Tag: British
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March 1775: Restraint
The timing on the next pair of decisions is almost funny. As previously noted, in the beginning of February 1775, Parliament in England had lost patience with the pesky colonials in Boston and had declared them to be in open rebellion. A ship bearing this decision set sail for America, and would arrive in Massachusetts…
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February 1775: Rebellion
In the beginning of February, 1775, the English Parliament was feeling snarky. On the first day of the month, they rejected William Pitt’s proposed plan for recognizing the authority of the Continental Congress and allowing the American colonists some measure of self rule – a plan known as the Provisional Act – by a whopping…
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January 1775: The Elder Statesman
On January 20, 1775, the most influential English politician of the century arrived at the House of Lords. This was William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham, who had been Prime Minister of England from 1766 to 1768, and before that the guiding power behind two other Prime Ministers who had served from 1754 to…
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September 1773: The Coming Storm
250 years ago, September, 1773, there was a Category 5 storm headed for the North Atlantic. But it wasn’t meteorological, it was monetary. It had to do with one of the most valuable substances known to man, which was whale oil. In the days before petroleum products, whale oil provided a range of benefits like…
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June, 1773: The Letters, the Leak, and Liberty
250 years ago this month, Boston was on the boil. It was a result of events going back much further, all the way to 1603. Back then, when James of Scotland became James 1st of both England AND Scotland, his crowning raised the question of what rights the Scots would have in their newly unified…
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May 10, 1773: The Tea Act
250 years ago today, the tea started to hit the fan. It’s a moment that had been steeping for a decade. Ever since the end of the French and Indian War in 1763 – a struggle that was part of the larger 7 Years War, that spilled out around the globe, and proved to be…
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