Wikipedia History Lesson: Sons of Liberty
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Wikipedia's hard power definition focuses on the international politics of hard power - one country using military and economic power to pressure another country. Hard power starts smaller though.
All politics is local, and all violence starts with one person in conflict with another. Countries start with armies, armies start with militias, militias start with gangs, and gangs start with street toughs with a cashflow. Hard power starts on the streets, and works its way up to the national level from there.
Hence today's history lesson: the Sons of Liberty. You may have heard of them if you had to read "Johnny Tremain" in school (a patriotic revisionist book written during World War 2 when patriotic revisionism was the norm), or if you drink a lot of Samuel Adams Boston Lager. These guys were a loose network of terrorist cells in the East Coast of the United States, which continually harassed the British and escalated petty legal issues between the colonies and the British government.
Why? Rule number 1: Follow the money. They were almost certainly funded by people like John Hancock, who was an improbably rich merchant trader (*cough cough smuggler*) and a founder of the independent United States. Smuggling is only profitable when there are tariffs or other trade restrictions, and back in the mercantilist days of the British Empire, it was mighty profitable. Hancock's shipping company stood to make an even bigger fortune if he was allowed to trade with whomever he pleased. Thus, he needed to get Boston out of the yoke of port tax collectors and British army. John Hancock wasn't the only one - every American port had merchants with the same idea.
The Boston Tea Party (and many other Tea Parties in ports across the US) was the destruction of lots of valuable property to protest the Tea Act, which taxed tea imported to the American colonies. Tea came from that most valuable of British colonies, India, and it was expensive. The prime source of caffeine in that day, some economists think it helped people work longer and harder, and thus make more money. Of course, if the Americans were independent of the British Empire, they could import all the tea (or anything else they want) at a much cheaper price than from London. All the taxes that lead to the Revolutionary War ended up being something like 2% of income for Americans back then, and that was apparently enough to stoke the separatism into all out war of independence. Rule number 2: If there is enough money to be made by violence, someone will pay to start that violence.
The Sons of Liberty carried out things like "tar and feathering," which sounds almost cute and quaint, until you remember it involves taking a political official, and pouring boiling tar on them. I'm not a fan of having boiling anything poured over me, and the symbolic nature of the violence against these targets was one of America's first encounters with terrorism. Rule number 3: One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
This terrorist group eventually grew into a "well regulated militia," and with political leadership, time and money from France (yes, the Continental Army was a foreign backed insurgency), we were able to make it too expensive for Britain to keep fighting us. That is why we celebrate terrorism, insurgents and most importantly explosives on the Fourth of July.
Class dismissed.
All politics is local, and all violence starts with one person in conflict with another. Countries start with armies, armies start with militias, militias start with gangs, and gangs start with street toughs with a cashflow. Hard power starts on the streets, and works its way up to the national level from there.
Hence today's history lesson: the Sons of Liberty. You may have heard of them if you had to read "Johnny Tremain" in school (a patriotic revisionist book written during World War 2 when patriotic revisionism was the norm), or if you drink a lot of Samuel Adams Boston Lager. These guys were a loose network of terrorist cells in the East Coast of the United States, which continually harassed the British and escalated petty legal issues between the colonies and the British government.
Why? Rule number 1: Follow the money. They were almost certainly funded by people like John Hancock, who was an improbably rich merchant trader (*cough cough smuggler*) and a founder of the independent United States. Smuggling is only profitable when there are tariffs or other trade restrictions, and back in the mercantilist days of the British Empire, it was mighty profitable. Hancock's shipping company stood to make an even bigger fortune if he was allowed to trade with whomever he pleased. Thus, he needed to get Boston out of the yoke of port tax collectors and British army. John Hancock wasn't the only one - every American port had merchants with the same idea.
The Boston Tea Party (and many other Tea Parties in ports across the US) was the destruction of lots of valuable property to protest the Tea Act, which taxed tea imported to the American colonies. Tea came from that most valuable of British colonies, India, and it was expensive. The prime source of caffeine in that day, some economists think it helped people work longer and harder, and thus make more money. Of course, if the Americans were independent of the British Empire, they could import all the tea (or anything else they want) at a much cheaper price than from London. All the taxes that lead to the Revolutionary War ended up being something like 2% of income for Americans back then, and that was apparently enough to stoke the separatism into all out war of independence. Rule number 2: If there is enough money to be made by violence, someone will pay to start that violence.
The Sons of Liberty carried out things like "tar and feathering," which sounds almost cute and quaint, until you remember it involves taking a political official, and pouring boiling tar on them. I'm not a fan of having boiling anything poured over me, and the symbolic nature of the violence against these targets was one of America's first encounters with terrorism. Rule number 3: One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
This terrorist group eventually grew into a "well regulated militia," and with political leadership, time and money from France (yes, the Continental Army was a foreign backed insurgency), we were able to make it too expensive for Britain to keep fighting us. That is why we celebrate terrorism, insurgents and most importantly explosives on the Fourth of July.
Class dismissed.
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- Hard Power
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- Terrorism, Smuggling, hard power, Definitions, 3 more
