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- [00:00]
Taylor
Hey everybody. This is Taylor from the Total Soccer show. And this episode is brought to you by Hotels.com the summer of soccer is right around the corner. And if you aren't using hotels.com to book the experience of a lifetime, it's worth asking why? As a member, you save up to 20% on hundreds of thousands of hotels around the world and earn rewards on every single stay. Which means the trips you're taking now help pay for the ones you're already dreaming about. So whether you're following your team across North America this summer or or planning a well earned escape after being glued to football for weeks on end, make sure you book on hotels.com and start earning rewards. Because when it comes to hotels, it's all in the name. Hotels.com
- [00:43]
Peter Frankenpern
we think we know why America broke away from Britain. It's all about taxation without representation. It's a noble fight for liberty. It's about the birth of democracy.
- [00:53]
Afro Hashtag
But the real story is considerably messier and considerably more concerned with profit.
- [01:00]
Peter Frankenpern
So today we're going to look at the merchants, the smugglers, the hurricane chasers, the men who built their vast fortunes through the Caribbean slave economy and decided that British trade restrictions weren't bad for business.
- [01:11]
Afro Hashtag
Men like John Hancock, the celebrated patriot, and according to British customs officials, the head of one of the largest smuggling operations in the colonies.
- [01:21]
Peter Frankenpern
We're also going to touch on how famine that killed maybe 10 million people in Bengal, as well as a series of hurricanes of the Caribbean, helped light the fuse of American independence.
- [01:32]
Afro Hashtag
It turns out, Peter, surprise, surprise, that it wasn't just about revolutionary ideals and democracy. This was also in large part about who controlled the money.
- [01:44]
Peter Frankenpern
Hello and welcome to a new episode of Legacy. I'm Peter Frankenpern.
- [01:48]
Afro Hashtag
I'm Afro Hashtag.
- [01:50]
Peter Frankenpern
And this is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.
- [01:58]
Afro Hashtag
This is American independence. Follow the money.
- [02:07]
Peter Frankenpern
Thanks for joining us on Legacy Today. To support the show, sign up to Legacy.
- [02:12]
Afro Hashtag
You can enjoy early access, fewer ads, Q&As and bonus content like when we spoke to Professor Helen Thompson and about the conflict in Iran or when we caught up with surgeons like Dr. Mingyang Gray and Dr. Isosa Omurabe to go deeper into the world of facelifts and explored more unusual topics like the legacies of the remote control and fish fingers.
- [02:34]
Peter Frankenpern
So do sign up and join us on Legacy supportingcast fm. Right afw it's always about the Mari revolutions. It's always about the people who claim that they're holier than thou, but they can't wait to get in the hands of the till.
- [02:45]
Afro Hashtag
I mean, so cynical. Peter, I fear that the example of 1776 is not going to disprove that cynicism.
- [02:52]
Peter Frankenpern
All right, look, let's start. We got up to the kind of the breaking points of the early 1770s. We've talked about how by that time the British colonies in North America had become a lot larger, a lot richer and more self confident that many people in London had fully appreciated. And the population of 13 colonies that we're talking about has risen from about 250,000 in 1700 to about 2 million by the early 1770s.
- [03:17]
Afro Hashtag
And we've also talked about the mindset and cultural identity of colonial elites. And it's really important to understand that these. And we're talking about white men because even though there were many people of other backgrounds, there were women, there were enslaved people, there were indigenous Native Americans, the people who controlled the colonies and who instigated this revolution were specifically white men. And they had a very high opinion of themselves. They saw themselves as not these provincial dependents in far flung colonies, but as proud British citizens entitled to the same constitutional rights and protections as subjects in London, Bristol and Liverpool.
- [03:52]
Peter Frankenpern
And one of the reasons they felt so self confident enough was because they were rich. And that always goes hand in hand. If you're, if you're minted, it's very good, easy to feel good about yourself. And so many of those leading figures that we've talked about in our Founding Fathers episodes we're going to talk about today in places like Boston and Philadelphia and Virginia are deeply embedded in making money for themselves. A lot of them directly connected to the transatlantic trade, all of them indirectly in one way or another. They all own substantial property and they're big consumers of British goods. So it's sort of ironically, these people in the American colonies are feeling not just British, but they feel that they're becoming more British because they, they are like, for, like they're the greater, the good. They, they recognize that they are wealthy, that they've got these large estates that were compared to favorably to ones in England too. So it's a bit of an irony that as America gets richer and more self confident, it starts to feel that it's unhappy with its lot rather than being grateful for it.
