Something of a revisionist history, this take on the “tea party” movement of the American Revolution makes it clear that the revolt was a seditious, criminal conspiracy with a paramilitary terrorist wing and that while British tea was vilified and boycotted by the “patriots,” it was also widely consumed in the colonies and traded for profit.
“Just as Americans drank alcohol during the Prohibition of the 1920s, so colonists drank tea and consumed British goods during the prohibition of 1775. Records show thousands of colonists buying, selling, and drinking tea in private, despite public declarations of abstinence,” notes author James R. Fichter in this detailed history of the tea revolution in colonial America.