>> to find out more about this book and the work that john prendergast and his colleagues a doing this it enough project got org. >> up next benjamin carp, associate history professor at tufts university discussing the causes and impacts of the boston tea party which took place on december 16th 1773. this event in washington last about an hour. [applauding] >> again i just want to say thanks to the staff of the library. this is a wonderful institution, not just for its programming, but a wonderful institution for scholars. the archives and archival material and records that they

have here are difficult or even impossible to find elsewhere in the united states. it's a real benefit to scholars like myself. keeping with that actually the beginning and ending of my talk, the evidence is drawn from the revolutionary war pension records, which is one of the many items that they have here in the collection. so thanks to all of you for coming. in 1820a61 year-old ohio blacksmith with no more than $70 worth of property to his name made a startling admission in court. i was on board the east india companies ship and the harbor at boston and assisted in throwing the tea overboard on the 18th of december. being been 15 years of age. well, he was off by two days. the boston tea party to place on november 16th. joshua wiener had just done what no more than four or five people had ever done before. he confessed to participating in the boston tea party.

went on to describe his participation in the boughs of bunker hill. he was attempting to gain attention from the united states government which has never adequately rewarded its revolutionary soldiers for their service. but his testimony leaves questions unanswered. why did it happen? why did he join in? how did the tea party become a turning point? y had a state secret for almost 50 years? what does it all mean? the boston tea party has come with surprises, not least of which that the motivation started here in the middle colonies, new york city and philadelphia and not entirely in boston itself. fifteen years after his court appearance he was able to tell his story in more detail. he talked of the indignation he and his associates felt. legal tea brought tax or duty known as the towns and act.

these were the taxes on t as well as paper, leather, glass. most of those duties or repealed, but the tax on tea stayed on. to protest these tax the american colonies hit upon the nonimportation agreement as a way of convincing the british, it's they needed the americans. you're going to continue to impose these taxes. we are not going to import any british goods. when your merchants start complaining then you will change these laws that are making a so unhappy. the trick was that these agreements had to be universal in order to be successful. so by 1770 new york city and philadelphia had gotten their legal tea imports down to about zero. that's not to said they were still drinking tea. it is just that they were drinking smuggled tea from the dutch, danish, the german

principalities. so in boston all smugglers were doing some of the tea importing plenty of legal team was still entering the the market. when the nonimportation agreement collapsed in the summer of 1770 many of the radical patriots blamed boston for failing to keep up its end of the bargain. these resentments were still lingering. now under the tea act of 1773 passed by parliament the east india company received a tax break on t shipped to america. now there would have the ability to ship its t directly to america rather than go through a british or american merchant house as some sort of middle man. the indignation was increased by having heard of the arrival of the tea ships, referring to the arrival of the first ship in november of 1773. this was what he remembered as

the turning point. the arrival of three merchant ships. until 340 chesapeake bologna to the east india company. designated for sale in boston. a fourth ship was on its way, but it ran aground and never sailed again. then more ships were headed. in all four of these seaports the radical groups or the sons of liberty wanted this to be sent back to london. it wasn't so simple. the tea companies, in other words the designated agents of the east india company, they were very enthusiastic about giving up these generous new commissions. that was one group that wanted to see the tea land. another group that face the problem were the owners of these ships. they knew that if they were to just do with the sons of liberty

wanted them to do that their ships would be liable to seizure and basically they would lose all of the money that they had invested in purchasing these ships in the first place. you know. ships weren't allowed to come into port with dutiable goods and then turn around. had to actually land the goods and pay the taxes. but despite this resistance from the ship owners in new york city and philadelphia the radicals were able to pressure the companies to resign their commission, persuade the shipowners to go back, and they were able to persuade local officials all the way up to the governor into permitting this to go through. in boston those companies refused to resign their commissions and the customs officers and the governor in boston refused to look the other way and let those. ♪ turnaround. this is where the problem is going to arise.

