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Facing Down a Great Corporation
The East India Company was the wealthiest private corporation of the day. Parliament gave its stockholders a bailout by giving the company a monopoly on the colonial tea trade in 1773. They also kept a tax on the tea. Patriots in nearly every colony blocked sale of the tea, either reshipping it back to England or forcibly storing it in locked warehouses. Boston was the first city to destroy East India Company tea, in December 1773. This creamer reminded tea drinkers not to indulge. Its inscription reads “Britons take back your baneful tea/You N’er shall make a slave of me.”
“The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor,” New York, around 1846 |