During the “Taxation Without Representation” years preceding the
American Revolution, among the ways the king would try to tax
his colonies was by attaching a tax to imports. American
patriots responded by pledging to avoid the use of imported
products and to rely instead on goods manufactured in the
colonies: a tactic Gandhi would later call swadeshi. And as in
the Indian independence movement over a century later, the
wearing of homespun cloth became a symbol of allegiance to the
cause of independence. The Massachusetts Gazette reported:
Williamsburg, Va., . On evening the honorable speaker and
gentlemen of the House of Burgesses gave a ball at the capitol,
for the entertainment of His Excellency, Lord Botetourt; and it
is with the greatest pleasure we inform our readers that the
same patriotic spirit which gave rise to the association of
gentlemen on a late event was most agreeably manifested in the
dress of the ladies on that occasion, who, to the number of near
one hundred, appeared in homespun gowns; a