commercial Society implanted overnight meaning while commercial Society has arisen in Western Europe it is only risen against the Deep background Thousand-Year background of feudal society slowly going into Decline and Decay so in Western Europe there are great religious establishments that dominate countries and want to persecute religious minorities there are great aristocracies and nobilities that demand their particular privileges and their cast and hereditary rights there are great monarchies that demand their absolute power and not having to deal with checks and balances on their Authority commercial Society emerges against that background whereas in colonial British North America commercial Society is implanted beyond the slave plantations from the very beginning those family Farmers that dot the landscape of much of colonial British North America are free they are in no way bondsmen they are no way surfs they are able even though they're mostly producing for the subsistence of their families they're able to work harder and smarter to calculate how to buy Goods on the market and so by the mid-18th century even the back country of the West pictured here is deeply ensconced in global commercial trading networks you can go to the back country of Virginia and there are roads that are going to take you right into Coastal Virginia which are again going to be protected by the Royal Navy that is access to the world seas and there are Commodities flowing in and out so there are porcelains and pottery coming from Asia there are manufactured goods coming from Great Britain um there's tea and coffee we can see even amongst quite humble family Farmers across the 13 colonies by the mid-18th century a whole series of goods that are produced in Britain or Europe and even in some cases Beyond in Asia and elsewhere so these farmers are free laborers they're free Farmers that can mostly set the course of their own life and they're ensconced in local trading networks they go into town to get certain things they need and come back home those local trading networks are ensconced and Regional networks connecting them to the coasts the well-settled eastern coast and those Eastern coasts are through the Royal Navy and the British state connected to Global networks of trade with Europe and trade with Asia so essentially you have the most purely developing commercial Society in colonial British North America beyond the slave plantations you don't have any existing feudal forms you do not have the great religious establishments the huge Cathedrals and churches that dauntingly uh Shadow the landscape throughout Western Europe you don't have the vast standing armies and garrisons and fortifications that exist all throughout Western in Europe you don't have the all-powerful centralized monarchs with tax collectors and surveyors and Anton dance that exist in Western Europe the whole apparatus of the old world I.E Western Europe doesn't really exist to any degree in the new world but what it does develop in the new world is this civil society that is emerging against the West against a deep medieval background but it's emerging in North America not against any medieval background so it has the most thorough going development and although slavery is a vital and important part of the colonial American economy in the 17th century with tobacco production and slavery again becomes a vital part of the United States economy in the early 19th century with cotton textile production if you simply look at the 18th century 1700 to the American Revolution with the real dynamism is is in the free laboring parts of colonial British North America you have the greatest demographic expansion in the history of the world prior to the Industrial Revolution in colonial British North America in 1700 the free population of colonial British North America was less than 200 000 people on the eve of the Revolution it's 2.5 million people it's 2.5 million people who have a higher per capita income than Britain which had been the richest country in the world in the 18th century that is an incredibly Dynamic development that hasn't been seen before um if any of you are interested in tracing this just read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography Benjamin Franklin is an exceptional figure in many ways he's obviously a genius I'm not denying that Tim but if you read his autobiography and you look at the kind of life he lives initially in Boston and then going to Philadelphia and all of that he is clearly taking advantage of opportunities that are being made by this unprecedented growth of Civil Society of a civil associational world of people freely exchanging goods and services freely meaning to form Civic associations to freely consent and do things together collectively that they can't do on their own forming reading clubs meeting at pubs meeting at uh coffee houses debating discussing producing newspapers producing pamphlets Benjamin Franklin comes out of that whole world that is driven by the development of free labor and Commercial society and ultimately Civil Society in colonial British North America he he takes advantages of it he takes he exploits opportunities and he realizes its potentials better than anyone else he is aware of two things by the mid-18th century one in his observations concerning the increase of mankind he's aware of how rapidly the free laboring population is expanding Colonial British North America that it will sometime in the 19th century overtake Britain itself and two he's also aware that that will require a kind of political re-adjudication of the British Empire right like how do we make