- [04:48]
Afro Hashtag
And there's the really important backdrop as well of the Seven Years War and many of the immediate roots of discontent for these colonists laid in that conflict. The Seven Years War is fantastically complicated, Peter. I wonder if another time we should do a series trying to actually break down what it involved. It is, and I think Winston Churchill described it as the first truly world war because it engulfed Africa, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, North America and Europe. But it is a war from which Britain emerges victorious and it's actually a real success for the British. They gained vast new territories in North America, including many former French territories, expanded, expanding their land holdings. But of course, like all long term military campaigns, it comes at an enormous cost. The national debt for Britain has almost doubled and by 1763 it's around £133 million, which is a humongous sum at the time.
- [05:49]
Peter Frankenpern
And people are scared of debt. You know, it's not like today where you could inflate it away. I mean, we're at the kind of just the beginning points of the Industrial revolution. So in fact, that the national debt discussion sort of drift, just does drift away. But ministers in London are very worried about having to pay back these loans and the debts they owe. And they figure out that the colonies need to contribute more to imperial defense and administration need to pay their way. Especially because there are thousands of British troops stationed in America after the war in case the French kick off again. So from London's point of view, Westwood's point of view, it's completely reasonable to think that raises of taxes are making people pay. To be part of the club is what's fair. The problem is, from the colonial perspective, it looks like it's a dramatic and dangerous change in the relationship where you're being asked to pay for parts of the world that got nothing to do with you.
- [06:36]
Afro Hashtag
This is actually a cultural difference that I think many of our listeners will relate to today because there is a really different approach to taxation now in Britain and America. And actually at this time, after the Seven Years War, people living on mainland Britain were the most taxed population in Europe. They were paying large amounts of tax, much less than people in the colonies were paying. And actually people in the colonies were, especially in North America. And I'm not including the enslaved population because they their whole life was a taxation in a way. They weren't even paid for their labor. But for white colonists, who are landowners, slave owners, merchants and traders, they paid less tax. And they also enjoyed frankly a better quality of life. Not to downplay the struggles they'd had in settling this land, but they were by some contemporary accounts, 2 inches taller than the average Englishman. That reflects a better diet, a more prosperous lifestyle. They had more Land, they paid less tax, they had more opportunity, they had this sense of promise. And so the imposition of these kind of British style taxes which had been there to some extent but were now about to be properly enforced, was seen as a great affront. And Peter, as you said, it's not just the fact of these taxes but the way they were being imposed by these political so called representatives in Westminster, thousands of kilometres away, people who actually had never stepped foot on the American continent and the colonists felt didn't actually have any right to interfere in such a direct way in their lives.
- [08:06]
Peter Frankenpern
In our Founding Fathers episode we mentioned Brexit a few times and that idea that you don't have enough accountability about where your money's going to. And the famous phrase associated with the American Revolution or American independence is no taxation without representation. And really what that was saying is that in the colonies, in the North American colonies, these 13, was to say we are uncomfortable that we're being milked and we don't see what the benefits are. And so resistance in the 1760s and 1770s becomes increasingly theatrical actually, because it's about how do you get that message across? So you've got crowds intimidating tax collectors, you got merchants organizing boycotts of British goods. We're going to talk about some of that. You get pamphlets and newspapers spreading political arguments. And it's a bit like, if you remember the discussions around Brexit in the middle of the 2010s and the two different pathways. They were simple to explain what those choices were. And the Brexit lot made it sound a lot easier. That's why there was the vote in that direction. But do you see those parallels with groups like the Sons of Liberty with modern day Brexiteers?
- [09:12]
Afro Hashtag
Absolutely. You can just substitute Brussels for London. This idea that these nameless, faceless bureaucrats in some faraway place are creating policies and laws that directly impact your life in a negative way. And it's a much easier narrative to sell than the complex reality of being part of an empire and the costs of maintaining these colonies from which the colonists were benefiting, and you could say it is perhaps unsustainable unless you sell the identity of being part of this community. If British people didn't feel part of Europe in a meaningful way, if colonists in North America didn't feel part of Westminster lawmaking in a meaningful way, then they were always going to find issue with some of the specific policies emanating. And in this case, as you said, groups like the Sons of Liberty begin burning effigies, they are erecting liberty poles, Ben. Their publicly humiliating customs officials. And of course, in those days, you know, now this would come from electronic demands and, you know, direct debits out of your bank account. But in those days, the only way Britain could collect its tax was by putting tax collectors and British officials in the colony. So you create obvious immediate scapegoats, easy targets for colonists to publicly reject and rebel against these demands. And even in that context, Peter, there is still this sense that these are Englishmen, the men in the colonies. They're English, they're British, they still want to be part of the empire. And so even though they're resisting, they still deep down hope for some kind of reconciliation with Britain.