this is when he's 75 years old. this is in about -- this is 1826 when he first tells the story. sexually not 15 years later. 1835. anyway, we agreed that if the tea was landed the people could not withstand the temptation and would certainly by it. this is what they are afraid of there is not that they don't want tee. they are obsessed with tea. this was the fear off. even though the tea act would mean cheaper t pd cut out the middleman. this is going to mean a reduction in the cost of the tea. this was just a way to subdue them into paying taxes for which they had not given consent. the americans were still going to have to pay taxes that again,

it is not as if the sons of liberty are worried about higher taxes at that moment. they are worried about the principle of taxation without consent because they were worried that might lead to higher taxes later on. meanwhile writers in new york city and philadelphia were warning the americans and bostonian is what would happen if they allowed the tee to land. the writer named captain who may have been the new york city patriot alexander mcdougal, he argued that the east india company monopoly on east india trade was corrupting great britain's politics and constitution. he says the purchase of the company's tea must be sent to the colonies, the profit of which is the supporting the tyranny of the east and enslave the west. in other words, by beating parliament's right to tax the colonies without consent the americans would wind up know

better than in his words the helpless asiatics. other writers added that if americans accepted a monopoly on tee for the monopolies would be sure to follow. john dickinson, the famous pennsylvania farmer took up depending prestigous and agreed. he said it is not the paltry sum of 3p, up 3-penny per pound. is not the pollsters some of 3p, but the principle upon which it is demanded that we are contending against. these principles were both the east india company monopoly and also this offensive notion of taxing the americans without their consent. also worried about taxation, but the merchants, whether they were smugglers are legitimate both cared a great deal about the east india company monopoly. some had been doing great since

1767 bringing in illegal de from, no europe with the dutch west indies. the tea act who threatens to mess everything up. in boston the objection was also a personal. three of the agents were the sons of governor thomas hutchinson. and the clarks were basically close friends and relatives by marriage. all of the companies were somehow related to one of these two families in one way or another. so it really looked like this kind of dirty shame. here you're going to have parliament levying a tax, the east india company charging monopoly prices and then the only people who will profit are all related to the people who are then empowered and in forcing customs laws. this really looks like an evil conspiracy to the bostonian.

so the other thing that you have to be aware of is that in previous years parliaments had decided to begin paying hutchison and the other civil officers from the money that the tea tax and. again, the tax they are paying is lining the pockets of these officials his relatives are the ones who are profiting from monopoly prices on t. it really looks like they are reaching into american pockets. it is to their mind this whole story of taxes on americans being used to support the tyrants who is there to enslave them. so in other words it is not just the tax but the fact that the tax money was going into the pockets of the hated enemy of the profits were being burned by the relatives of this enemy. it really looks like a bad situation to them. in other words in general when we think about the tea party, what was the cost? welcoming taxes.

but relief for causes i would say. the first is taxation without representation. the second was going to be the use of this tax revenue from american taxes to support civil officials, judges, the governor, and so on. the third is the east india company monopoly which they find so offensive. the fourth is peer pressure, particularly from new york city and philadelphia. these were the years when the committees were becoming very active. no son of liberty wanted to see a repeat of the failure, distrust, and recrimination that followed the failure of the nonimportation agreement in 1770. the right-hander had warned that the nonimportation agreement is obligatory and all the parties to it. whoever shall or eight in the violating of it is an enemy -- enemy to commerce and liberty. william paltry who was a

merchant and an inner circle some of liberty, he was traveling to new york and philadelphia to try to cement these intercolonial alliances. he writes back probably to john hancock saying you guys have to be firm on this question of the east india company. he says if by any means he should relax or fall back in any degree from europe played resolution you will be reproached among your neighbors and never more be able to retrieve the public confidence. now is the time to convince the world that the people of boston can act with virtue and revolution. you can see that somebody doubts that the bostonian were not necessarily faithful and trustworthy when it came to the patriot cause. so just says we came to a sudden determination to make suk of it by throwing it overboard. we agreed as much as we might prevent ourselves from being discovered to wear ragged

clothes, disfigure ourselves as much as possible. after we pledge our honor that we would not reveal our secret plan we separated. here is why. he's taking us into the story of what's happening. at the appointed time we all met according to agreement. we dressed to resemble indians as much as possible. he smeared our faces with greece and set or lamp black. we should not have known each other saved by our voices and we truly resemble devils from the bottomless pit. after placing centuries the men preceded readily to business. they board the ships, demanded the captain open the hatch race and the crab hoisted tackle and ropes. some jumped into the hold and past the sea chests. the men hoisted the tests on deck, smash them open, raise them to the wailing and drug the contents. this is the tea party of december 16th. we start briskly in the business from the moment we left our

dressing room. we were married in under terms of the idea of making so large a cup of tea for the fishes. .. >> over 90,000 pounds of the stuff, pounds as a measure of weight. so why did i write this book? don't we know why the tea party is an important turning point of the american revolution? don't we already know why it's so important? we know, don't we, that the boston tea party was an important catalyst between great