this Empire work given its real seed of dynamism is now across the Atlantic okay he's a great example of precisely these developments and phenomenon now I don't want to belabor this point too much but what I want to kind of try and just get across is a sense in which there are levels of civil freedom and by civil freedom I don't just mean individual rights sometimes we're too focused on individualism there are a lot of individual rights in the colonies but there are a whole series of social Collective rights because you don't need to have coercion to have the state to have a collective activity forming a business Enterprise forming a church forming a voluntary Association forming a firefighting service forming a street lighting service forming a reading club forming a debating Society all these kinds of things Franklin did are Collective life where people freely consent to come together and organize their own lives all right so by the mid-18th century because of unintentional reasons to do with the availability of land not only does the free population of colonial British North America have the greatest enfranchisement in the world right across all 13 colonies more than 50 percent of adult males meet the property qualifications to vote but it's not just the political right to exercise a vote I also want to emphasize this freedom of daily life this Freedom where you can meet other people and you can work together to achieve ends that you can't achieve on your own right to form churches to form civil associations to form firefighting groups to form reading clubs what have you and that whole world is a new experience of Freedom right so there's the traditional story which I completely agree with that you have to understand that the enfranchisement of colonial adult males is much greater than anywhere else in the world because of accidental reasons to do with land availability but beyond that once you realize this is the most dynamic Free Labor commercial Society developing in the world you can also see there's other forms of freedom in in daily life from people exchanging goods and services interacting debating discussing cooperating determining the course of their own lives and coming together to determine the course of their lives together there is is an experience in colonial North America not just of self-government in the sense of exercising a vote but self-government as in figuring out how you want to live your life and setting the course of your own existence and that's made possible by this whole Collective development of Free Labor commercial society and Civil Society um now that brings us to the mid-18th century that's the backdrop story now I'm going to tell a very rapid story I know that everybody who comes to events of the American Revolution Institute probably has a lot of familiarity with the coming of the American Revolution so forgive me for going over some ground that's probably quite familiar to you but um this will be the second half of the talk um essentially in the 1750s in 1754 we have the beginning of massive Global Warfare between Great Britain or Whig Britain and Burbon France the France the France of the monarchy of Louis the 15th um of course this war breaks out a couple of years earlier it breaks out between the British and French East Indy company in 1754 1755 in Asian Waters and Asian lands principally around the Indian subcontinent and then of course it breaks out in 1754 in the Ohio River Valley with the beginning of the French and Indian War and then two years later it becomes official in Europe with the Seven Years War and the Seven Years War is a massive global war between Britain and France what I want to stress about this war right now is it's incredible incredible scope and scale if you're sitting in London or you're sitting in Versailles you're not like another European ruler right the Seven Years War involves Russia it involves Sweden it involves Spain it involves uh um um uh Austria involves many European countries but if you're in London and Versailles you look at the world not simply as a European chessboard but a global chessboard because not only do you have European allies the British crown has Prussia and Portugal um the French Crown has Spain Austria Russia but both of these crowns have non-european allies they have Native American indigenous allies in the Americas and they have South Asian allies on the Indian subcontinent and they're fighting This Global struggle against one another and in order to wage it they have to send men and material around the globe they have to have supply lines that are unprecedented of the history of the world right they both send their navies around the southern tip of Africa the Cape of Good Hope to fight in Asian Waters they both send armies across the Atlantic to fight in the Americas right to fight in New France and to fight in colonial British North America not simply in Europe where of course they have extensive supply lines and logistical difficulties they face all of this war requires immense expenditure which means that you have to raise taxes on your population but if you raise taxes on your population you're going to get resistance and revolts which indeed Britain does have tax riots during the war and France has peasant uprisings during the war so you've got to raise deferred taxes I.E debt you've got to raise debt and their earmark future taxes to pay the interest on that debt the problem with that though is both Britain and France are accumulating massive amounts of debt during the war on the British side you go in 1756 from 70 million Pounds Sterling spent um to in 1760 almost doubling it at 