“Tea’s Party: From Boston to Salem and Back Again” with Historian James Fichter

Join historian James Fichter for “Tea’s Party: From Boston to Salem and Back Again” a special talk on the history of tea in colonial Massachusetts Bay. This free talk with be hosted at the Salem Armory Regional Visitor Center (2 New Liberty Street, Salem) on Thursday, May 13 at 7 p.m.

In this talk Fichter reveals that despite the so-called Boston Tea Party of 1773, large shipments of tea from the East India Company were sold in North America, one of them in Boston! The survival of the Boston tea shaped Massachusetts politics in 1774, impeded efforts to reimburse the Company for its losses in Boston Harbor, and hinted at the enduring conflict between consumer demand and revolutionary boycotts. That tension was not confined to Boston. As General Gage and the colonial government relocated to Salem in the summer of 1774, Essex County residents found committing to a boycott just as difficult as Bostonians had.

James Fichter is an historian and Associate Professor in Global and Area Studies at the University of Hong Kong, where he teaches on maritime history and the revolutionary Atlantic. He is also the author of So Great a Profit: How the East Indies Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism (Harvard, 2010) which examines Salem’s trade to China. He received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard in 2006.