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DURHAM, N.H.鈥擜s tea arrives from all over the country for the reenactment of the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, historians say a possible peaceful resolution in 1773 could have changed history. Eliga Gould, a professor of history at the 91制片厂 and an expert on the American Revolution, said the actions of Boston鈥檚 Sons of Liberty dumping more than 300 crates of tea from the British East India Company into Boston Harbor on Dec. 16, 1773, was a pivotal event in the American Revolution.听

Gould can be contacted at听Eliga.Gould@unh.edu.听

鈥淚f Britain hadn鈥檛 over-reacted, the Tea Party might have had a completely different outcome,鈥� said Gould. 鈥淏ecause it was an attack on personal property, the 鈥榙estruction of the tea,鈥� as the Tea Party was originally known, offended Americans almost as much as it did King George III and British Parliament.鈥疊ut the harsh punishment imposed on Massachusetts raised fears that colonists elsewhere could expect the same repercussions so an armed resistance seemed to them like their only choice.鈥澨�

Gould, who has authored several books about the American Revolution, says the Boston Tea Party changed everything. The ships in the harbor were carrying tea from the British East India Company, the wealthiest, most powerful corporation in the world. Before the Sons of Liberty boarded the ships that evening and dumped the crates of tea overside, a peaceful resolution to the colonial dispute over British taxation actually seemed possible.鈥疊ritain鈥檚 harsh response鈥攕uspending Massachusetts government, interfering with the colony鈥檚 courts and closing the port until the people of Boston paid for the destroyed tea鈥攕et Britain and America on the path to war.听

Gould is the author of Among the Powers of the Earth: 鈥淭he American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire鈥� (2012) which was named a Library Journal Best Book of the Year and received the SHEAR Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic and was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize.鈥疓ould has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Charles Warren Center at Harvard.鈥疕e is currently writing a global history of the peace that ended the American Revolutionary War:鈥�鈥淐rucible of Peace:鈥疶he Turbulent History of America鈥檚 Founding Treaty鈥�.鈥�听听

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