britain and the american colonies. the destruction of the tea in boston harbor helped bring about a set of particularly harsh punishments that altered the massachusetts charter, gave soldiers and british officials the right to face a jury back in london rather than boston if they didn't want to. this called the murder act by the colonists. not the technical name, but that was the epithet for it. and, you know, accompanied by the reoccupation of boston by british troops which in turn altered the acts to the occupation were going to lead to more widespread resistance. we're going to see more boycotts, the first be continental congress, the first formation of committees of mass inspection. throughout the colonies we're or going to see the minuteman companies beginning to muster, and eventually this is going to culminate in the firing of the first shots at lexington and con

cord in massachusetts. and then, you know, in turn a year later there's going to be the full separation from great britain and the declaration of independence. now, this is a story about the boston tea party that's been told up until now, a story that focuses on the imperial story and why parliament had made the decisions that it did, and also a story that focuses on the shared actions of the different american colonies and the kind of, the formation of the idea of america being american as opposed to being british. but i wanted to tell a different story. in addition to emphasizing the four causes of the boston tea party that i just tribed, i also wanted to tell a story that was going to be more local in nature and also more global. what i mean by telling a more local story is that i really wanted to explore what boston was about in these days. i wanted to talk about the poem, boston's people -- people, boston's people, their religion,

the economy, the fights they'd been having for many years over the massachusetts charter, boston's riotous history and the lull that takes place from 1770 to 1773. i wanted to lay the groundwork and say what was it about boston that makes it the kind of place where something like the tea party took place. i also wanted to talk about specific groups of people who were important actors during the tea crisis of 1773. i wanted to talk about the men who were supporting the landing of the tea, i wanted to find out who the customs officers were, who the ship owners were, tell readers a little bit more about governor hutchinson and why he made the decisions that he did. i also wanted to talk about the political actors on the liberty side. i wanted to talk about familiar character like samuel adams, thomas young, some of the leading patriots in boston. third, i wanted to talk about

who were these apartments. this is a question that historians have largely avoided because it's maddening to try and figure out who these guys were. it's hard to tell the fake be stories from the real stories. it's like woodstock, right? everybody said they were there. but i managed to come up with at the end of the book an appendix that lists about 100 men who i think were -- who probably have the best case for having been there. and the reason i wanted to come up with a good, workable list was to find out how old were they, what kind of jobs had they had, had they had any previous political experience, and i thought it was important for people to understand, you know, who were these participants, why did they do what they did? that's a question that i think most historians have avoided. ask finally, i wanted to talk about the involvement of women in boston. they help connect the tea party

participants to one another because some of them were related by marriage. there are some stories that they helped the men prepare for the tea party beforehand and then helped them clean up, clean the soot and stuff off of their faces afterwards. you know, those are some minor ways, the main ways in which women were important was, a, their parpg in boycotts of tea were going to be crucial. who is it that's participating in the ceremonies of the tea table? it's women. be you can't get women to go along with the boycott, any chance of success in getting people to push tea away on principle was doomed to failure. women were incredibly important in that respect. and also later on once you get to the 19th century, women play an important role in telling the stories of the tea party stories that they'd heard from their husbands, fathers or grandfathers. and so in many ways women play a crucial role in the story of the o boston tea party even though

it seems like the kind of ultimate guy's guy event. i said before i also wanted to tell a global story of the boston tea party. so there's a way in which you can tell the story of the boss with on the tea party is just a boston story, but you can also tell it in the following way. you have the east india company that has a monopoly on all british trade east of the cape of good hope n. the 1770s they've become more and more a ruler over south asians. their principle crop, tea, is tarped by east asians and mixed with sugar which is farmed by afro caribbeans, and beginning in 1600 this crop tea is becoming the favorite drink of many europeans. when the bostonians protest the tea act, they dress as native americans. and all of these are dmeptions that i explore more fully in the book, and i can talk about them more during the q&a if you're curious. but, you know, this is now all of a sudden a global story of what seems like a very localized

event. this tea party's iconic significance has captured imagination for over two centuries inspiring women's suffrage advocates to points of property tax hikes, abolitionists in the 1850s, wests in the 1920s that's with regard to alcohol temperance, from white supremacists in the early part of the 20th century to civil rights leaders like martin luther king in 1963 all of whom i found evidence as mentioning the tea party being an inspiration to them in one way or another. people have debated and distorted the memory of an event that helped bring about the american revolution. but i'd argue that it's important to get this history right, and i want to conclude with another story from the revolutionary war pension records. in 1773 samuel noel was a boat