130 million Pounds Sterling spent which is nobody thought you could break through those records in the 18th we're used to that now but nobody in the 18th century thought you could break through those records and so by the end of this war even though Britain wins it convincingly between the late 1750s and the early 1760s and ultimately is the Victor at the peace settlement in Paris in February 1763 nevertheless it has a massive increase in debt and because of its increase in debt it's got a massive increase in the interest payments it has to pay to people who have subscribed to the public debt because nobody is confident anymore they're going to repay the debt anytime soon so they're charging much higher interest rates because basically lenders to the government are taking on much greater risk and furthermore taxes on the population are quite high they try and raise an excise tax on Cider at the end of the war and there's a massive Revolt in the west country The Cider the Apple growing cider producing West country against this because the people are already quite highly taxed furthermore their economy has been destroyed in a war their sons have been impressed forcefully sent off the fight in the war and um essentially they don't have any money to pay and now their taxes are being increased so by the end of that War the British Ministry faces a considerable dilemma um a very very very considerable dilemma which is effectively that it must find new sources of revenue it must buy new sources of revenue not necessarily to immediately pay down debt but at least to signal to debt holders that they're good for the debt in the long run and there is another problem British ministers and officials face which is during the war political radicalism developed in Britain and the kind of two great leaders of political radicalism are pictured here William Pitt the Elder who had directed the war effort against France from 1757 to 1761 he's on the right and John Wilkes the famous propagandist and newspaper man who had been a great supporter of William Pitts who's pictured on the left what I mean by political radicalism is that essentially these politicos Wilkes and others are beginning to say the problem with the whole British political system is not simply that it doesn't work well or there are bad ministers the problem with the whole British political system is that those who do the work and pay the taxes are not represented now this is sometimes news to an audience in 2023 United States but those kinds of claims connecting taxation representation emerge in Britain earlier and nearly simultaneously as they do in the colonies meaning you have a political radical movement that's coming developing at the war saying we fought this war we died in this war we're paying all these high taxes you want to increase our taxes even more okay fine now what you need to do is represent us meaning someone like Wilkes and other radical newspaper men and propagandists public opinion makers are essentially saying that taxes should be linked to representation now they're not arguing for universal suffrage they exclude all women they're not even arguing for Universal manhood suffrage but they are arguing that Parliament shouldn't be dominated simply by the land of the league by the aristocrats and the Gentry the collection of gentlemen who control real estate land people like manufacturers Merchants bankers lawyers professionals people who we might call kind of middle class middling soar another term for this is Bourgeois obviously right are demanding their inclusion in the political system that they're creating all the industry and Enterprise that is being taxed they're demanding some kind of inclusion in the system so you have to take the perspective of British ministers and officials at the end of the war and basically realize they have a massive fiscal crisis a debt and tax crisis they need new sources of revenue and that is exacerbated by a political crisis meaning if they increase taxes on their own population if they turn the screws on their own population it's going to create problems now they were usually able to turn the screws on their own population why because the people who pay the taxes in Britain are not represented right the land tax is very very low and the main taxes are excise and Customs taxation on um Goods produced and sold so basically sales taxes regressive taxes that fall on the poor and the middling sort as much as they do the rich but now with this development of a radical movement demanding parliamentary reform British ministers and officials have to worry about the fact that any increase in taxes create a worse political situation at home um finally uh it's in this context really where a group of conservative political thinkers now I mean conservative by 18th century standards I don't mean by terms today um meaning these conservatives essentially decide that it's necessary to deal with this terrible fiscal and political situation I don't have time to go into the details but essentially two of the leading figures of this conservative movement are pictured here oh sorry I thought they were pictured there I apologize um on the right King George III the young king who comes to the throne in October 1760 and um his later prime minister George Grenville who is in office High office from 1763 to 1765. King George III and George Granville represent a group of people you can't really call them Tories or wigs those labels don't work so much but they're of a more conservative bent meaning they don't like the radical idea of reforming the parliamentary system to make it more representative of the kind