Please join us for a lecture in partnership with The Old Exchange entitled, Tea and Revolution in Charleston, by Dr. James R. Fichter.
The lecture will take place upstairs in The Old Exchange building at 122 East Bay Street, Charleston. While the lecture is open to the general public, we do ask for a suggested donation of $20 per person.
Capacity is limited, so please register ahead of time to ensure a seat.
MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER AND THE LECTURE:
James R. Fichter is an associate professor of European and American studies at the University of Hong Kong. His book, Tea: Consumption, Politics and Revolution, 1773-1776, comes out on December 15th.
In 1773 the English East India Company sent 70,000 pounds of tea to Charleston. Despite protests, the tea was not destroyed, as in Boston, but safely stored in the Exchange. In 1776 it was sold and drunk. Mistakenly overlooked, the Charleston tea story has much to tell us about Charleston’s unique role in the Revolution and colonists’ dueling impulses to boycott or consume tea.
Dr. Fichter's book, Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773-1776 (Cornell: 2023), focuses heavily on the story of the East India Company tea sent to Charleston in 1773. It incorporates new research that reveals Charleston merchants' efforts to secure the tea's survival in 1773 and the State of South Carolina's previously unknown sale of that tea in 1776. The book argues that the Charleston Tea Party, the "Tea Party That Wasn't," was more representative of colonists' attitudes toward tea than the Boston Tea Party was. It also suggest that the later-day casting of Boston as bravely Patriotic for its Tea Party and of Charleston as having "failed" to destroy its tea was a result of post-independence public memory and propaganda.