builder who had lived in boston and newbury port. here's what he wrote to o congress. i was one of those who perilled themselves in that celebrated achievement, the destruction of a cargo of tea in the harbor of boston. i was then young, enterprising and courageous, and i presumed my broad axe was never more dexterously used. this is how we talked in legal documents. your petitioner -- by which he meant himself -- views the destruction of said tea powerfully influenced and produced that civil rupture between great britain and her then-american colonies which has resulted in the independence of the united states and its unprecedented consequences. noel then goes on to describe an amazing revolutionary war career, his daring escape from occupied boston, his capture at sea, his imprisonment for 16 months in halifax, nova scotia, three of those in shackles as

punishment for attempting to e cape, and his recovery from yellow fever while he was in prison. while he and his fellow prisoners were being transferred to occupied new york city, he helped lead a mutiny when a storm separated the rest of the ship from the convoy and the american mute nears led the boat to safety. so he has this amazing career. but now he was 86 years old in 1831, he described himself as being no longer able to work, and he says he has no means whatsoever to subsist, he wrote, but he is wholly deenboun of hir his daily support. at the time he writes, he was thus actively and zell howly jeopardizing himself for his country. he was happy, his country miserable. he was happy in the conscious discharge of a duty paramount to all others. now his country is rich and happy, he is poor and miserable. o i think we owe it to samuel noel, to joshua wyoming earth and the rest of these tea party

participants to make sure we all know the true story of the boston tea party. so, thank you, and i'm looking forward the seeing -- to seeing what questions you have. prison [applause] he'll do the calling on you, and i'll try and field the question. >> first question. and if you could wait for the mic to reach you. >> yeah. all right, go ahead. >> so you said that it was in boston where we had the tea party and that new york and philadelphia, basically, let it pass. but i understand there actually were other incidents like the boston tea party in delaware and near the delaware river. that i guess they just didn't

have a good enough publicist? [laughter] >> well, the first thing i should say -- that's a very good question. the question was weren't there other anti-tea incidents? i should say new york and philadelphia do do something very important which is they are able to force the tea to turn around. it doesn't end up being a violent, dramatic action, but they're still able to uphold the principle of the tea not landing in those ports. in charleston, south carolina, they demand that the tea be locked up in a warehouse, and it basically sits there and rots. so as a result, none of them are able to actually successfully make it into the exception of the market with the exception of the ship that wrecked on cape cod because the merchants were able to rescue some of the tea. just as important in some ways as what had been done in boston, those other incidents you're referring to, though, annapolis,

maryland, greenwich, new jersey, those were later egypts, and -- events, and they weren't necessarily protesting east india company shipments of tea, but private shipments of tea or already-existing stores of tea. after the tea party, the boycott movement starts to spread everywhere, and all of a sudden people are saying, well, we won't drink dutied tea anymore. how can we tell the difference? if so they say, okay, just to be certain, we won't have any tea. and actually two or three days before the boston tea party, lexington, massachusetts, had, you know, took all its tea to the town square and burned it. you know, and concord and charleston do some of the same things. so this then becomes the thing to do to enforce all over the country the idea of not importing british goods by 1774, but especially tea. and so there are other actions, but, you know, but often the boston tea party is definitely a

kind of very dramatic event. that's a very good question. yeah, there are other dimensions to -- there are other tea parties that kind of happen elsewhere, but the boston tea party is the most dramatic early one in december of 1773. >> question this back. question in back. >> dr. carp, could you comment on the role that the green dragon tavern played in the story? >> yeah, the question is about the green dragon tavern, i loitered in that exhibit that we'll be able to gather in after the talk. the green dragon tavern was one of many t.a.r.p.es where the boston sons of liberty might meet to plan things. it was also often the meeting place for one of the boston lodges of free masons, and there's some suggest -- i talk about this in the book -- that the boston free masons were one of the groups that contributed membership to the boston tea party.