- [10:41]
Peter Frankenpern
Yeah, I mean, people like Benjamin Franklin, who we covered, you know, this is before his public humiliation at the Privy Council, but assumes that there's going to be some kind of settlement, you know, that you can be a loyal subject and you can still have some constitutional rights. Or there are people like John Dickinson, who writes a very influential pamphlet called Letters from a farm in Pennsylvania in the late 1760s in which she criticizes parliament in London for its overreach, but explicitly rejects independence. You know, like you said, Afro, these are loyal subjects of the crown. They feel aggrieved that there's not enough accountability. That kind of Brexit reference is a little, you know, can be a little bit forced because Brexiteers didn't burn their effigies. But it was clear what they wanted was to have to take back control. Right. And that there is a kind of parallel here of the colonists, on the one hand, wanted to be part of the club, but at the same time wanted to have all the privilege and benefits too. So in Britain as well, by the way, of course, many politicians thought that compromise would be possible. And why the crisis becomes so toxic is that both sides just completely mistrust each other and distrust each other, while also thinking that the relationship can be fixed. I mean, that's one of the problems that causes what was a spat turns into a kind of great geopolitical earthquake of the 18th century.
- [11:55]
Afro Hashtag
There's also a real differential perspective on who's benefiting from this colonial arrangement. Britain has what I think can only be described as quite a patronizing attitude towards some of these colonists. Seems sees them as these kind of children that need to be disciplined, you know, who are. Who are thriving only because of the generous patronage of Britain. Whereas the colonists feel that they have thrown. Thrived in spite of relative neglect from Britain. They have been out there on the frontier, forging their own destiny. I mean, this is their perspective, not necessarily how I would describe it, but they don't appreciate this idea that the British can just swan in and start taking away rights that they hadn't only enjoyed, but they built an ideology around. And this culminates in the somewhat unlikely substance of tea.
- [12:37]
Peter Frankenpern
PETER well, I mean, tea is one of the biggest of touch points. I mean, number one, it's the kind of the most. It's the archetypal drink. In the 18th century, tea consumption in Britain goes literally through the roof. I mean, it's like sugar, crisps, you know, put it all together, fast food, everybody goes for, for tea.
- [12:56]
Afro Hashtag
I'm just appropriately having a sip on my English breakfast tea, literally, as we have this conversation, case in point.
- [13:01]
Peter Frankenpern
There you go. And tea, tea is kind of symbolic of the fact that empires work it. There are all sorts of the negatives, the downsides of empire, but they're about centralizing, bringing things in from peripheries, from regions far away for the benefit of the people back at home. That, that's the, that's the function of empires. And tea is kind of a hugely symbolic thing. It's very popular in the colonies, too. It's shipped from China via the East India Company, usually via London. And although people love drinking tea and, you know, it's, it's all, it's our most famous because meal, isn't it, in Britain is, is tea rather than breakfast, lunch or supper, which until very recently were not culinary highlights anywhere in the world. Now, now British cuisine is, is up right up there. But tea was the way which we, we put our stamp on the, on the world. But you have, I guess, the Boston Tea Party is one of the defining moments of a process that escalates. So in the kind of late 1760s, people like Samuel Adams are beginning to hint that there might need to be a complete break with Britain. Others like Joseph Quincy Jr. Warns that Britain, if it's coercive, might have to face the consequences. And in December 1773, that comes to a head at the Boston Tea Party, where the British government has passed a Tea act earlier that year to help bail out the ECD Company, which is one of the largest pirate corporations in the world. It's involved in terrible smuggling of opium, of depredations, of finding ways of, to take cash out of particularly Bengal. That leads directly is evolved in the death of many millions of people through famine, while East India Company is still extracting cash dividends. And it becomes symptomatic of look, this is what happens if you run an empire badly. People will die. So on the night of 16th December 1773, a group of colonists, many of them linked to this Sons of Liberty group, bought board three ships in Boston Harbor. The Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver. And some are disguised as Mohawk Indians. Partly conceal their identity, but also to present themselves symbolically as Americans rather than as Britain. Safwan.
