Today is the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Stop rolling your eyes, this isn't a patriotic post! You know me better than that.
This is about spilling the tea... about the British East India Company's spilled tea, and what that had to do with Bengal, textile workers, and famine.
See, BEIC was using its private armies to open markets around the world to their trading policies, and to install local rulers who would keep the goods and money flowing. They did this in Bengal, one of the world's biggest producers of textiles in the mid-1700s.
Then, in 1768, drought hit Bengal and crops failed. People began to go hungry, but the BEIC's puppet rulers and agents just continued to collect taxes--and, in some cases, to profiteer off the sale of food. Over the next two years, these practices exacerbated the food shortages, leading to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770, in which 7 - 10 million people are estimated to have starved to death. That's at least 25% of the entire Bengali population of the time.
This put a big dent in the profits of the BEIC (oopsie, who knew famine profiteering could have negative economic impacts?), leading to a financial crisis in England. This is also why BEIC was unloading tea for cheap in the American colonies, to get some of those revenues back.
So yeah, "no taxation without representation" was the rallying cry, but isn't it interesting that we (USians, I mean) were never taught that the REASON colonists were worried about this is because they felt they had something in common with starving Bengalis: namely, the vulnerability to a multinational corporation which clearly demonstrated its depraved indifference to human suffering in pursuit of profit.
#CfP#histodons
The US #Military and the #Holocaust
International Research #Workshop, Center for Advanced #HolocaustStudies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (#USHMM), July 15–26, 2024
Co-Convenors: Kaete O’Connell (Yale University) and Adam Seipp (Texas A&M University)
Application deadline: February 2, 2024
Check out my new article, co-authored with some very swell gents. We find that lynch victims' surviving family members were more likely to move out of the county than were other people living in their census districts. People victimized by the US regime of violent racial terror respond the same way that other terrorism victims do. Implications for dispossession & reparations.
Dating Sept. 25, 1773, this account statement between Joseph Woodfolk & George Mitchell is signed by James Madison Sr., the president's father.
It includes a receipt for various supplies, including 2 bed cords, 8 nails, 1 quart mug & 1 pair of buckles.
Document with Madison Sr.’s signature, MF2014.22.5, The Montpelier Collection.
#OTD 1787 the full text of the #Constitution was printed for the public for the first time in the "The Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser", issue No. 2690, published by Dunlap & Claypoole, Philadelphia.
Sept.17 marks the anniversary of the signing of the #Constitution. #JamesMadison wrote to #ThomasJefferson in March 1787, when plans were underway for the #ConstitutionalConvention, “What may be the result of this political experiment cannot be foreseen.”
11 days before the Constitution was signed, Madison wrote Jefferson, “If the present moment be lost it is hard to say what may be our fate.”
We know that Demas was born #OTD in 1777 because Isaac Hite recorded his birthdate after receiving Demas and his family as a wedding gift from James Madison Sr.
#OTD in 1845, 250 veterans of the Battle of Baltimore were honored in Washington DC on the battle’s
31 st anniversary – and they took time to honor their wartime First Lady.
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Dolley Madison,
by then 77 years old, had become an icon of an earlier time in American history.
William Elwell, 1848 portrait of Dolley Madison, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Join Montpelier’s Sr. Research Historian Hilarie Hicks as she discusses Montpelier’s duPont family history, shows personal photos of the duPonts at Montpelier, and reveals some surprising connections between the Madisons and duPonts.
What does a #President do if the #WhiteHouse is uninhabitable?
Rent a new house! That's what #JamesMadison did on Sept. 8, 1814, moving into the #OctagonHouse after British troops burned the White House.
National Photo Company collection, Library of Congress, 1910-1926.
Really enjoying this. It's both an impressively erudite and remarkably accessible retelling of #USHistory that centers #Indigenous peoples and obliterates a number of national myths. Highly recommended and worth imitating for historians (like me!) working in other national contexts. #history#AmericanHistory#histodons@histodons
Really enjoying this. It's both an impressively erudite and remarkably accessible retelling of #USHistory that centers #Indigenous peoples and obliterates a number of national myths. Highly recommended and worth imitating for historians (like me!) working in other national contexts. #history#AmericanHistory#histodons@histodons
#OTD 1787 the #ConstituionalConvention appointed a Committee of Style “to revise the
stile of and arrange the articles which had been agreed to by the House," including #JamesMadison.
Gouverneur Morris was the lead writer, penning “We, the People of the United States...”
Episode #1 of Montpelier's new podcast series, "Consider the Constitution" drops TODAY!
Host Dr. Katie Crawford Lackey sits down with scholar Dr. Lynn Uzzell and discusses the Bill of Rights. What they are. Why they are so important. And whether they protect individuals today the way Madison conceived of them.
#OTD the Constitutional Convention unanimously approved the Copyright and Patent Clause. Madison
had first proposed patent protection on August 18. Learn more about his involvement with patents and
the Patent Office in “Patently Madison.” https://www.montpelier.org/learn/patently-madison
Marion duPont Scott, the last private owner of #Montpelier, died at home #OTD in 1983, at the age of 89.
In her will, Mrs. Scott expressed a desire that her heirs would transfer Montpelier to The National Trust for Historic Preservation so that it could be restored & furnished to the time period of #JamesMadison. #sschat#histodons#HistoryTeacher#apgov#ushistory@academicchatter
“Orange. September Court. 1771.”
This document in the Montpelier Collection features the remains of #JamesMadison’s signature, unfortunately, lost when the paper was damaged sometime during the past #250 years.
Court document, MF2014.22.2a-c, The Montpelier Collection.