and so i have a whole chapter in my first book on the importance of taverns as gathering places for the sons of liberty and for some of these other extralegal groups of american resistors. and so in that way the green dragon tavern which was friendly to the sons of liberty was definitely an important place. >> question in the back. >> yes. i have -- [inaudible] >> sure. >> the several that you mentioned, were they successful. >> >> yes. i actually looked this up today because i was, like, i've introduced this concept, i'm going to get this question now. yeah. both of those pensions were successful, you do see records of the government having paid out some monies to these men. noel actually died in 1833, but neither of these men went unrecognized. i mean, wyeth's story is published everywhere, and samuel

noel had some nice o obituaries when he died that talked about his participation in the tea party and his revolutionary service. >> up front. >> could you summarize for us your findings about the average age and the occupation of the participantsesome. >> sure. more than half of the tea party participants were between the ages of 18 and 29 inclusive, so it's a very young group. but i should say there's also a little bit of a kind of sample bias there because think about how young would have been to have been and how long you would have had to have lived to tell your story, because the stories don't start coming out until 1820. there very well might have been more 40-somethings at the boston tea party, but they might not have lived long enough to have been able to share their story. so of the 99 or 100 people i

list, it's, you know, most of them are ages 18-29. and there are, there's a big group that's younger than 18 as well, people who had been apprentices. one of the more amusing things about the tea party is that the tide was out. it was 14 feet below high tide, so o taid throw the -- they'd throw the tea over the ship, and it starts clumping up. so they have to send apprentices in row boats to take their oars and break up the piles of tea so it would float away. there were some young kids there as well. in terms of occupations, i think i found about two of thirds of them were artisans or craftsmen of one kind or another. these were boss bostonians who d with their hands. a large plurality of them in the construction industry. but i also suspect that a lot of bostonians when they were younger men had spent at least some time at sea, and some of them might have been laborers who were used to doing this kind of dock work, so a lot of the

men were comfortable aboard ships and that's important because they did a lot of hard work, and they did it fast. 46 tons, it's still a lot to be hauling around. and in terms of political experience, i don't know the percentage, but a lot of them had participated this one or more of either the important political groups in boston or one of the dramatic previous actions in boston like the stamp act riots or the boston massacre. actually, i think i found that the bullets during the boston mass kerr almost missed about pour or five people who would later participant in the boston tea party, and there are descriptions of them catching some of the falling men in their arms. you've got to imagine an experience like that would lead you to be the kind of person to dump the east india company's tea into the water afterwards. so, yeah, the profile of the tea party participants is really interesting. >> go ahead. >> [inaudible]

popularity of coffee and tea? we think of 18th century england and the great coffeehouses and that. it's even been suggested that coffee became the dominant drink in this country because tea was oaked with the english. -- was associated with the english. and i wonder what the facts of the matter are. >> yeah, that's a very good question. the question was about the relative popularity of coffee and tea. europeans discover chocolate, tea and coffee all around the same time. you know, chocolate is more popular in spain and portugal, coffee is more popular in france, tea tends to be more popular in russia and in great britain, but they're all very witter. the europeans can only tolerate them if they mix them with sugar. and, yes, we have the famous london coffeehouses of the 18th century, but eventually as the east india company's connections

with china get better and better, tea really becomes the drink of the british. so for that reason it was the drink of the americans too. they loved tea. that's why they're so scared of these tea shipments because they know it's so popular and so seductive, they were afraid the americans would not be tough enough to resist it and, therefore, would accept the tax imposed by the townsend act. now, after the revolution america becomes a coffee-drinking country for the most part, but it's not because of the political principle of, you know, we still hate tea after what the british tried to do to us. the reason is coffee is starting to be grown in jamaica, and it's a lot -- you know, it's just a more available market and a cheaper market for them to get tea from -- coffee from the caribbean than it is to get tea all the way from china. it's not until well into the 19th century that the british

start growing tea in india k. 19th century inventions in some way. earl grey was named after a british general who fought against the american during the american revolution. so just an odd thing there. but, yeah, the americans had their own kinds of connections to get lots of tea for as cheaply as the british could get it, but coffee becomes more readily available from brazil so frank sinatra can sing about it and everything like that. [laughter] >> do you have a question, sir? >> well, actually the prior gentleman took my question, but i've come up with another one. [laughter] with all the controversy surrounding these tea shipments and the taxation issues surrounding it, why wasn't there better security provided for these ships? >> that's a very good question. i mean, there is -- the security

that's being provided onboard these ships this weeks for the ships arrive -- well, let me back up for a second. the rule was if a ship comes into harbor, it has 20 days to unload it good if it has dutiable goods aboard. and if those 20 days elapse, the navy can sell everything at option. if you had taxable goods onboard, you had to get rid of it in 20 days. and so the deadline was going to expire on december 17th at the stroke of midnight. so that's why december 16th becomes the last day for the bostonians to somehow deal with the tea. so, but the thing that the bostonians were afraid of was that it was the tea agents, the east india company's agents who were going to sneak aboard the ships, take all the tea and smuggle it into the countryside so they can then begin selling it and pay the tooth -- duty on

