Patriots and Tea: Newport and the American Revolution with author James Fichter

After the Boston Tea Party and the Coercive Acts, Patriots urged a boycott of tea, and the Continental Congress prohibited the drink. Sometimes we imagine this is when Americans turned from tea to coffee. But how did this work in Newport, a town known for its smuggling ways? This talk examines the Boston Tea Party and its after-effects in Newport, the ways Newport Patriots tried to make abstaining from tea a symbol, and the ways that Newport’s tea-runners evaded the Congressional Prohibition on tea to continue to sell the drink to a willing public. In the end it was Congress, not Newport’s merchants, who gave the people what they wanted. Congress conceded defeat and repealed its ban on tea in April 1776.
James R. Fichter is an Associate Professor, historian, and director of the Global and Area Studies program at the University of Hong Kong. He teaches on the maritime and Revolutionary Atlantic and on the intersections of American, British imperial and international history. He has lived and taught in Hong Kong for nearly 20 years. He received his BA in history from Brown University and his PhD from Harvard. His most recent book, Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773-1776, was published by Cornell in December 2023 on the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. His earlier work looked at early American trade with China.