Yeah, you can take that argument and dump it right into Boston Harbor.
Five minutes of hate news
- Thread starter PsihoKekec
- Start date
As much as I hate the historical allusion (it was a waste of perfectly good tea! Barbaric Americans!
), I agree.
SHould not have raised taxesAs much as I hate the historical allusion (it was a waste of perfectly good tea! Barbaric Americans!
Yeah, we were dicks back then. Still, being a bunch of dicks had us owning most of the world at one point, haha.
And raising the tax a little to much started a domino effect
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
And enforce it with guns and bayonets. Just keep in mind the people you're enforcing it on can fight back and resist.
Actually, it was the First and Second World Wars that were the beginning of the end for us. The loss of the American colonies was a big blow, yeah, but it wasn't a death blow.
We still had Canada and pretty much everywhere else.
Then the First World War happened, and the decline started.
One of our worst mistakes was giving Hong Kong back, at our end. Fucking China.
Harlock
I should have expected that really
More the Second World War, Britain took a lot of casualties and morale loss in WWI but economically came out stronger than we went in. The Empire peaked in the 1920s.
It was the stacking of economic crashes in the 20s and 30s followed by a vastly expensive war followed by the US undercutting potential European rivals afterwards.
It was the stacking of economic crashes in the 20s and 30s followed by a vastly expensive war followed by the US undercutting potential European rivals afterwards.
Vimes would be so angry, even Lord Vetinari takes a step back.
Terthna
Professional Lurker
Your biggest dicks at the time were the King and Parliament; if they hadn't first ignored the American colonies' objection to being treated like second-class citizens, and then later taken it as a threat to their power when it persisted, the revolution would have never happened. Though I'm glad they did; because honestly? You guys seem to be even more screwed than we are right now.
bintananth
behind a desk
That's a bit messier.
In 1898 Britain didn't buy Hong Kong from China. They leased it for 99 years. In 1997 the lease was up and China wasn't going to extend it.
The mistake wasn't returning Hong Kong to China. It was renting it instead of buying it outright.
Unfortunately, yeah. We... really don't like our government, to put it mildly.
Yeah, we should have bought it. Then again, we couldn't have predicted the rise of the CCP and how shitty China has become back then.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty, I guess?
You do realize that the stamped and taxed tea was *cheaper* than the illicit tea which was smuggled in by colonial traders and sold for considerable markups. The Boston Tea Party was literally a bunch of criminal smugglers who were angry that their highly profitable criminal activity was now being "undermined" by legal competition.
bintananth
behind a desk
Sorta.
If Britain owns Hong Kong then the CCP has no real incentive to play nice when trying to get it back.
The threat of nukes might deter the PLA from just waltzing in but wouldn't stop them from harassing any ship or aircraft headed to or leaving from Hong Kong.
Doesn't matter if it was cheaper, the taxes already existed. The real problem was that Tea Act granted a monopoly to the British East India Tea Company by undercutting any competition.
It was a government sanctioned monopoly to bail out the Tea Company.
As in, you have to pay the taxes and you have to take these shipments from us.
It doesn't MATTER if it was cheaper than other goods, it was the fact that they had to buy and pay taxes on THOSE goods whether they liked it or not. When they tried to send shipments back, they weren't allowed. That's what lead to the Boston Tea Party.
Yes the tax was an issue, but it was the tax combined with the fact that they were destroying any chance of competition with their Monopoly, by selling tea at undercut prices and not allowing the shipments to be turned away.
The tea being cheaper was actually part of the problem.
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Chaos Marine
Well-known member
Man gets police record for 'whistling Bob The Builder theme'
A MAN received a ‘racial hatred' police record, after whistling the Bob the Builder theme tune at a neighbour.
www.express.co.uk
Terthna
Professional Lurker
Also, it's important to note that the Tea Act was just the latest in a long series of issues with the British government; so the Boston Tea Party wasn't just about that one tax.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
More accurately the New Territory part of Hong Kong was leased. The actual Island was permanent UK territory as per the treaty that ended the 1st Opium War. Of course when most of the water for the Island came from the New Territory and it was completely indefensible yeah the UK keeping the Island wasn't really feasible
None of which would have been an issue if we had listened to MacArthur and killed the CCP in the crib.
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Americans organizing boycotts of English tea trade (1773, colorized, adapted to video):
