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Comment by jt2190 | Hacker News Reader

Where “smuggling” is defined as tea that was imported without paying duties to the crown; duties that colonists didn’t have any say in imposing. To make the comparison with alcohol in the 1920s work, it’d be like the government banning the purchase of alcohol from everyone except the government’s anointed “company”, and the voters having no say in the matter.

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In fact that sort of smuggling goes on all the time with cigarettes and alcohol es with government monopolies, and as various ways of arbitraging different tax regimes.

My point is simply that, if you read contemporary documents, you’ll see that the smugglers, and others, exploited the situation to promote their respective positions. And the whole story is exploited today with the details filed off.

Propaganda is an important part of nation building.

You're overindulging in cynicism. It's fair to say that, smugglers or not, Boston as a whole wasn't too found of Crown rule: tea party, Boston Massacre, Powder Alarm, Intolerable Acts (inc. abolishing home rule), etc. The closing end of the Battle of Lexington and Concord were citizens[+] showing up just to take potshots at the retreating redcoats. The war basically started with British troops under siege in Boston.

[+] Admittedly, mostly drunk tavern patrons

I don't know if this is true (can't trust anything to not be propaganda anymore) but iirc we learned in school that less than a third of Americans supported Independence with more than a third being indifferent and about a third strictly loyal to to British government. If there was a referendum, we can assume that pro Independence would have likely lost.

I believe this is the case (it's been decades since I read the original docs but that is my recollection). It's pretty typical for revolutionary movements, successful or not, to be well in the minority.

Famously, in revolutionary pre-USSR Russia The "Bolsheviks" ("majority") were not in the majority but named themselves so in order to gain credibility and marginalize the majority opposition.

I don't know where that's famous (I've never heard it before) but I think the name Bolshevik simply derives from an internal party vote which Lenin's faction won (against what became known as the Mensheviks (minority)).

Across all 13 colonies, sure but Massachusetts might have tilted more heavily towards independence. Googling around quickly (because this is just a petty comment thread after all), there's a NYtimes OpEd that said it was more like 40+/20-/40abstain but then other sources indicate Massachusetts was far higher. Again, having the lion's share of rebellious acts, notable incidents, and the focus/ire of Parliament.

I'm not sure anyone thought to take a scientific poll. Obviously the Patriots were in favor of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffolk_Resolves

> it’d be like the government banning the purchase of alcohol from everyone except the government’s anointed “company”

I think it's how it work in Canada for alcohol.

Right but this part doesn't apply

> and the voters having no say in the matter

Yeah, I missed that, thank you for pointing it.

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