- [15:05]
Afro Hashtag
I mean the irony of that, you know, they, they don't accept Native Americans as, as equal humans in terms of the rights they deserve, but they're happy to kind of cosplay, to use the modern term, as Native Americans to make a point. And over the course of around three hours, these colonists break open 342 chests of east India Company tea and dump them into the harbour, destroying property that's worth around £10,000 at the time. That's equivalent to millions today. And it's not so much a riot, it's actually quite an orderly dismantling and dumping of tea overboard. But it's very much political theater. It's designed to perform this heroic stamp against tyranny and the monopoly of power. And it's quite a complicated piece of theatre Peter, because on the one hand, as you were saying, this isn't a response to a very well thought through policy from Britain. Britain hasn't taken some high moral ground. Britain is trying to rescue the East India Company and it's annoying the colonists because by introducing essentially a monopoly for the East India Company, Britain is undercutting the smuggling that North American colonists are finding very profitable of tea. But difficult to talk about this in binary terms because essentially everyone here is a smuggler. The British state has a monopoly over tea through the East India Company through what is essentially a piracy organization. It's not operating according to any norms or values we would recognize today. And the colonists in North America are resentful because that big pirate organization endorsed by the Crown is undercutting their piracy in their own smuggling of tea. So there's no clear moral high ground in this situation. But everybody thinks they're right. And alongside, even people like Benjamin Franklin who stand against British tyranny at this stage are also ambivalent about the destruction of tea because this is the destruction of property. And central to these so called Enlightenment values that the colonists pride themselves in inhabiting is this idea that protecting property is, is central to how civilized people behave.
- [17:00]
Peter Frankenpern
And also the people in Britain. It's not exactly the same as the terrorist act would be thought of today, but you know, it's an act that is, it's over the top, it's destruction of equivalent of today's millions of pounds worth. And it's done with great sort of theater. And it makes people think, you know, these guys who are living on the other side of the Atlantic have a good quality of life. How can they be complaining and that they need to be taught a lesser be put in their place. So the British response is severe. Parliament passes the coercive act in 1774 which the Americans call the intolerable acts. Because as we're going to see part of the story of the of US independence. The declaration is Americans feeling they're being hard done by and they feel sorry for themselves. And then Boston Harbour gets closed until all the tea has been paid for and Massachusetts self government is curtailed. So Britain is busy tightening its authority very sharply. So you know, that's the usual story. These are plucky freedom fighters standing up to tyranny and that this is a noble cause in which the Americans had no choice except to take matters into their head. And every time they did something to try to say look, please help me, the British came down like a ton of bricks. When we come back up, let's talk about these inflamed passions and how the route towards from disagreement heads towards revolution.
- [18:15]
Taylor
Hey everybody, this is Taylor from the Total Soccer show and this episode is brought to you by Hotels.com the summer of soccer is right around the corner. And if you aren't using hotels.com to book the experience of a lifetime, it's worth asking why? As a member, you save up to 20% on hundreds of thousands of hotels around the world and earn rewards on every single stay. Which means the trips you're taking now help pay for the ones you're already dreaming about. So whether you're following your team across North America this summer or planning a well earned escape after being glued to football for weeks on end, make sure you book on hotels.com and start earning rewards. Because when it comes to hotels, it's all in the name.
- [18:55]
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- [20:02]
Afro Hashtag
So the roots of these really heightened tensions actually date back to before what was called at the time the destruction of the tea, what we now think of as the Boston tea party, to 1770, when violence had broken out between soldiers and civilians in Boston in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Five colonists were killed in this violence. And patriot propagandists, especially Paul Revere, who was an illustrator who spread very effective messages of the incredible wrongdoing as the colonists saw it transformed this incident from a violent killing of colonists into a symbol of British tyranny and a rallying call for colonists to rise up against the oppression of the British British Crown.
- [20:46]
Peter Frankenpern
So colonists start to fear that standing armies, arbitrary taxation and coercion is threatening what they see as classic English or British liberties. I mean, it's ironic, they think that they're being not dealt a fair hand as Brits and they're being treated with tyranny. One of the great examples of that is Benjamin Franklin in 1774 when he says rather bleakly, that Britain has already lost the colonies in the affections of the people. So still, even at this point, independence isn't really on the cards. But then colonists start to believe that the British government is not just going to try to tax them, but to subordinate them. And we mentioned the coercive acts before the break, or the Americans are called the intolerable acts that convinces a lot of people that constitutional compromise is going to collapse. So the shutting of Boston Harbour, the idea that there's going to be arbitrary rule is that the colonists are going to be treated as though they had been colonized and themselves. And so increasingly, they start to do what lots of Americans do today is they form militia gangs.