of society and economy Britain's become they think that's a recipe for Anarchy that you will get basically anarchic democracy everybody will start demanding representation and the whole thing will fall apart maybe in a military dictatorship like it had a hundred years ago under Oliver Cromwell um but their view is that there must be some place where you meet these Revenue demands and ultimately what King George III and uh uh the Earl of Butte who's prime minister from 1762 to 1763 and then George Grenville his successors prime minister from 1763 to 1765. what they effectively decide is to pursue a whole series of new Imperial policies all right um I need not go into the details of all of this but essentially big points very quickly they're going to station a peacetime standing army of ten thousand Redcoats in British North America remember in Europe they're used to vast standing armies that are under the control of central governments in British North America they're not used to vast standing armies you've now got a 10 000 man peacetime standing army of Redcoats being stationed two King George III issues the Royal Proclamation in the fall of 1763 preventing westward migration past the Appalachian mountain range mountain ranges pictured here um that severely affects social and economic Mobility because the way poorer people people had a difficult time making it in the East could basically uh through their free labor and their Enterprise pull themselves up was to move west and settle West and so that hurts social and economic Mobility a great deal and then um to basically pay for the vast new Empire that Britain has acquired in America meaning remember at the end of the war Britain doesn't just control what a control before the war It Now controls all of New France that is French Canada Quebec with 60 000 Catholic French settlers and furthermore it controls the entire trans Appalachian West with tens of thousands of indigenous people it directly rules over so now Britain has a massively expanded Empire at the end of the war ruling over what used to be New France and the trans Appalachian West with non-british subjects indigenous people and French Catholics and it's got to pay to govern Garrison and administer those areas and so it decides that in this context where it has a fiscal and political crisis at home and it's got vast new needs of Imperial Administration and upkeep it decides to begin to try however so slightly to shift some of the burden of the Empire onto the periphery so following these first set of new Imperial policies there are other Imperial policies all of which are designed to raise the revenue the next of the the big five are the decision to enforce the trade Navigation Acts that had not been enforced really for 40 years now they're not enforcing the trade Navigation Acts for the original purpose which was to regulate trade they're enforcing the Navigation Acts to get money Revenue that's what they want Even though those laws are on the books even though they have every right to enforce those and collect those taxes nevertheless they haven't done it for 40 50 years because they think they get more money from the colonists in the long term by allowing them to trade with whoever they want to and then they become prosperous Farmers and Merchants and they buy manufactured goods from Britain and that means more manufacturing employment in Britain more taxes more Revenue more prosperity in Britain but it's battened down the hatches time and they need short-term revenue and so they turn to enforcing trade Navigation Acts they have it enforced in a very long time that's three four the Sugar Act five the Stamp Act the Stamp Act of course being an innovation designed to directly raise attacks on the colonies now what is I think fundamental to understand about all of these things is nobody in Britain has a kind of Dr Evil right rubbing the hand plot to say let's put the colonies in slavery they have a fiscal and political crisis at home they have a vast increase in Imperial burdens and costs and they need to meet it somewhere and they decide the best way to meet It Is by shifting part of the burdens to the colonies furthermore during the Seven Years War the colonial political leaders were often recalcitrant and refused to go along with Imperial generals and Royal Governors and so the decision is that the colonies need to be need to be more directly under the Metropole so the purpose of all of these moves is not to put American slavery from the perspective of British ministers but rather to more efficiently and with little checks actually be able to collect some revenue from the American colonies right the idea is you stop them moving Westward you put a standing army mostly on the Western border but also in the commercial ports and cities to help your tax collectors and your Customs collectors you collect taxes on trade navigation laws you haven't collected in 50 years you use your Royal Navy to catch Smugglers and send them to courts vice admiralty courts where they're not tried by a jury of their peers but they're Tried by a royally appointed judge and furthermore you basically directly tax them to help pay for the upkeep of the army and Imperial Administration now the clear goal in London of all of these things is to get a source of Revenue that will allow them some relief from the political is from the fiscal and political crisis they face at home and from the vast Imperial upkeeps they have following the Seven Years War that's the goal but if you look at all of these steps essentially what happens is is it means that a British Parliament dominated by a British landed Elite