it. so the americans actually establish sentries to watch those ships at night, and, you know, they vote on this in an open meeting at the old south meeting house, and they say, okay, we're the 20 guys who are going to be onboard tonight, and they do this for 19 days, so it's the americans who are watching the tea. they are the ones who have the power over they tea for the entire period. now, the british navy, there are three warships in the harbor and regiments of troops on capitol island in boston harbor where they'd been since the immediate aftermath. so this neary governor hutchinson could have ordered those naval ships to interfere, and the british hater asked admiral montague and colonel leslie, like, why didn't you do this? but the is the rule was that the governor had to order that in order for that to take place,

and governor hutchinson was hampered because he would have needed the approval of his council in order to do this. one of the problems with massachusetts politics was the council didn't have to do what the governor said. they were appointed by the massachusetts house of representatives which is why one of the coercive acts, the massachusetts government act, was going to change that and say, oh, you know, the counsel will now be appointed by the governor, not by the house of representatives anymore. they wanted to make sure that governors in the future in massachusetts would have a cooperative council rather than a reis sis about the council. so governor hutchinson is completely unable to do anything. what's the the admiral going to do, fire the cannonballs into the town? i mean, that would have really started a problem for the british, and they weren't ready to make it that kind of a fight just yet. it's a tricky thing, but some of it has to do with the constitutional role of armed forces is and civilian control. so these -- the boss be tone

yangs talk a good game about how, oh, the navy could have fired on us, but i think they felt pretty confident the navy wasn't going to interfere with what they were doing. good question. >> actually, two points. the first is one, working at historic sites i sometimes get involved in explaining tea as a commodity to young children, and the question always comes up was it pressed block tea or loose tea? did you ever get into what type of tea it actually was? and secondly, did the british ever successfully identify and prosecute any of the people that dumped the teasome. >> okay. the first question is what do we know about what kind of tea it was that was dumped in the harbor? it's all loose tea, two varieties of green tea and four varieties of black tea.

no, singlo tea, i believe, and then the varieties of black tea were the most common sort of tea, congo which is also the word for kung fu, actually, pause it required skill, you know, in order to make make, suchong and farm the fourth. anyway -- what's that? no, no, no. there's a fourth one. so we know what kind of tea was dumped this harbor. your second question was anyone ever prosecuted for the tea pact? no. governor hutchinson wanted to try and prosecute, but then he was like, we probably can't make a case for treason. it's burglary. but they can't get anyone to anytime to doing it, persons unknown. who in boston is going to step forward and say i recognized, you know, my neighbor there.

pause that guy would have gotten beaten up. the sons of liberty had so put everyone in thrall that you were never going to get anyone to come forward. and in london they find the same things. they listen to all the reports from the governors, you know, and from other people, but there's no one they're ever able to confidently identify. samuel dyer goes to london in chains, and he's like, i know somebody who's there, but he names a ship captain, and we know his ship wasn't even in boston at the time. we don't have any definite ideas about win who is there until really the 18 tens with the exception of one person who was caught during the tea party trying to stuff tea into his own pockets. they grabbed his coat off and beat him up, and then they hanged his quote in charleston and said this is what this guy

was trying to do. ironically, even he's been written out of the story, he's the only one that we have multiple corroborating accounts that he was actually there. and the other story don't turn out until, like, 1813. >> yes. i've recently been to the old south meeting house, and i was disappointed with the amount of detail about the boston tea party. i know you're from the boston area. i don't know if you have any interaction with them? because they advertise themselves as a launch pad -- >> it was the largest building in boston at the time, there were so many people interested in protesting against the tea act they couldn't fit in samuel hall because there were thousands of people m interested in this, and people out of town and people who weren't ordinary

voters. so they pack them into the old south meeting house, and it's have very important place where these meetings are taking place talking about what to do and bringing the ship owner, you know, in there and confronting him and saying are you going to turn your ship around? these really dramatic encounters. i actually hi the old meeting house does a very good job with their interpretation. you know, right now the for-profit museums where you can throw those crates in the ship and play with that, that's been closed for a couple of years, so the old south meeting house is the place to learn about the boston tea party. i've given a couple of luncheon talks last december, and i'm going to be giving another talk there in a couple of weeks. so, yeah, i'm fans of theirs it's possible went you went the interpretation suspect as good as it is now. i don't know how recently you were there.

