---
title: 'The Corporate Bailout that caused The Boston Tea Party'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=tudXVzG_fG0'
video_id: 'tudXVzG_fG0'
date: 2026-07-01
duration_sec: 1385
---

# The Corporate Bailout that caused The Boston Tea Party

> Source: [The Corporate Bailout that caused The Boston Tea Party](https://youtube.com/watch?v=tudXVzG_fG0)

## Summary

This video explores the Boston Tea Party through the lens of a corporate bailout—the British East India Company's near bankruptcy and the resulting Tea Act. It also features a recipe for an 18th-century green tea caudle, using the same type of tea dumped into Boston Harbor.

### Key Points

- **Boston Tea Party and a Recipe** [00:00] — The video begins with the Boston Tea Party (92,000 lbs of tea dumped) and introduces a recipe for green tea caudle from the 1734 cookbook 'The Complete Housewife'.
- **Causes: Taxation and Corporate Bailout** [06:08] — The causes include post-Seven Years War debt, the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, and the retention of the tea duty. The East India Company's financial crisis led to a massive government bailout and the Tea Act of 1773.
- **East India Company's Power and Crisis** [09:57] — The East India Company controlled half of British trade and had a private army of 100,000 soldiers. It faced bankruptcy and requested a £1.5 million loan from the government.
- **The Tea Act and Colonial Reaction** [12:03] — The Tea Act lowered the price of tea but maintained a small tax to assert Parliament's right to tax. Colonists, led by figures like John Hancock and Samuel Adams, opposed it on principle, not price.
- **The Boston Tea Party Event** [14:14] — On December 16, 1773, about 50–100 men dressed as Mohawks boarded three ships and destroyed 342 chests of tea over three hours, leaving the ships otherwise untouched.
- **Aftermath: Intolerable Acts** [18:09] — The British response included the Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts), which closed Boston's port, allowed quartering of troops, and revoked Massachusetts' charter.