- [21:44]
Afro Hashtag
It's kind of ironic, given that these are people who colonize and enslave others, that they're so outraged by the idea of being colonized and oppressed themselves, they actually use the language of slavery, that this is akin to slavery. It's the greatest wrong that can be done with apparently no sense of irony. But it's really important to understand that they have been imbibing the materials of the Enlightenment, the writings of ancient Rome. And this idea of standing armies, of excessive taxation, of tyranny, is hard baked into their psyches as the beginning of the end. It's apocalyptic. It's a sign that the British are beginning to lose their civilized status and descend themselves into some kind of abyss. And they really start to believe this. There's this atmosphere of paranoid conspiracy might sound a little familiar, but at the same time, and we could talk endlessly about the ideological underpinnings of this movement, which are very real, there is also another narrative, another source of grievance at work that's maybe a little less based on enlightenment and literary and historic precedent and more based on material self interest. Because one of the most underappreciated causes of colonial frustration at this era is the growing belief among merchants in places like Boston, Newport, Philadelphia and Charleston that Britain is actually preventing them from becoming rich in the way they feel they have deserved, and that they have the potential to become. And at the heart of that tension is the Caribbean.
- [23:16]
Peter Frankenpern
And the Caribbean at this time is the kind of generator of huge proportions of global wealth. The sugar islands in the West Indies, particularly Jamaica, Barbados, the French colony of Saint Domingue, are amongst the wealthiest places in the world in the 18th century. I mean, there are discussions when there's warfare about whether you should swap the whole of Canada for a single island for Martinique, because of the value that single, reasonably small islands have. But these islands, they produce sugar, in particular molasses, but they depend heavily on imports for. For survival, particularly food, but also timber, livestock, flour, fish, manufactures, goods, et cetera, because plantation economies concentrate on entirely on cash crops. So North American colonists are making huge profits by supplying these islands. And many merchants resent imperial regulations from Britain that restrict where and with whom they can change. So that's one piece of it. And of course, Afro one of the problems. If you're hyper dependent on a cash crop, that also means you can be vulnerable to change as well, particularly environmental change. And so I did a bit of work on climate change in the Caribbean in the 1760s. And it suddenly becomes clear that there are very unusual and heavy hurricanes and tropical storms that hit the whole Caribbean after the 1760s. And that creates terror on the ground, but it creates even bigger opportunities for the North American seaports because there are real chances to make even more money. So, for example, in October 1766, a big hurricane strikes Guadeloupe Martinique and parts of Saint Domingue, which later becomes Haiti. And French plantations are devastated. Sugar works are destroyed, ships wrecked all across the Lesser Antilles. And merchants in Boston and Newport and Philadelphia and New York are very quick to rub their hands because they recognize that they can sell masses of goods at quite high prices too. So they start loading their ships with everything they can find, code, barrel staves, horses, candles, lumber. And they sell their cargoes as a whole and at great profit. So this is a real opportunity, but it creates problems for the relationship with London.
- [25:25]
Afro Hashtag
Well, one of Britain's priorities at this point is to maintain its strategic superiority over the French. It's just fought an expensive war with France. It's anxious to continue to put pressure on French islands, but the last thing it wants is British colonists in North America helping out the French by supplying them with the crucial goods they need. So Britain has tried to prevent colonists from trading with French colonies in the Caribbean. These, though, are some of the most lucrative trading opportunities for those colonists. And they are not about to miss out on opportunities for profit. So instead of abiding by the restrictions imposed by Britain, they just find ways around them. They use false papers, they use, they go through intermediary ports and they use bribery to continue trading. It's a little bit like countries and companies that continue trading, for example, with Russia to avoid sanctions or Iran or North Korea, they see the opportunity if they can get around it, and these resourceful enterprising merchants will find ways around it. Customs officials in Britain are constantly complaining that American captains are openly ignoring their imperial restrictions and they are doing it to huge profit.
