Trade and Revolution, 1773–1783

Chapter 7 of The Overseas Trade of British America opens with a rescue plan for the East India Company that called for dumping vast quantities of tea in British North America and applying the infamous 1767 tax on tea. Resistance in New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston forced importing agents to back down. But not in Boston. There, toe-to-toe confrontation between political activists and the Massachusetts governor precipitated the Boston Tea Party. Britain’s punitive response ignited armed rebellion. In the War of Independence that followed, success on the American side hinged on acquisition of military supplies from abroad. Some came directly from Europe, but most arrived through Dutch, French, Danish, and Spanish intermediaries in the West Indies. By far the greatest sufferers from the breakdown of colonial trade were the thousands of enslaved Africans in the British West Indies dependent on food from North America. The revolutionaries succeeded in establishing the independence of the United States, but its commerce was in shambles. The economy of the young republic, having lost its privileged connection to the British Empire, slid into a deep depression. Optimism prevailed, however, as the United States prepared to step onto the world stage.