House of Lords titled aristocracy House of Commons common nobility gentlemen Untitled nobility the British land of elite without a single colonial American representative can directly tax the colonial American population and then use that money to keep up the entire Imperial State North America they can use that money to pay for the Army and its officers they can use that money to pay for the Royal Navy stationed out there they can use that money to pay for the judges in the vice admiralty courts they can use that money to pay for the Royal Governors they can use that money to pay for customs and tax collectors why is that important because those people used to depend on their salaries for budgets passed by the colonial assemblies the assemblies in British North America and therefore those people those Imperial officials those Royal officials had to negotiate with the colonial assemblies the colonial the the Imperial and Royal officials came to the Colonial assemblies the House of Burgesses in Virginia Massachusetts Bay assembly and came hat in hand and said we need money to do stuff to build canals to build turnpikes to have border defense to dredge the harbor and then the colonial assembly says what are you going to do with it and a process of negotiations opened up were effectively the colonial assemblies controlled the purse strings and their constituents the more than 50 percent of free adult males that have the vote were able to hold the elected representatives to account so if the British Parliament can tax the colonists directly and then use it to fund the Imperial state in North America all the governors all the judges all the tax collectors all the Army all the Navy that means Imperial official dumb the Imperial bureaucracy and Military in colonial North America will move an orientation away from the colonial assemblies away from New York away from Williamsburg away from Savannah away from Boston and to London and to the needs of the land Elite and the monarchy in London and that is what the colonial American resistance movement means when it says this is a plan for slavery because in their view if Parliament can simply get in place the principle which is it can tax the American colonists without a single representative in the parliament or without talking to their colonial assemblies that means that Parliament can continue to tax and can continue to fund the Imperial State North America and that means this once quite small Imperial state that used to have to go hand in hand to the Colonial assemblies is going to expand you're going to bigger Imperial bureaucracy a bigger Imperial military and it's taking orders from London it's not taking orders or negotiating with Savannah or Williamsburg or Boston and those Colonial assemblies it will forgive me are just going to be talk shops they'll be meaningless nobody will have to deal with them you don't need to burn any of them you don't need to send an army into any of them they will simply become fade into black in the political situation or at least the leaders of the colonial American resistance movement thought now pressed for time and my final um 15 minutes here I would like to just bring in India now where is the Indian angle on all of this well the exact same year that the Stamp Act um is passed um this gentleman Robert Clive arrives on a ship in East Indy company ship from London in Calcutta in Bengal and he then travels up country to alahabad the Mogul capital and meets this gentleman on this makeshift throne here who is the Mogul Emperor Shaw Alam II and the Mogul Emperor Shah Alam II gives Robert Clive a piece of paper which is the devani grant the Divani Grant is the right to collect taxes and revenues to give Law and Order and to maintain jurisdiction in Bengal effectively with this act when Mogul Emperor Shalom II hands Robert Clive this Divani what's happening is Shalom II is giving Robert Clive and through Robert Clive the British East India Company effective sovereignty over three provinces in the Mughal Empire Northeastern India Bengal Behar and orisa and the British East India Company is going to use those sovereign powers to go back to Bengal Bihar and Arisa and to collect taxes from Bengali peasants and use the money from those taxes to pay Bengali Spinners Weavers and manufacturers for the goods they make and then take those goods and sell them in Europe so effectively the British East India Company when it becomes a territorial Empire through this act by Robert Clive is essentially transforming into a sovereign state in northeastern India and this sovereign state has a bureaucracy and a military that is in no way accountable to the population it rules over meaning what Robert Clive in the British East ending company builds in northeastern India and Bengal in the late 1760s is what they themselves call an oriental despotism by which they mean a bureaucracy that can assess wealth and collect taxes and an army that can collect those taxes if the peasants don't pay them and they can wage war and that bureaucracy in that military are in no way accountable to the population over which they rule there's not a single Court any Bengali peasant can go to to sue for something a British bureaucrat or a British officer has done here in the Clive area there's not a single representative assembly where the elites the zemandari land Elites in Bengal can go and bring the Grievances from the localities and tell people hey your policy your taxes are too high they're hurting the economy there's nothing like that so what you have to realize is the year of the Stamp Act is being passed in 1765. the British East Indy company