Chinese label once tied to Boston Tea Party reveals 19th-century Pacific trade

Historian Tristan Brown initially examined a Chinese tea chest label believed to be from the Boston Tea Party. The label, donated by descendants of Thomas Wells to the Old South Meeting House in 1987, seemed to provide a rare link to the 1773 protest. However, a year of research revealed the label was created nearly a century later.

The key to the label's true origin lay in its Chinese text. Initially, scholars had studied the text using Mandarin, but Brown discovered the characters were being used phonetically in Cantonese, revealing the name Smith, Archer & Co., an American trading firm active in East Asia during the 1860s and 1870s. This discovery did not diminish the label's historical significance but offered a new story connected to Chinese migration, Pacific commerce, and the ways Americans constructed the Revolution's history.

The project began when the American Historical Review called for essays on objects linked to 1776, the year the United States declared independence. Brown, a China historian, accepted the challenge and found the label during a visit to the Old South Meeting House. Its scarcity and the difficulty in verifying claims of family participation in the Tea Party made the object intriguing.

Brown's research revealed the label belonged to a 19th-century Pacific trade network, not the 18th-century Canton trade system. The label also identified a Cantonese merchant linked to the trading firm, providing a link to 1860s and 1870s commerce.