## Transcript

In December of 1773, Undutax's illegal smuggling and one of the biggest corporate bailouts in world history led to 92,000 pounds of tea being tossed into Boston Harbor.
So I am going to make an 18th century recipe for green tea caudal as I discuss the Boston Tea Party. So thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video as we raise a cup of thickened tea to the American Revolution, this time on Drinking History.
So while I'm obviously going to be brewing a pot of tea for this episode, I wanted something a little more interesting than just brewing a pot of tea and I found something a little more interesting in the 1734 edition of the complete housewife
or accomplished gentle woman's companion by Eliza Smith. The book is English but it was the first cookbook that was printed in the American colonies when it was printed in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1742.
And in addition to containing the first English recipe for something called ketchup, the author includes a recipe for tea caudal. Now caudal is an older word that just refers to any warm drink actually,
but typically it was either wine or ale-based, starting in the middle ages, and then it was sweetened and spiced and thickened with either egg yolks or breadcrumbs or some other thickener.
This is the first caudal recipe that I have come across that uses not only a liquor like an alcohol but also tea, specifically green tea. She says to make tea caudal.
Make a quart of strong green tea and pour it out into a skillet and set it over the fire. Then beat the yolks of four eggs and mix with them a pint of white wine, a grated nutmeg, sugar to your taste, and put all together.
And stir it over the fire till it is very hot, then drink it in China dishes as caudal. Now since this episode is on the Boston Tea Party, I wanted to actually use one of the types of tea that they tossed into Boston Harbor in 1773.
Now the most common tea that was on the ships was something called Buhi, which is a black tea and it was kind of the lowest grade of black tea. But then they also had too much nicer black teas. One was Kongu and one was Sushong.
Then there were two green teas, Singlow and Young Heisen tea. And the Heisen tea was drunk by the wealthier colonists and was a favorite of both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. And the tea was named after Philip Heisen who was the director of the East India Company.
And since the East India Company plays a big role in the Boston Tea Party, I have opted to use that one. So for this recipe, what you'll need is one quarter, one liter of water, two tablespoons of green loose leaf tea, four egg yolks, two cups, or four hundred and 75
milliliters of white wine, one nutmeg, about two and a half teaspoons grated, and about a half cup or 100 grams of white sugar to your taste. So we're going to start by making the actual green tea which needs to be steeped, not boiled, just steeped.
So heat the water on the stove until it hits just about 170 to 180 fahrenheit around 80 degrees Celsius. Make sure it doesn't boil. Then add the green tea and stir it in and let it steep for about
three minutes, much longer than that and it can become bitter. Once it is steeped, strain the tea leaves out and leave the liquid in a medium saucepan and let it cool until it is just warm. And as it cools, you can take your four egg yolks and whisk them in a bowl with the nutmeg
and then whisk in the sugar as well. Once all of those are combined, you can add in the white wine and stir until everything is dissolved. Then once the tea has cooled until it is just warm to the touch, you can add that egg mixture. If it is too hot when you add the egg mixture, the egg will
curdle and that's gross, so wait until it's just warmed to the touch. Then set this over a medium heat and slowly let it warm. As soon as it starts to steam, you can stir it until it comes to about 175
degrees Fahrenheit or 80 degrees Celsius, not much hotter than that. Now some coddles use a lot more egg yolk or they'll use bread crumbs or sometimes oats and they'll get really, really thick, almost like
a porridge or a drinkable custard. Then there are some that are just a little thickened and are more like an egg nog kind of texture and that's going to be closer to what this is. Also, when I started
researching this episode, I came across a couple of sources that said that the tea that was tossed in the harbor was actually brick tea and so I was like, okay, I'm going to order some of those and this is brick tea or tea brick or sometimes called a tea cake and it's basically fermented tea that
has been compressed. Here is one that I got that's really fancy and it turns out that these were not actually on those three boats. So now I have some really fancy and beautiful brick tea but they
are not appropriate for the Boston tea party. Turns out that most of the sites that claim that it was brick tea are just trying to actually sell bricks of tea. They got me but I think they're pretty and
it is a thing. So, brick tea was very popular. It goes way back at least to the Ming dynasty and this you have to actually boil for a while. It does leave a lot of tea crumbs but you have to boil it for a
while. The tea that was actually on the the three ships in the Boston tea party that was all loose leaf tea and we know that because they actually had to rake it into the water at one point. You can't
really rake a brick. They did the the Boston tea party at low tide so while some of it got into the ocean some of it like just kind of piled in mounds in the mud and so they sent people down with
rakes and we're like all right get it into the ocean. But I am getting way ahead of myself because that what I actually want to talk about are the causes of the Boston tea party and obviously it's very very complicated and there are lots of different causes and different people had different
motivations but a lot of them actually come down to excessive greed of some of the wealthy colonists and one of the biggest corporate bailouts in all of history. So while your coddle warms
make sure that you are subscribed to tasting history and let me tell you a little bit more about the Boston tea party. So most of us learned in school that the Boston tea party occurred as a protest
against taxation without representation and it was in part but like most things with history it's always a lot more complicated than that entire books have been written about this. Also turns out that