has basically created a territorial Empire Northeast in India that is a bureaucratic and Military despotism it can collect taxes as it sees fit it can spend those taxes on what it wants it's buying as a private Corporation it's buying the goods it sells back to Europe so it's a drain of wealth on the Bengali economy and the standing army isn't accountable to the society over which it operates at all why was this allowed to happen this was allowed to happen because this gentleman Robert Clive got the backing of King George III and George Granville and the group of conservatives who were extremely worried about the fiscal and Military sorry the fiscal and political crisis afflicting Britain at the end of the Seven Years War I know I've told you guys a lot of things I apologize but let me try and draw it all together if you go back to the end of the Seven Years War there's a huge fiscal and political crisis in Britain they need alternative sources of revenue it looks like the British East India Company in Bengal is on the verge of collapse it's been fighting the French it's been fighting South Asian indigenous forces uh Calcutta was at one point captured by the Nevada Bengal and essentially Robert Clive sells the conservative political circles in Britain in the early 1760s on the idea that if you create a territorial Empire a unaccountable bureaucracy in military in Bengal you can get revenues from the Bengali population that will stabilize the British East India Company and if you stabilize the British East India Company you will stabilize a public creditor back in Britain and a key player on the London Financial market and if the British East Indy company does well if it can extract wealth from Bengali peasants because it's got a bureaucracy in the military that can extract wealth without at all being held to account or having to deal with the people from whom it's attracting wealth if it can do that really well it can increase shareholder dividends it can increase salary to the directors of the East Indy company and the shareholders and directors of the East India Company are some of the major lenders and uh grantors of money to the government so this is why in the midst of a fiscal and political crisis in Britain these conservative forces around King George III and George Granville support Clive's idea of returning and basically transforming the British East Indian company into a territorial Empire that can collect revenue from a population that can't hold these to any company accounts and can stabilize these in the company's situation and potentially deliver future profits and revenue to the British state and it's not just me there are many many um uh members of colonial American resistance movement who put two and two together and say just this um let me give you a couple of examples so this takes us now towards the conclusion all right so basically uh I don't know how much details should go into but I'll say very quickly because of the Stamp Act there are massive riots across Colonial North America from New Hampshire to Georgia uh George Grenville Falls as prime minister in a much more compromising moderate prime minister The Marquis of Rockingham comes to power and The Marquis of Rockingham decides that practically they're going to repeal the Stamp Act but theoretically they're going to uphold the Stamp Act what does that mean well basically that's something pictured here called the declaratory act that's passed in 1766 meaning the same month that Parliament repeals the Stamp Act for practical purpose they passed the declaratory act saying Parliament theoretically constitutionally had the right to do everything it did in the new Imperial policies so Rockingham is saying yes you're upset about the Stamp Act colonists will repeal it but theoretically we have the right to do it and if need be down the road we can do it again and sure enough the Marquess of Rockingham Falls from Power a coalition Ministry comes into power in 1766 and eventually a year later this gentleman pictured here on the left Charles Townsend the most important Financial minister in the government the chancellor of the exchequer decides that he's going to try and do everything George Grenville did with the Stamp Act except through the back door the genius the kind of mad Genius of Charles Townsend is okay the colonists claim they're upset with the direct tax on them and therefore I Charles Townsend I'm going to pass the Townsend acts which leads to what we call the Townsend duties which basically are taxes at Colonial ports on Imports coming in from Europe right taxes that the colonists have to pay duties they have to pay on lead on paint on glass on um a paper and tea amongst other Goods so Townsend believes he's escaped the problem by putting it as an indirect tax uh collected at Colonial ports on Imports rather than a direct tax internally taxed within the colonies but Townsend wants to do the exact same thing Grenville wanted to do he wants to pay for all of Imperial officialdum the judges the Royal Governors the tax collectors with the Townsend duties which means what Townsend is again trying to do with the British government is again trying to do is effectively to raise a tax British Parliament is raising the Townsend duties it doesn't have a single representative from the American colonies in it it doesn't consult or get the approval of a single Colonial assembly or agent it raises these indirect taxes these Townsend duties at Colonial ports and it's using them for the exact same purpose Grenville wanted to use it for which is to pay for all of Imperial official done so meaning what the Townsend duties