- [26:37]
Peter Frankenpern
Yeah, and that's just worth underlining, you know, bust sanctions. It means you could charge even more for your goods because the hassle factor and the reward factor, so you can make enormous profits. So for example, the Brown family of Providence, who later become benefactors of what becomes Brown University, are amongst those who profit heavily. So Nicholas Brown and Company trades extensively with the Caribbean, shipping horses and candles, rumors, foods, etc. While shipping molasses and sugar northwards. And those hurricanes increase the dependence on mainland suppliers. You know, you see the merchant elites of Newport, Rhode island that benefit hugely. And Newport's already one of the busiest slave trading, provisioning ports. This opens up lots of new potential for families like the Melbournes and the Vernons and the Lopez's who are building huge capabilities and logistical networks. And then the most important hurricane season comes in 1772. So this is exactly when the tensions with Britain are starting to warm up and get even Higher. In late August and September, very severe storms go through Jamaica and Cuba and parts of the Lesser Antilles, particularly hitting Jamaica. Contemporary reports of Kingston describe how warehouses are destroyed, wharves are smashed apart, and large numbers of ships are sunk in the harbour. And one account describes entire sugar estates laid flat, as if cut down with a scythe. And that matters to Britain, too, because Jamaica's Britain's single most valuable Caribbean colony, it's producing about a fifth of the whole of the empire's imported sugar and generating enormous customs revenue. So you've got this financial and environmental bit in the background that's such an important piece of the puzzle.
- [28:11]
Afro Hashtag
I think it's hard to comprehend now because you think of the power of the American economy. You wouldn't put Jamaica in the same league. But at this time in the late 1700s, to the British, Jamaica fell far outshines North America in its value as a colonial possession. It is generating huge cash profits for the British Crown, for British plantation owners. This island, which has the biggest concentration of enslaved people in the British colonial world, is constantly making money. And so the decimation of Jamaica by this hurricane is really problematic for Britain. And to add insult to injury is the specter of these Philadelphia flower merchants, for example, exporting huge quantities of flour into Jamaica after prices surge and enjoying the huge spoils of this disaster by importing large quantities of flour at these massively inflated prices. Many North American merchants from livestock traders in Chesapeake, for example, are exploiting the situation in Jamaica. And this is extremely triggering for Britain because it's. It's seeing colonists in one part of the empire weaponize a disaster for Britain in another part of the empire. And instead of this patriotic solidarity, they are looking for opportunities to sell, to smuggle and to enrich themselves. And that is something that Britain wants to stop.
- [29:35]
Peter Frankenpern
And, you know, you've mentioned already AFWA about how the irony is that in places like East India Company, where there's a kind of entire machine that's designed to extract and to smuggle and to treat people badly and make it all profits and says a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, but you've got people like John Hancock, the Boston merchant, who's already notorious amongst British customs officials, who keep complaining about the fact that he avoids customs duties and he keeps trading with the Caribbean, and these ships that he's sending out are making enormous profits for him. And they don't see Hancock as a respectable merchant who should be paying his taxes, paying his ways. They see him as the head of a massive smuggling operation that is being protected by Boston's political elite. So all this talk about liberty, customs officials think is all self serving. And Hancock, I mean, it's one of the great ironies of the whole story of the American Revolution. Hancock gets really angry by the Tea act and ironically the Tea act is one that cuts out intermediaries and makes tea cheaper to buy in the colonies and in America allows the ECD company to sell direct to the colonies in the US at 13. But that's really bad news for John Hancock because it means his margins go down because he's not able to smuggle so much because the tea's cheaper. So he's not worried about taxation and about representation, he's worried about his own profit lines. So those British crackdowns on smuggling in the 1760s is a source of great antagonism that's not really spoken about by the so called Founding Fathers because it's much better to talk about liberty and tyranny and republics than it is about the nuts and bolts of how you make a fast buck.
- [31:06]
Afro Hashtag
And I mean in defense of the Founding Fathers, which isn't necessarily a sentence I thought I would utter and as
- [31:11]
Peter Frankenpern
I said, I was surprised to hear,
- [31:12]
Afro Hashtag
as I said earlier, everyone is a pirate in this situation. The British state is angry that it's basically illegal economy of enslaving, exploiting, torturing and murdering in large numbers. Because I think the average life expectancy of black people once they arrive in Jamaica under slavery is seven years they are worked until they drop dead in the fields. It's the most brutal plantation economy possibly in history. Britain is angry that that system is under threat by another group of colonists who are also enslaving and also smuggling, enjoying those spoils. So there's no one honourable as far as I'm concerned in this scenario, everybody is speaking the language of the rule of law and allegiance to the King and liberty to justify whatever money making scam they are running at the time. But I think what is interesting is how much those respective parties believe in the language of liberty and the Enlightenment that they're speaking. Underneath all of that though, is the undeniable hard, cold reality of profit. And we'll see after the break how that by the 1770s comes to threaten not just the relationship between Britain and America, but the whole colonial structure in itself.
