There were tons of issues , I wonder if there would have been compromises and no revolt. I mean it could go into infinite possibilities , just pointless scifi kinda thought. Make a series with different paths of countries in pivotal times going the opposite direction . Czars in Russia and stuff.
Actually, funny enough- the king basically did say “forget the tax.” The taxes were imposed to recoup the cost of troop deployments against the French and Natives. They’d already abolished basically every tax except for the tea tax- which was so drastically reduced that at the time of the tea party tea had never been cheaper in New England. That’s a big part of the problem. The Dutch east India company had been given a monopoly and a huge government subsidy and tea was cheaper than ever which undercut the profits of many wealthy Colonists who’d made their trade smuggling items like tea. They were pretty upset. It’s no coincidence that the “founding fathers” were wealthy elites. At the time of the revolution 1/5 of Americans supported the crown, and over 100k fled to British Canada. It’s complex but the short version is that the school house tales of outraged and oppressed colonists are only a partial truth. Like most wars it was largely a war started by rich men looking to get richer.
The Tea Wars were the bloodiest featured some of the deadliest battles of all time. Like the battle of constant Comet where General Earl Grey led forces against the Darjeeling’s best, emperor Green
The British bought so much tea from China they started running out of silver in the country to pay for it, so they tried to trade with opium instead. They then fought the Opium Wars to force the Chinese to let them trade opium in the country. Extra Credits does a great series on it.
Simplified version that is mostly correct of not slightly inaccurate. The brits were short on silver because they traded for silk, spices, and tea with China but China largely just wanted the silver. So the brits started trading opium from India to third party drug dealers for silver. The drug dealers would sell the opium in China for the silver the brits had traded in- then trade it back to the brits for more opium. China outlawed possession of opium and seized a large shipment, the brits called it an outrage and attacked. They won Hong Kong and many concessions in the treaties they forced China to sign. The second opium war was the brits trying to expand empirialist reach into China through legalizing opium and forcing China to open the entire country to foreign trade (previously only designated ports were open to foreign trade and within China many places were off limits to foreigners.) They also demanded China not charge tariffs on foreign goods. China lost that one too.
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