pose is exactly what the Stamp Act posed that all of Imperial official them all the officers all the judges all the governors all the tax collectors would no longer be concerned about what the colonial assemblies wanted and what their popular constituents wanted rather they would be concerned about what the British Parliament wanted which meant they would be concerned about with the British land and Elite the bewigged aristocrats and gentlemen wanted unsurprisingly you get the renewal of the Imperial crisis massive protests non-importation agreements break out again in the late 1760s and as a result uh prime minister Lord North who comes into power in 17 1970 decides he wants to quiet this situation and he decides effectively to eliminate all of the Townsend duties except for the one on T why does he keep the one on T he keeps it because he wants to uphold the principle of parliament's absolute Sovereign authority over the colonies he wants to uphold the principle that there is no necessary link between Taxation and representation why because Lord North is a conservative and he points out to many people in the British Elite if we see to the colonists their principle of no taxation without representation what about all the people here that we tax half to death that don't aren't represented at all London the biggest city in Europe two representatives in Parliament Manchester and Birmingham 50 000 people headed towards a couple of hundred thousand Dynamic manufacturing sectors sectors not a single member of Parliament old serum 16 Village inhabitants two members of parliament it's an entirely unrepresentative system so Lord North wants to does not want to seed the principle of Taxation has to be linked to actual representation and he does not want to seed uh the idea that Parliament doesn't have absolute sovereignty over the colonies that's vital for him um now because I realize I'm coming up to my time limit I would just like to read you guys a couple of quotes um this is from the most famous pamphlet produced in the colonial American resistance movement during the crisis uh of the later 1760s provoked by the Townsend duties it's by John Dickinson I've already mentioned him he writes letters from A farmer in Pennsylvania to the inhabitants of the British colonies and in there he says the East India company's conduct in Asia for some years past has given ample proof how little they regard the laws of Nations the rights Liberties are lives of men they have levied War excited rebellions to thrown princes and sacrifice Millions for the sake of gain the revenue of Mighty kingdoms have centered in their coffers and these not being sufficient to glut their avarice they have by the most unparalleled barbarities extortions and monopolies stripped the miserable inhabitants of their property and reduced whole provinces to poverty and ruin they now it seems cast their eyes to America as a new theater we're on to exercise their talents of repine Oppression and cruelty the Monopoly of tea is I dare say but a small part of the plan they have formed to strip us of our property many people Dickinson is the most famous example but many people are pointing out this in the colonial American resistance movement right okay British ministers and officials say that they don't have a plan for slavery remember slavery means not what we understand Plantation slavery slavery means that the state is not accountable to the Civil Society so the community over which it rules that's what they mean by slavery and they will point out the colonial American resistance movement if if if you're not if you don't have a plan for slavery in the British Empire if you don't have a plan to raise the state Beyond accountability to the population over which it rules why are you accepting what's going on in Bengal why are you accepting what's going on in India that is a pure despotism if there ever has been one right there many Colonial American resistance leaders point out taxation without representation is an accomplished fact the Bengali peasant population is tax tax tax without a single representative there's not a newspaper there's not a petition there's not a court they can go to there's not an assembly where they can seek readjusts there's no checks on the Imperial bureaucracy or the Army whatsoever um and and basically this is the situation in 1770 when Lord North decides to remove the Townsend duties to quiet the crisis and so to take things to a conclusion basically um that's how things lie for about three years but then we're back at where we began right we're back where we begin the problem the Tea Act Lord North Faces this difficulty which is the British East India Company is on the verge of bankruptcy why because they're extractive and monopolistic policies have been ruinous in Bengal they've led to famine they've led to undermining the goose that lays the golden egg I mean I can't get into the details but the British East Indian company is using its political power in the late 1760s to impose a monopson young Bengal meaning merchants and manufacturers in Bengal who want to sell goods are are have to preferentially sell them to the British East Indian company which means that the prices aren't being determined by the market they're being determined by the East India Company and that's economically ruinous it's destroying the Wellsprings of Indian life and the economy and it's in turn going to make it harder for them to pay revenues to the British seasoning company to taxes and so the whole British engineering company is spiraling out of control by the late 60s early 70s and it's on the verge of bankruptcy and if it