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Asia-Pacific in the Making of the Americas: Toward a Global History

"Liberty Triumphant", 1774

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Tea Promotes Eastern Slavery in America
At the close of the Seven Years War in 1763, victorious Britain became the largest empire and largest colonizer in the world, holding more people in bondage than any other nation. Americans, as English subjects—or as true-born Englishmen, as they saw themselves--initially shared in Britain’s military glory But gradually over the course of the 1760s and early ‘70s that changed. Britain, in dire financial straits after a war fought on so many fronts, turned to the colonies for increased revenue. Americans looked at India and saw a nation of ethnic others being exploited, emasculated, for the good of East India Company merchants. The passage of the Tea Act in 1773, allowing the East India Company for the first time ever to bring tea directly to the colonies, was confirmation that Americans themselves were now viewed as an exploitable market rather than equal and autonomous players in selling the world’s most valuable commodity: Chinese tea.
In an early 1774 cartoon sketched just as the infamous tea ships approached Philadelphia, colonial artist Henry Dawkins graphically portrayed the deep-rooted anxieties and covetousness aroused by trade with a place called the “East Indies,” as well as the crisis in American identity vis-à-vis English ministers. Chinese tea chests figure prominently in the foreground of the conflict. We notice that the contest with East India Company merchants over this all-important trade has actually transformed American Patriots from “civilized” English merchants to Indians—to just another of the brown-skinned, ethnically-other world populations vulnerable to East India Company colonization. In this dispute that pitches the colonies as a target market, as consumers of rather than masters of East India tea, American men became non-European, exploitable, and enslave-able. (See image key for identification of people.)
The whole tea affair was tainted with elements of Eastern despotism and slavery, as Americans recalled repeatedly in an ardent conversation in the press in the months following the passage of the Tea Act. To understand why English ministers became “tyrants” in trying to tax American consumers, we need to look at the models available to the colonialists. A “Mechanic” writing in the Pennsylvania Gazette evokes the scepter of slavery perpetrated in “Whole Provinces” of India:
The East India Company, if once they get
Footing in this (once) happy country, will leave no
Stone unturned to become your Masters.
They are an opulent Body, and Money or Credit is not wanting amongst them
They have a designing, depraved, and despotic Ministry to assist and support them.
They themselves are well versed in Tyranny, Plunder, Oppression and Bloodshed.
Whole Provinces labouring under the Distresses of Oppression, Slavery, Famine, and the Sword, are familiar to them.
Thus they have enriched themselves, thus they are become the most powerful Trading Company in the Universe."
The December 2, 1773, issue of the New York Journal carried this warning: “A SHIP loaded with TEA is now on her Way to this Port, being sent out by the Ministry for the Purpose of enslaving and poisoning ALL the AMERICANS.”[6] Americans would be reduced to dependent consumers while imbibing a soporific substance produced by a despotized people. One preacher pleaded with his congregation in western Connecticut, “We have not as yet experienced the galling chains of slavery; tho’ they have been shook over our heads. For this reason few perhaps among us, realize the horrors of that slavery, which arbitrary and despotic government lays men under….now [you] supinely slumber.”[7] “A Mechanic” and then “A Countryman” in Philadelphia protested, “They [the East India Company] will...Ship US all other East India Goods...Thus our merchants are ruined...and every Tradesman will groan under dire Oppression.” “Hampden” in a New York paper warned, “and the trade of all the commodities of that country [China] will be lost to our merchants and carried on by the company.”[8] “If so,” a Pennsylvanian added, “have we a single chance of being any Thing but Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Waters to them. The East Indians are proof of this.”
This last remark was a Biblical reference to enslavement. The full passage from the Book of Joshua was certainly familiar to most Christian Americans. It reads, "Now therefore, you are cursed, and you shall never cease being slaves, both hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God." The Pennsylvania author imagined precisely this sort of divinely sanctioned slavery perpetrated by Britons in East India and, in this reference, demonstrated the degree to which deep-rooted notions derived from Christian theology saturated the American consciousness. Even though blatant institutionalized slavery existed in their very midst, colonial pamphleteers habitually called forth some version of imagined Eastern slavery, explicitly Egyptian, Moorish, Ottoman, or Indian.
John Adams wrote in his diary the December morning after the tea was destroyed in Boston that landing the tea would have been equivalent to “subjecting ourselves and our Posterity forever to Egyptian Taskmasters,” not interestingly to Virginia slave owners or Rhode Island slave drivers. This overlooked discourse founded on embedded prejudices and anxieties about the relationship between Anglo (“Western”) and Asian (“Eastern”) peoples, fueled by commercial prerogative to Chinese wealth, needs to be interrogated as part of the cultural climate of the Tea Party, and ultimately the identity of American patriots.

________________________
^{[6] New York Journal, or General Advertiser, Dec. 2 – 9, 1773.
[7] "Appendix stating the heavy grievances the colonies labour under from the several Acts of the British Parliament," in A Sermon containing scriptural instructions to civil rulers, given by Rev. Samuel Sherwood in Fairfield, Conn., Aug. 31, 1774.
[8] NY Journal, Oct. 28, 1773. "Hampden" was a pseudonym used by James Otis, Jr.}
Key to Dawkins' 1774 "Liberty Triumphant" map-cartoon. The cartoon has 18 numbered persons, objects, and allegorical figures illustrating the growing British-American discord in early 1774 after the virulent protests?including the Boston Tea Party against the Tea Act of 1773. (The viewer’s perspective is from the north looking south: Britain at left and America at right).

