The Golden Rock and The Hudson Hollows: Atlantic Smuggling and Gendering of Revolutionary Politics

During the American Revolution, tea became more than a contested commodity. It became a vehicle for political action. This episode follows nine female-led “tea parties” across New York’s Hudson Valley in 1776 and 1777, where women confronted merchants, seized or demanded access to scarce tea, and enforced community expectations over price and distribution. Connecting these local confrontations to Dutch smuggling networks and St. Eustatius, the episode explores how wartime shortages, the revolutionary moral economy, and older traditions of female collective action expanded women’s political agency beyond the household and into the public marketplace.