- [32:27]
Taylor
Hey everybody, this is Taylor from the Total Soccer show and this episode is brought to you by Hotels.com, the summer of soccer is right around the corner and if you aren't using hotels.com to book the experience of a lifetime. It's worth asking why? As a member, you save up to 20% on hundreds of thousands of hotels around the world and earn rewards on every single stay. Which means the trips you're taking now help pay for the ones you're already dreaming about. So whether you're following your team across North America this summer, or planning a well earned escape after being glued to football for weeks on end, make sure you book on hotels.com and start earning rewards. Because when it comes to hotels, it's all in the name. Hotels dot com.
- [33:14]
Peter Frankenpern
So, by the 1770s, as we've seen, many colonial elites have begun to believe that Britain sees American prosperity as a threat. It's not just annoying that they're not paying their way. It's that the American colonies and some of the wealthy families are undermining Britain and its and its national interests. So, ironically, when the First Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia in 1774, it does so not to promote ideas about revolutionary government, but as an emergency gathering by people who are keen to protect both their constitutional rights, but also their economic interests. That's their right from the very beginning. And at that meeting, there are 56 delegates from 12 colonies, all except Georgia, who assemble after Britain imposed the coercive acts following the Bossantine Party. And although later this idea of Congress is a purely patriotic gathering, the discussions about how to protect commercial advantage and to not allow the British to put restrictions in their way becomes a real problem.
- [34:09]
Afro Hashtag
Perhaps the most important outcome of the First Continental Congress in 1774 was the creation of what became known as the Continental Assembly Association. This was a sweeping boycott of British imports and a threat that if grievances remain unresolved, then there would be eventual bans on exports to Britain and to the West Indies. This is the American colonies flexing its muscles and stating its ability and willingness to completely go against the British Crown and act as if it's in many ways already an independent nation by passing policies and coordinated acts which would damage Britain. It's completely unprecedented in the history of North America to this point, but it's
- [34:55]
Peter Frankenpern
a kind of tit for tat. So if the British are going to put restrictions, the American colonies agree that they're going to stop exports to Britain. It's a bit like Donald Trump closing the Straits of Hormuz after Iran has already closed it. It's a bit like saying, if you're going to inflict pain on me, I get to inflict pain pain on you. And the measures are very Carefully designed delegates know that Caribbean plantation economies depend on food imports from North America, especially grain and food and livestock. So restricting trade doesn't just threaten British merchants on these islands and their plantation wealth, but also affects the wider Atlantic commercial system that's generating so much of the support that the British Empire depends on. So Congress is gambling that the use of its great growing economic power can be used as a bargaining tool. And it's a sort of form of economic coercion that again looks quite reminiscent of the world we're living in at the moment, about how you can use your economic muscles to be able to try to concentrate people's minds. But even after the first meeting, the second time the Continental Congress meets in 1775, the focus is not about Britain and tyranny and liberty, it's about trade and finance.
- [36:02]
Afro Hashtag
Yeah, Congress realizes very quickly that sustaining resistance to Britain is going to absolutely centre on access to international commerce, to foreign credit and to crucial maritime supply networks. So these new leaders in North America are thinking about how to keep their ports functioning, how to maintain exports and how to secure overseas markets. And that helps explain something that later comes to be very important to Britain, to America and to France, and which is the early interest in getting French support. Because the colonists need France not just for military aid, but because they need commercial partnerships and access to finance that bypasses the British. So the prospect of trading freely with France, with Spain, which is a huge power in the Caribbean and one of Britain's other main rivals, becomes one of the unspoken but powerful attractions from separation with Britain. It's opening up these world markets that were not permitted in its former colonial arrangement. And it's the opportunity, not just for immediate profit, but to get through the war and also to imagine what an independent future could look like, having weaned itself off this dependent colonial relationship with Britain.
- [37:13]
Peter Frankenpern
So that in many ways that the great special relationship is between the United States and France in a kind of French telling, particularly with people like La Marquis de Lafayette, who's unbelievably famous in the us, it's about the French who later have their own revolution, only just over a decade later. That language about independence, about liberty, allows this act of great heroism. But for the French too, it's, it's all self motivated and self interested by wanting to supply their own Caribbean islands, wanting to stick their finger in the eye of their rivals in Europe, and also because there's lots of money you can make too, but ironically afraid there's another reason to generate support for independence. And it's about how people in other parts of the British world are being treated.
