Tagged: monopoly

The Trade Deficit Britain Closed With Opium

Britain drank Chinese tea and China wanted almost nothing Britain made, so the bill was settled in bullion, roughly £30 million of silver between 1760 and 1800. The East India Company's answer was to build a second consumer market on the other side of its own empire, and it worked exactly as a balance-of-payments device is meant to.

The Tea Dumped in Boston Harbor Was on Sale

Parliament's 1773 rescue of a nearly insolvent East India Company cut the price of tea reaching the American colonies. The protest that followed was against a monopoly and a tax precedent, not against a high price.