Political Memes

I've argued pretty much all of this already. But, from the article:

Unfortunately, none of that is true. The three ships bringing tea into Boston Harbor, the Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver, were privately owned, colonial-built, colonial captained and crewed ships. They were transporting tea belonging to the East India Company, not the British government. The British government lost nothing monetarily.

The British East India Trading Company was a British Corporation and heavily influenced by The Crown / British Empire. It was used primarily to facilitate trade between all the British colonies and outposts. This isn't even fringe history, which makes me believe that this article is not written in Good Faith.

This meant that imports would primarily be for the British Military Occupants and it's ongoing war to expand Westward. The Colonists would have to barter with the British Occupants to get anything they wanted.

That's the root cause of the unrest and eventual revolution. Independence from being under The British Empires thumb and allowing them to separate themselves as a new Nation. The tea was a play to encourage this change in that society, a new society that spanned ~150+ years away from Britain on new lands over a 1600-mile (2574 kilometers) landmass.

These articles always call them "smugglers" but what does that really mean? These people were born ON Americas soil and they were "smuggling" local trade to circumvent dealing with the British Occupants.

The British East India Trading Company was a oldtime Corporation and it certainly had a Monopoly on trade. Either you believe that Corporate and British Governmental Rule is a de facto good thing or you believe in Free Trade, but you can't have it both ways in this time period.