>> [inaudible] >> wait for the boom. >> you said that the tax on a pound of tea was three pence? >> yeah. >> what was the wholesale price of a pound of tea? >> oh, that's a hard one. it was about two pounds, i think. it fluctuates a lot. >> is that in relation to today's -- >> you know what? i'm flattered that you think i've memorized the price index -- [laughter] it's, well, let's see. i guess we could extrapolate by saying if a ton costs as much as paul revere's house which was, i think, maybe 200 pounds? then, let's see, i think that the total tea shipment was worth about a million to two million dollars 'in today's -- >> when today's prices of tea, tea was much more expensive.

>> yes. a cup of tea was probably more expensive in real dollars than, back then, than it is today. but till inexpensive enough that an ordinary family could enjoy a cup of tea. maybe not every day, but for special occasions. it had to come around china over to england. they were reliant on wind back then. as all professors are. [laughter] >> [inaudible] and how they went about it. >> yeah. that's very tricky, right? because no one's going to come forward and say this. i mean, i think there were two dynamics at work. one is that there were influential sons of of liberty, the north end caucus, the boston committee of correspondence, you know, these movers and shakers, people like samuel adams but

also including some more middling merchants and craftmen. you know, there's some indication that they were the ones who were kind of coordinating this protest, you know, making sure that the bostonians did what they had to do and that they pulled in some of their employees and apprentices and said, okay, we've got a job to do, let's put on indian disguises and do this. there's some indication it was a top-down affair, but i also found this weird document of a bunch of yale students who were traveling around the countryside, and they run into this old guy who talks about his experiences at the boston tea party, and he says it was a bunch of craftsmen who got together and said, you know, we are the ones that have to do something about the tea party. and they tried to get one of these elite leaders to back them. ask guy would come in and say i don't know if i can countenance this. one die -- guy says if you do

it, you will find friends. so they say we'll choose a leader from amongst ourselves and they go and dump the tea. was the revolution directed by these elite puppeteers controlling what everyone was doing, or were ordinary working class artisan bostonians kind of taking it upon themselves to protest against the government. so the planners may have been familiar leaders like adams and hancock and quincy, but they also may have been these ordinary artisans from boston. >> hi. i was just wondering, after a safe period the revolution settled and all. did they have just coming out of the woodwork men claiming i was there, i was there? >> yeah. it actually becomes a big

dispute, and nathaniel hawthorne weighs in and says wouldn't it be better if everyone just kept quiet about this and the mystery of the boston tea party could just survive? and this were people who came out and started telling their stories, and then in the press, you know, some of the printers would attack them and say, oh, there's inconsistencies in this story, and can it's probably not true, etc., etc. o so there was a real reis sis dance in the 1830s for having story the come out. and the republican for -- americans see it as something that was dangerous and, you know, subversive and, you know, and parasidal in a way. that was really a sketchy thing to do. or you still had people in upstate new york or main who would black their faces and protest against their land lords. so the keys at that time were

not ready to celebrate the tea party because they didn't want to encourage that kind of protest. so there's a real tension there. but the people that were working against that, all of a sudden there's more of a labor movement, and there were artisans who wanted to celebrate the participation of artisans in this an event like this. so it's contested history even back then in the 1830s, and one of the ways this fight plays out is over, well, should we even believe them? it's also a problem for the historian which is that, you know, we want to see that there's some kind of corroboration for be these stories. so that was an issue that or i had to struggle with, you know, which of these stories should i reject because i can see something false final in -- falsifiable? the story got mutated and they said, oh, no, he he wasn't a witness, he was a participant. right? so some of the stories do end up

getting exaggerated in the telling, it's like a game of telephone, but the 99 or 100 people i list at the back of the book, i feel pretty confident that's our best guest who was at the tea party. and based on this woman over here about the provile of the tea party participants, it makes a lot of sense. they were to some extent politically connected, but not all of them. they were mostly young men and artisans. that makes sense as far as who would have been been there, and those are the names that came down to us. some of them were a little more elite. there were a couple of college graduates onboard there and some merchants and a doctor, you know, and so on. but, yeah, i mean, so that's what i would say is that it's a very tricky issue, but i did my best to work it out in the book. >> we have time for one last question.

one more? all right. >> just a quick segway to what you were just describing as far as the participants. was paul revere among them? >> yes, paul revere is one of the participants in the tea party. that comes out in the 1830s that he had been one of the people there, and he's very closely associated with this leadership group and also ordinary artisans because he was, himself, a silversmith. and paul revere had already done a lot for the sons of liberty before that time, so it's not surprising to see him there. >> thank you all for coming this evening. we have a reception downstairs, and please, give professor carp another round of applause. [applause] >> this event was hosted by the david library of the american rev of louis. to find out more, visit dlar.org.