- [37:52]
Afro Hashtag
Yeah. And we'll come back to France because actually the self interest that France calculates spectacularly backfires when it ends up bankrupted as a result of supporting the American colonies. But in 1770, world events are becoming very much connected to the struggle in America. And in 1770 in particular, there is a famine in Bengal which has a huge impact and becomes a meme for how British imperialism exploits. So the famine between 1769 and 1773 killed. And it's quite hard to get your head around the numbers, actually between 7 and 10 million people. That is around 1/3 of the population of Bengal at the time. And it's not the only time in history there'll be a catastrophic famine in Bengal deeply connected to British imperialism. But in the 1770s, news of this mortality, starvation, societal collapse circulates widely through this interconnected world. Newspapers, pamphlets, parliamentary debates, commercial correspondence across the Atlantic. And for many observers, and even observers who at the time don't even regard the inhabitants of Bengal as their equals because of the racial narratives and hierarchies that are popular even in that context, this horrific scale of death and suffering becomes symbolic of greed, the destructive power of monopolies and the abuse of imperial power and unaccountable corporations. And it's perhaps that more than the humanitarian issues, Peter, that the mismanagement of the East India Company that really fuels the argument made by North American colonists that this is actually a toxic empire capable of inflicting havoc rather than providing opportunities to thrive for its colonies.
- [39:42]
Peter Frankenpern
Yeah, I mean, it's fuzzy because Bengal isn't governed by the British state directly, but by the East India Company, as you mentioned. And the East India Company has gathered enormous tax collecting rights in Bengal in the 1760s. It extracts huge revenue while and pushing enormous profits back to Britain. I wrote about this in silk roads nearly 15 years ago about these global connections, about how that was seen in the North American colonies. Critics, both in what becomes the United States but also in the in Britain criticize and accuse company officials of enriching themselves while making the situation worse locally. Not everybody's delighted about about all of this, but the reports that grain is being exported while people are starving and taxes collected even as famine spread creates outrage, particularly in London. And so in both Britain and in the colonies, the East India Company becomes a symbol of corruption, of monopoly power, of exploitation. And colonial critics start to use that as a way of saying if the British and easy to company allow people to starve to death in Bengal, would they allow people in the American colonies to starve as well? And that connection solidifies with the Tea act, which is all to do with bailing out the East India Company. That's, that's basically gone bust because its business model has sort of toppled itself over. So the American Revolution kicks off because a whole set of different factors, but a lot of them have something to do with money. So from London's point of view, colonial assemblies are defiant. They're standing the way of what London is telling them to do. British customs officials get intimidated, there's destruction of private property, and basically this is a bunch of ungrateful subjects not knowing their place.
- [41:18]
Afro Hashtag
But as we'll see in the next episode, the crisis escalates not necessarily because of these events that have objectively taken place, but, but as is so often the case, because of the decisions that are made about how to handle those events. And neither side really understands the mindset of the other and how far it's willing to go. So on the American side, they're not actually thinking about independence initially. They are thinking about using their leverage to negotiate better terms. They want Britain to treat them with respect. They want to maintain control of their own affairs. They want reassurances that these harbingers of doom, like standing armies and excessive taxation, will not be brought down on them. On the British side, most British politicians don't want a war with America and also see these colonists as their kind of far flung cousins. What they want is this bunch of nouveau riche in the colonies to know their place and protect the status quo and not quite create any unnecessary disruption in the empire. But that's the whole point. Mistrust, fear, miscalculation and a lack of cultural and emotional insight into how each side is thinking can push events way beyond any actual intention of war ever could. And that is exactly what is happening here. And it's far from the last time it will happen.
- [42:46]
Peter Frankenpern
Thanks for listening to Legacy.
- [42:47]
Afro Hashtag
To dive deeper and support the show, sign up to Legacy. Plus, you will get bonus episodes, early access, Q&As and much, much more. Go to Legacy SupportingCast FM.
- [42:59]
Peter Frankenpern
And don't forget, you can watch all of our episodes on Spotify or YouTube. And for everything else, including our substacks or updates on TikTok and Instagram, just check out the show notes or search for Legacy Podcast.
- [43:09]
Afro Hashtag
I'm Peter Frankerpen, I'm afraid, and we'll see you on the next episode of Legacy.
- [43:31]
Ben Green
Hi, this is Ben Green from the Athletic fc. The podcast you're about to listen to is brought to you by Hotels.com as a Hotels.com member, you save up to 20% on hundreds of thousands of hotels and earn rewards on every single stay. Which means the trips you're taking now help pay for the ones you're already dreaming about. And unlike some other places, there are no blackout dates. So when you want to travel, your rewards are ready to go. So the next time you're planning a work trip or a getaway, make sure to book it@hotels.com and start earning rewards. Hotels.com it's all in the name.