for some of the people involved it was maybe not quite so noble as all that but it does at least start with taxes. See following the seven years war the British government while victorious was
also flat broke. Parliament was of course used to raising money via taxes and duties on the citizens of the mother country and its businesses but until then it had never actually levied a direct tax on those living in the 13 American colonies. Well since a large portion of the war was fought
in North America for the benefit of the colonists it's what we here call the French and Indian war. Parliament and King George III felt that it was only fair to recoup some of that money
by taxing the colonists who benefited from the war. First came the sugar act in 1764 which was as the name would suggest a tax on sugar but really it was actually a reworking of a 30-year-old molasses
tax and the effect was less to tax the people and more to curtail smuggling. But then came the stamp act and this was the first direct tax levied on pretty much everyone if you ever needed
any kind of legal document or newspaper or magazine or even cards playing cards there had to be a royal stamp on it and that stamp cost you money. The thing is this tax passed parliament
without any of the colonists having representation in parliament and so this was taxation without representation and the outcry was overwhelming so much so that they repealed it within six months.
Instead parliament passed the Townsend Revenue Act which added duties to certain imports like paint and paper, lead, glass and tea. Again the blowback was so intense that in 1770 parliament
repealed all of the duties except for one. See originally many people in parliament just said let's just get rid of all the duties this is ridiculous it's not worth it but the prime minister Lord
North said no we have to keep one to assert our right to tax the colonists. If we take them all away then we're kind of giving up that right and they chose tea as the one to keep. Well the colonists
who didn't agree that parliament did have a right to tax them decided to boycott British tea and find other options less legal options and tea smuggling had already existed before this but now
it really flourished and for the next few years working with Dutch traders a number of prominent Americans including the first signer of the Declaration of Independence John Hancock smuggled in copious amounts of tea and provided it to the colonists for slightly less than they would have
paid to have the British tea. Flash forward to October 8 1772 and Lord North the prime minister takes a meeting with the head of the East India Company. Now the British East India Company
was unbelievably large wealthy and powerful. There is no modern equivalent truly you would basically have to take like the top 15 or 20 companies in America make them one and then make them have powers
that no company has. Not only did this company control about half the British trade but it also maintained a private army of 100,000 soldiers to do so. Eventually it would actually be a quarter million soldiers
which was larger than the actual British army. So with this kind of wealth and power it's no wonder that Lord North kind of freaked out when the meeting was to tell him we're broke and we're going to
be bankrupt really really soon. What we do have not money but what we do have is a bunch of tea that's just sitting in some warehouses. Benjamin Franklin who was an American diplomat living in
London at the time got wind of this and sent a letter to a friend in Philadelphia saying the company have accepted bills which they find themselves unable to pay. Though they have the value of two millions in tea and other India goods in their stores, perishing under a want of demand. Their
credit thus suffering and their stock falling government will lose 400,000 pounds per annum and although it is known that the American market is lost by continuing the duty on tea and that we are supplied by
the Dutch can an American for bear smiling at these blunders. They needed the government to provide them with 1.5 million pounds which was about an eighth of the entire revenue that the government took in
every year and Lord North said okay we're going to make you this loan even though they don't have any money to pay it back but the British government then took over more control over the company
and they had to pass an act to make sure that the company could actually pay the money back and that was the tea act. Now this was not a tax on tea but rather the opposite. It actually allowed
the East India company to bypass middlemen in London and import directly to America with a much smaller tax on the tea. It would actually lower the price of tea for American colonists, thus opening the
American market and giving the company a monopoly over cheaper tea supplied to the colonists. In this one act Lord North was saving the British East India company ensuring that they would be able
to repay the loan and placating the colonists by supplying them with less expensive tea. It was a masterstroke or at least that's what Lord North thought but another letter from Benjamin Franklin
shows why he was wrong about that. Now the wise scheme is to take off so much duty here as we'll make tea cheaper in America than foreigners can supply us and continue the duty there to keep up the exercise
of the right. They have no idea that any people can act from any other principle but that of interest and they believe that three pens in a pound of tea of which one does not drink perhaps ten pound in a year is sufficient to overcome all the patriotism of an American. See it wasn't really about the price
of tea. It was about the British right to tax the colonists and the colonists right to not have the British tax the colonists and so even though the tea would actually now be cheaper than the smuggled tea
it would still have a tiny tiny tax on it and that was still too much tax for many of the colonists. Those who were behind the no taxation without representation line people like John Adams and
Sam Adams they would not allow this and those who were making great deals of money off of smuggled Dutch tea like John Hancock also wouldn't allow this. But the tea left London all the same and on
November 28th 1773 the Dartmouth laden with 114 chests of British East India company tea from China arrived at Griffin's Wharf in Boston Harbor shortly after the Eleanor and the Beaver also landed