>> well, another los angeles times reporter from the beijing bureau has been nominated for the national book award in the nonfiction category, and this is barbara demick and her book, "knoll to envy, ordinary lives in north korea." how did you get access to north korea? >> i spent about seven years interviewing north koreans not in north korea, but in south korea around the chinese border. i've been to north korea quite a few times, but you can't speak to anybody in north korea. you can't even make eye contact with them. to say that this is the most repressive regime in the world, you know, an actual case where we can use superla tiffs. when you work in north korea, you have a minder, and your

minder has a minder to make sure you don't talk to anybody. but i found north koreans actually to be quite talkative when they got out of the country, and i really just painstakingly pieced together their stories which, in my mind, were 1984 come true. >> these north koreans that you spoke with, did they escape from north korea? were they visiting south korea? how, why were they out of the country? >> >> everybody had to escape. north koreans, basically, live in a large prison. they're not allowed out of their country unless they're very, very elite. these are people who largely when they were starving to death crossed the rivers that border china and tried to make new lives for themselves. and, you know, the funny thing is that when they were in north korea although they were stamping, they had been fed this

propaganda that they were the best country in the world. that's where the title comes from. they realize that, by god, in china people eat rice, and they have televisions, and they can read whatever they want more or less. so you found they were pretty unaware of the outside world? >> fox in a well, that' one of my chapters titles. north korea is really maintained by the regime, almost her met chi sealed. ask, of course, the greaters the lie, the greater the power. >> barbara demick, can you give us a nape shot of the daily life of an urban getter in north korea and a rural dweller? >> sure. the people who i wrote about were loisly from the city. get up the first light of dawn, and the minute the sun is up what you do is you start looking for weeds and grass that's

edible. go out to the countryside, take a knife and a basket looking for something to eat. basically, people thend spare whole day looking for something to eat dinner, and then they go to wed early to preserve energy. this was a situation in the is 1990s, and be it got better and now, unfortunately, it's gotten worse again. >> when you travel to north korea, what was the process like getting in? >> it's really difficult as an american and as a journalist. i speak a little bit, not very much, keep. i was rejected for a year for a visa, but in 2005 i finally got a proper visa. i think they let some of us in, basically, because they need money. there aren't a lot of people that want to visit north korea,

and it's a bad hi-needed -- badly-needed source of hard currency. >> so what was your experience like? tell us about your trip very quickly. >> pyongyang is a lovely city. it's one of the cleanest, least polluted cities in all of asia. there's no industry, there's very few cars. the people are friendly, they're completely brainwashed. i mean, they'll only talk about their great leader. you don't really have any kind of honest conversation. but, you know, i would say that there is a warmth to the people. and one of the reasons i wrote the book is i felt north koreans were so mysterious, and a lot of the very negative stereotypes that americans have about asians, communist, you know, all this old garbage was always applied to north koreans. and i wanted to show them as real people. and so i portrayed these six

people who i still know, and they're wonderful people. >> did you find yourself being stared at? >> no. that's what's very interesting. they're taught not to stare, and they don't stare at you which is one sign of how controlled the environment is. in china i'm stared at, in south korea i'm stared at. not north korea. they don't make eye contact. >> were you relieved when you got out? >> yes. always. but it's not nearly as scary as you might think because you get a proper -- once you get a proper visa as opposed to walking across the river, you're chaperoned. i knew not to say anything that would get me in trouble or the people who were guiding me. >> how long have you been working on nothing to envy? >> it's embarrassing. it was about seven years. i started interviewing, i

started interviews north koreans in, i guess, 2001, and be i think because e e couldn't get into north korean i became upset. journalists, we're very simplistic creatures. you can't do be with some place, you want to go. sort of like the cat on the string. so i was what everyday life was like. and i imagined it was a little bit like 1984 or brave new world and, in fact, it is. >> you've already won the samuel johnson prize for nothing to envy, ordinary lives in north korea, and now nominated for the national book award, nonfiction category 2010, barbara demick is the author. >> next, angelo codevilla was awarded the paolucci bagehot book award for the look,