goes bankrupt the biggest multinational corporation one of the biggest holders of government debt one of the biggest players on the London Stock Market will crash this is too big to fail on steroids and so Lord North steps in with this act the T Act right and that t act although it seems banal and simple enough when the Prime Minister and his cabinet passes it through the British household Commons in the House of Lords and King George Signs it on May the 10th 1773 making it effective it signals two things to the colonists one there is going to be full support for the British UC in the company and everything it's doing in Bengal which means that an important part of the British Empire has been lost to Liberty that's their understanding I'm not saying they're right or wrong that's their understanding that there is a plan for slavery that has been realized in Bengal right now British say it's our conditions it's imposed on us we can't rule in any other way but but that's the view of many leaders of the colonial American resistance movement that a plan for slavery has been realized in Bengal and British ministers are willing to do anything to uphold the British East India Company look at to pass the Tea Act therefore they're committed to this Empire not of consent not of Liberty but of coercion and domination two the other thing it signals to the colonial American population is ah they are really doubling down on this Townsend Duty on t that isn't just like a little fig Leaf they are going to make the East Indian company pay it they're going to make tea uh sales people pay it and therefore they're going to establish the principle of Parliament can tax the colonists without having a single representative in the colonists in Parliament in London Parliament is going to tax the colonists through this Duty on T right because the Tea Act is a doubling down on the duty on T Parliament is going to tax the colonists without consulting their colonial assemblies so this is what the colonial American resistance movement essentially has in its Minds right they're backing a despotic Empire in Bengal and they're allowing the East Indian company to establish a presence in North America and in establishing that presence they're doubling down on the T Duty which is a doubling down on the idea of an absolute parliamentary authority to tax the colonies without representing them in any way shape or form that is the future is going to be basically taxation without representation a state that is not accountable to the people over whom it governs and that is going to lead right to the event that uh Andrew tells me um you'll be coming here to hear another lecture about hopefully didn't go over time as badly as I did um on the Boston Tea Party in December 16th uh 1773 right which triggers the renewal of the Imperial crisis and ultimately um uh leads to essentially the total breakdown of appeal Authority and the um the end more or less of of of of the British Empire in North America I would like to leave you if you're patients would bear with one quote it's from a radical member of the British House of Commons named George Dempster he had been a follower of William Pitt the Earl of Chatham and he's trying to point out to his fellow members of the House of Commons in 1775 how they got themselves in this situation George Dempster is a political radical he wants the reform of parliament he's a friend of America he's against the American war and he's trying to tell his fellow members of the British House of Commons how they got to this situation he writes or sorry he says on the floor of the commons this is on October 27 1775. in my conscience I think the claim of the Americans is just and well-founded to be left in the free exercise of the right of taxing themselves in her several provincial assemblies and the same manner that Ireland now does and always has done by this beautiful part of our constitution our wise ancestors have bound together the different and distant parts of this Mighty Empire by this single principle heretofore and violet they have diffused in a most unexampled manner the blessings of liberty and good government through our remotest provinces look sir into the history of the provinces of other states of the Roman Empire in ancient times of the French Spanish Dutch and Turkish Turkish provinces of more modern date and you will find every page of it stained with acts of oppressive violence of Cruelty Injustice and peculation but in the British provinces the annual meetings of their little assemblies have constantly restrained the despotism and corrected the Follies of their governance they watch over the administration of justice and from time to time enact such salutatory regulations as tend to promote their happiness and well-being and what sir I beseech you could ensure the regular meetings of those assemblies ever Troublesome to Governors but they're retaining in their own hands like us at home the power of granting the funds necessary for defraying the current expense of government were your provincial assemblies deprived of this power I cannot see wherein the government of America would differ in any way from that of India and has our inquiries in a former session into the administration of Bengal made us in love with the Eastern species of government we have created do we seriously wish to transplant that repine despotism and cruelty in India to America thank you and thank you sorry for trespassing on your time foreign

Channel: American Revolution Institute

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Length: 76min 58sec (4618 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023