all filled with tea and other goods and all worried about violence hence unwilling to unload their cargo. By law the owners of these ships had to unload their cargo within 20 days of it getting there and
pay the tax on it and that 20th day would be December 17th. Well on December 16th the night before the deadline to offload the tea and pay the duty 5,000 to 7,000 people over a third of Boston's population
met at the old south meeting hall to listen to speeches and debates about what exactly to do with the hope that governor Thomas Hutchinson would allow the ships to return to England without offloading the tea. But when word came that he refused and said if those ships try to leave the
harbor they will be fired upon Samuel Adams got up and declared this meeting can do nothing further to save the country. Now some people actually claim that that was the signal to head out
to Boston Harbor and dump the tea but it actually wasn't in fact he tried to keep people there because he wasn't done talking. The meeting still had a little bit more time to go but about 10 or 15 minutes later there were some people who got up and left and they went and dressed up many of them
as Mohawk warriors and between 6 and 7 pm about 50 to 100 men walked down to Griffins Wharf boarded the three ships and quite methodically over the period of three hours destroyed about 342
chests holding 92,000 pounds of tea. Now most of the leaders of this movement like John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren they did not go in fact they not only stayed back but they made sure
to be seen staying back so basically they had an alibi because it was an illegal act that was going to be perpetrated. In fact the only one of the leaders who did go to the ships was a man named William
Molino who ended up dying a year later so we don't usually even remember his name. Most of the people who went were like normal people just dock workers and stuff like that and so they went
down there to destroy the tea and to only destroy the tea. It is hard today to imagine how egregious an act this was because the destruction of property was one of the very worst things
that a person could do. I mean it still is but it was taken much much more seriously back then especially in the colonies and so they made sure that they were only destroying the tea and that nothing else
would be touched. In fact some people stuck around afterward to sweep up any of like the the broken wooden everything that was on the decks of the ships because they wanted to leave them spotless
and there was a lock that had to be destroyed to get into the tea on one of the ships. The next morning the person who broke it brought a new lock and said hey here I'm here to replace your lock it really was just about destroying the tea as an act of defiance and it was serious and they knew that it was
serious and so did everyone else. The next day it was in newspapers and people were writing about it. John Adams wrote the die is cast the people have passed the river and cut away the bridge. Last night
three cargoes of tea were emptied into the harbor. This is the grandest event which has ever yet happened since the controversy with Britain opened. The sublimity of it charms me. By the way John
Adams over abundant use of commas absolutely baffles me. Just don't get it. Anyway it took a little while for word of this to reach London but when it did all hell broke loose normal people were just
they were flabbergasted you this did not happen it was outrageous and lord north the prime minister said the Americans have tarred and feathered your subjects burned your ships denied obedience to your
laws and authority yet so clement and so far bearing has our conduct been that it is incumbent on us now to take a different course if they deny our authority in one instance it goes to all we must
control them or submit to them and not long after in an effort to punish the Bostonians the coercive acts or intolerable acts were passed which among other things closed the port of Boston allowed for
the quartering of troops in people's private homes and revoked the colonial charter of Massachusetts placing it now directly under British control and it really was just Boston that they were trying to
punish even though other acts of vandalism around the tea took place in other parts of the colonies in fact the first took place in Charleston but they didn't destroy the tea they just confiscated it
and basically hit it away they did destroy the tea in New York they dumped it into the Hudson but it was somewhat after the the Boston affair so Boston took the brunt of it as for the colonists they retaliated
by boycotting tea all together in many cases drinking liberty tea instead which was basically infusions of local herbs and plants and switching more and more over to coffee for their caffeine fix so with
that in mind if this were 1774 I would probably be seen as a trader for what I am about to do because I am about to enjoy or at least try this 18th century recipe for tea coddle and here we are tea
coddle using the same green tea that was tossed into the harbor during the Boston Tea Party so you can really smell the wine and the nutmeg I'm not getting much of a green tea scent on it but let's give it
a taste last word
okay so you do taste the green tea and the nutmeg you actually I don't really taste the wine oddly enough I can smell it but I can't taste it what's odd is that I can taste like citrus like lemon
or some citrus in there but there is there is no citrus in there oh that is very very interesting I don't hate that I don't hate that I mean it's kind of growing on me actually it is that is very
odd it is not too thick at all it's it's kind of like eggnog it's just like a little thicker than the liquid tube that was to begin with but it's not so thick that like I said it's not like it's
going to coat the back of a spoon or anything but it's actually quite pleasant but yeah there's like this bite of citrus and I'm guessing that's actually the wine but something has happened to
the flavor where it has changed and it is something new and that's really cool so yeah this is actually worth making if only to to taste such an interesting drink because you're not going to find this on
many menus today I can tell you that so I will make sure to put the recipe on the tasting history website as I always do a website that I built with help from today's sponsor Squarespace. Squarespace is
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a website or domain and I will see you next time on Drinking History.