East Indian Company Dbq

In the early 1600’s Queen Elizabeth granted the East Indian Company (EIC) its first charter. The EIC was the company that was to handle all the trading of goods in the East Indies (Carp, 7-8). The Company did so well that it helped with Europe’s economy, and “helped to support the government through payment of customs duties” (Carp, 8). Anyone who had any part to do with the EIC would accumulate a great amount of wealth. The EIC acquired most of its wealth through the trading of, “spices, silk, cotton, opium, gold, silver, and tea across enormous distances, paying out generous dividends to its shareholders” (Carp, 8). This was the reason for mostly everyone who had a part in the EIC would accumulate a great amount of wealth. Everything was

Families held teatime as a peaceful household occasion; sometimes small number of guest would be invited. Tea became a ritual of etiquette behaviors for all family members. To partake in teatime meant that your family had great wealth and virtue (Carp, 56). While the middle class in America, “of tradesmen, professionals, and landowners couldn’t resist the chance to partake in the elite pastime” (Carp 56). The colonist wanted to be just like their fellow friends and family in Britain. They wanted to have all the same luxuries as them including teatime. While they might now have taken it as serious as them, with the tea ceremonies they still wanted to be able to have the opportunity to enjoy drinking tea. Men and women both drink plenty amounts of tea. Men found it arousing that, “woman’s pure, white hands—unsullied by dirt or sweat and busy pouring tea” (Carp, 62). The men found this so arousing since they were the ones doing the hard manual work, and when they saw the women pouring tea it meant for an ends day of hard work and also seeing them pour tea caused them

The EIC had massive amounts of tea and the colonist in America loved tea. So the EIC directors began to lobbyist their ideas on how they could solve their problem. The thinking of the British Government and the EIC directors were to lower taxes on tea. Since the colonist loved drinking tea and they were buying from illegal sellers they figured this way they could make more money buy lowering their prices to make them lower than the illegal sellers. Even though the Tea Act lowered the price of tea, many people felt like the Tea Act was just a “seductive trick designed to get Americans to accept an offensive law” (Carp, 80). The Tea Act made many people upset and it got a lot of people involved in