5. US History - Boston Tea Party (1773) — Transcript

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1. 0:00So, as you can tell, I'm skipping ahead
2. 0:02a few centuries again to uh 1773.
3. 0:06Um, between 1620 and 1773,
4. 0:09um, the country grows significantly. Um,
5. 0:14in 1620, it was simply Plymouth's
6. 0:16colony. Um, by 1773, the country spans
7. 0:2013 states. Um they build a lot of towns,
8. 0:24they build harbors, they build
9. 0:26infrastructure, uh they build amongst
10. 0:28others, uh the city of Boston, which is
11. 0:30one of the older cities in the United
12. 0:32States. Um
13. 0:34and they kind of get sick of the
14. 0:36British. Um of course, the people that
15. 0:40got there first were British. However,
16. 0:42it's been about six generations now. So
17. 0:46the descendants of these Puritans don't
18. 0:49feel British anymore. They feel like
19. 0:51they're Americans and they feel that
20. 0:53it's um not right that they still
21. 0:56technically belong to Great Britain. Um
22. 1:00why do they feel that way? Well, for the
23. 1:03uh very good reason that they have to
24. 1:05pay a lot of taxes
25. 1:08to a country where they are not
26. 1:11represented. So, how does that work
27. 1:13exactly? Great Britain treats them like
28. 1:16it treats all of their other colonies.
29. 1:18they have to pay a lot of taxes, but
30. 1:20since they're a colony and not part of
31. 1:22the British Empire, they don't really
32. 1:24get a say in what is decided about them.
33. 1:28So,
34. 1:29practically this means that they pay
35. 1:31taxes even though they can't vote. Um,
36. 1:34so they don't have any representatives
37. 1:37uh of their colony in the British
38. 1:40government. Uh, and they feel like it is
39. 1:43unfair that they pay to be part of the
40. 1:46country. um but they don't have anything
41. 1:47to say in this country. That's what the
42. 1:49slogan of no taxation without
43. 1:51representation
44. 1:52uh represents.
45. 1:54So this idea uh of becoming more
46. 2:00independent for Great Britain has been
47. 2:02growing for a while now. Um and it
48. 2:04reaches its climax during the Boston Tea
49. 2:06Party which you can see depicted over
50. 2:08there. So basically three ship loads of
51. 2:10tea arrive in the Boston Harbor the that
52. 2:13have come from Great Britain. um before
53. 2:17Bostononians can that's that's an
54. 2:19inhabitant of Boston. Before the
55. 2:21Bostononians can um bring the tea uh to
56. 2:26shore. So into Boston they have to pay
57. 2:27large amounts of taxes. Uh and this is
58. 2:30the point where they figure out, you
59. 2:31know what, [ __ ] your taxes. We don't
60. 2:33want your tea. You're not getting any
61. 2:35taxes. So they throw uh three ship loads
62. 2:38worth of tea in the Boston Harbor. Uh
63. 2:41it's an act of revolution. It's not a
64. 2:42big act of revolution usually for big
65. 2:45gestures uh big revolutionary gestures.
66. 2:48It takes a lot of people dying for
67. 2:50governments to listen. Uh however, no
68. 2:53wait. So why is this then such a famous
69. 2:55event? Uh simply because it's the first
70. 2:57one. Uh after 1773,
71. 3:01a lot more of these tiny little riots,
72. 3:04tiny little revolutions uh take place.
73. 3:07And you can kind of already sense that
74. 3:09this is going to um get worse and uh
75. 3:14eventually 2 years later uh it does
76. 3:17become worse.