British officials and others in Great Britain (left of image, from right to left):
1. Lord N--th. Lord North [Prime Minister], holding out a sword and a chain toward America, says, “We must manage this business with a great deal of Art [skill/finesse]; Or I see we shall not succeed.”

2. Lord B--te. Bute [former Prime Minister, from Scotland], wearing a waistcoat of plaid, says “God’s curse, Mon, ye mon act wie meikle Spirit upon this occasion, or ane’s lost I assure ye.”

3. An East India [Company] Director says “I wish we may be able to establish our Monopoly in America.”

4. The infamous K?y says “Gov T?n [William Tryon, governor of new York] will cram the Tea down the Throat of the New Yorkers.” Dr. John Kearsley, Jr., of Philadelphia, was an outspoken Loyalist. . . . In August 1775 Kearsley was mobbed after firing his pistol from his window at a mob hauling Isaac hunt in a cart through the streets of the city. The associators, angered by Hunt, a lawyer, for defying the authority of the Committee of Safety, determined to make an example of him; but on Kearsley’s intervention, Hunt was set free and Kearsley put in his place.

5. Belzebub, the Prince of Devils, whispering to K--y,” Speak in favor of ye [the] Scheme Now’s the time to push your fortune.”

6. The writer of the Papers (signed Poplicola) in favor of the Tea who is dressed in clerical gown and bands, gestures toward No. 7, saying “I have prostituted my reason and my Conscience to serve You, and am therefore entitled to some reward.” Poplicola was the name signed to three articles appearing in Rivington’s New York Gazetteer, November 18, December 2 and 23, and republished as pamphlets, attempting to defend the government and the East India Company.

7. The Chairman of the India Company replies “If we had succeeded, you should have been provided for.” Standing behind the Director are:

8. A Group of India Directors, who say to one another, “We have just now received the disagreeable intelligence [news] that the Bostonians have destroyed the Tea”; “and that the Philadelphians have compel’d the Ship for their Port to return with the Tea”; “and likewise that the People of New York, are determined to act in the same spirited manner.” . . .

9. The Patriotic Duke of Richmond [sympathetic to Americans’ grievances] standing in the background, observes “Had my advice been follow’d, you would not have met with this loss and disappointment.” At the feet of this group are several boxes of tea. One, labeled “Tea for America” has resting on it a paper inscribed, “Plan for an India Warehouse in America.” Nearby are three boxes labeled “Tea from America.” Above this group on the banks of the Thames [River in London], are two allegorical figures.

10. The Genius of Britain” asks “Britannia why so much distress’d”; to which

11. Britannia replies, “The conduct of those my degenerate Sons will break my Heart.” In contrast to the grief-stricken Britannia, and the ship From Philadelphia just entering the Thames, is the scene on the other side of the ocean [America].

12. America represented by a Woman is an Indian queen, with drawn bow about to loose an arrow at Lord North.
Behind her are six Indian warriors. They are:

13. The Sons of Liberty, represented by the Natives of America, in their savage garb. They emerge from the forest, armed with bows and spears, saying “We will secure our freedom, or die in the Attempt”: “ Lead us to Liberty or Death”; “Lead on, Lead on.” Above them the shores of America stretch out from Boston to the Delaware. Seated in comfort on these shores, holding a liberty cap on her staff, a tabby cat curled somewhat incongruously at her feet, is:

14. The Goddess of Liberty, addressing herself to Fame and pointing To her Sons, saying proudly “Behold the Ardor of my Sons and let not their brave Actions be buried in Oblivion.”

15. Fame, resting on a cloud and holding a trumpet and laurel wreath, replies “I will trumpet their Noble Deeds, from Pole to Pole.”

16. A View of the Tea Ships in the Harbour of Boston

17. Capt. Loring’s Vessel with the Tea, Shipwrecked on Cape Cod [Massachusetts]. The Boston letter of Dec. 27 to the Pennsylvania Gazette reported the wreck, adding “We have not yet heard what has become of the detested Tea.” Two weeks later, it was reported that the tea had been brought to the Castle [Castle William, a British fort on an island in Boston harbor] by order of the Customs officials. The letter added, “It is reported that the Tea
Consignees had better have had a Millstone tied round their necks, than suffered [allowed] the Tea, saved out of the Wreck of Capt. Loring, to be landed at the Castle.”

18. A Group of Disappointed Americans, who were for landing the Tea; in hopes of sharing in the Plunder of their Country. These eight figures in the foreground wear mourning crepes on their hats.
– The first, at the left laments, “The People have discovered our design to divide them, & we shall never be able to regain their confidence.”

– Next to him stands a two-faced man, saying, “I am ready to die with grief and vexation, at our Disappointment, As it will blast my hopes of preferment.”

– The third man exclaims, “Damn the Bostonians, they have been a great means of frustrating our design.” Finally there are a group of four.

– The first says, “We must now make a Virtue of necessity & join against landing the Tea.”

– His companion answers, “I approve of your Scheme as it will save appearances with the people who are easily deceived.”

– “Agreed.” “Agreed” say the last two.

This description is courtesy of Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps, Inc. (accessed on March 10, 2016)