Tea and Social Class Boundaries in 19th Century England

In each image, I picked, I looked up how women were viewed in their culture and throughout the years. The first image I choose is the chief lady of Pomeiooc and her daughter. In 1585, the image was drawn by John White, who was an English traveler and the founder/ governor of the “lost Colony” of Roanoke (Carolina Algonquian tribe in eastern North Carolina). North Carolina was inhabited by a number of native tribes that share some culture traits. At the time more than thirty Native American tribes were living in North Carolina. They spoke languages derived from three language groups, the Siouan, Iroquoian, and Algonquian. The next image is a cartoon called “a society of patriotic ladies” by the British print on 1774. On October 1774, Edenton

How did tea transform English society? Who were its main consumers and what were some of the new rituals that surrounded tea?

Jack Larkin’s The Personal Side of a Developing People focuses on the patterns of social manners in the early nineteenth century and how they were changed by reform. He answers questions about these mannerisms, such as diet, alcohol consumption, cleanliness, and many others. He reveals the image that Americans were busy and unique, as they chewed and spat tobacco constantly, drank too much liquor, slept in bug infested beds, used chamber pots and dumped them into the streets, grew taller than Europeans, and had many sexual pleasures. Class differences in mannerisms are depicted as Larkin writes that “farmers were ‘heavy, awkward and slouching in movement” (pg. 148), and states that American city dwellers were often distinguished by a “contraction of the brow, knitting of the eyebrows, and compression of the

In the English colonies there were six social classes. From the richest to the poorest, these were the gentry, the middle Class, poor whites, indentured servants, free africans and slaves. The people that made up these classes ranged from the most powerful to those with the least amount of rights, if any.

One of the largest points that the author makes is the significance of tea to the people in the colonies. While there were many who thought that tea was evil and caused health issues, the overwhelming majority of colonist were obsessed. Tea was something new and seen as a luxury item. It took a six-month voyage for the EIC to bring to the precious leaves to Boston. Once there, it was auctioned to those who could afford it. While the bourgeoisie sipped their tea and

During the beginning of the 18th century, there was a massive explosion of importation of British goods, which came to be known as Anglicization. This was everything from tea to clothing and more. Using British products became a way in which to determine social class in the colonies. A common British practice was afternoon tea and during Anglicization, this was adopted by American colonists as well. Wearing British fashion was yet another sign of wealth in the

During the late 1700s, the East India Company had a monopoly on all of the tea in the colonies. Tea was everything

Although the United States was a British Colony in the early 1700s, the differences between the two were definitely noticeable, especially in the socioeconomic fields, mostly due to the fact that slavery played a much larger role in the United States.

The drawing, Billiards in Hanover-Town (Virginia), illustrates a form of social equality. (Doc. D.) It represents social equality because the rich and poor are playing a game of pool together, which was a game that only rich people played before the revolution. (Doc. D). In a monarchy, the wealthy people looked down upon the poor, but after the revolution, they interacted and had more tolerance for each other.

At the Edenton Tea Party fifty-one women gathered protesting, boycotting British goods, anticipating they could impact a change, by writing a proclamation and each signing it as a declaration and send to London, so that the British change their views on taxing tea. The purpose was for all citizens of England to read at time, and have a change at heart, they never indented to be harsh. ‘’ We do therefore accordingly subscribe this paper, as a witness of our fixed intention and solemn determination to do so. ‘’

In the late sixteenth- century Europe adopted a caffeinated warm drink for the first time this included chocolate, tea and coffee. Tea fills the senses with a bittersweet scent. This herb came from china by ship. Unlike cider and beer tea was new to the English-speaking world (49). Starting in the eighteenth- century Europe trading companies began to market green and black tea (51). Before this time period tea was very rare in the west region of British north America. Only the wealthy could originally afford tea and sugar. Tea was also used as a source of herbal medicine rather than traditional methods. This herb was also expensive because it shipped across great distances and allowed the East India Company to charge higher prices and labor added an extra charge. This resulted in tea becoming a luxury item in the colonies (53). The Townshend’s act in 1767 put a tax on tea which Americans responded that parliament could not tax without their consent. This frustrated the colonist because it put their love for tea at risk, so they responded to parliament by aiming at British merchants and manufactures

Tea was a common and essential part of the colonists daily lives, but women were the main purchasers and consumers of imported British tea. When the Tea Act was passed in 1773, in areas of “ Edenton, North Carolina to Boston, Massachusetts, women vowed publicly not to drink tea” unless the egregious acts were repealed. “The choice by American ladies to say no to British tea had an immediate and powerful impact as in mid-eighteenth century because they were the main purchasers and consumers of imported tea.” The fact that they vowed collectively as a group that they would boycott imported tea expresses that women during the American Revolution had a fighting spirit that was undeniable. In addition, they were smart enough to realize that if

In 1773, British Parliament passed a new act called the Tea Act on Colonial America. While this act placed no new direct tax on tea, it essentially created a monopoly on tea in favor of the British East India Company. This act enraged Colonists and merchants and revived the old American idiom “Taxation without Representation is Tyranny.” This term, first coined by James Otis, Jr., was an expression of American displeasure with how Parliament was able to enact new tax laws on the American Colonies without having a representative from the Colonies to voice the opinion of the Colonists. This idiom was prominent across Colonial America but had a greater emphasis on the port cities like Boston and Annapolis. As a result, of this new act,

Social Classes in Early Colonies - By the late seventeenth century there were a few upper class mostly younger sons of the lesser gentry some businessmen in the middle class who move for religious and commercial reasons and mostly English laborers; in the Chesapeake these laborers were often indentured while in New England they often arranged their own passage. In both men>women (a little more lax in the early south and women>children; in the south: large plantation owners>small plantation owners> owners w/o land>slaves

“Groundless” by Samuel Back depicts a scene in which a well-dressed man appears to be reflectively drinking a cup of tea or coffee while being chest deep in a teacup of water. To add to the bizarre scene, Back allows us to view the inside of the cup where it appears that is actually no water at all- just an empty pair of men’s dress shoes. I believe this scene is trying to show how empty our lives can be despite how busy we may seem. The man, though somber, could be viewed as very in control of his full life, which is represented by the normal teacup he drinks from, the sharp attire, and the fullness of the teacup in which he is incased; however, the empty shoes and hollowness of the cup shown below suggest that none of what he has is meaningful.